There is opportunity in every crisis. But how big an opportunity? For 32 year old Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, it’s been a $2.8 billion opportunity (so far).
 

That’s how much their company, Canva, has grown in value during the crisis. That now makes Canva the largest privately-owned company in Australia and makes Melanie the 3rd Richard woman in Australia and the country’s youngest billionaire.
 

It didn’t look that way 3 months ago. When the crisis hit, Cliff says “Moving into COVID, we were initially quite cautious because we thought that the business would be hit quite hard with lots of small and medium business really struggling”.
 

“To use a ship analogy, we had no idea what storm was coming”. Canva shut down its offices and sent their 1,000 staff home, but didn’t lay anyone off.
 

Print product sales dropped by 75% and some customers started asking to pause their subscriptions. The company all but froze their hiring.

But as the lockdown continued, more people at home started using Canva for their designs: “That led us to say, ‘Hey, collaboration is a real thing. We should lean into this a little bit’.
 

The result? Melanie and Cliff have doubled their paid user base, increasing to 500,000 companies and 1.5 million paid subscribers. The company (started 10 years ago in Melanie’s kitchen), has raised $60 million on a $6 billion valuation - almost double the $3.2 billion valuation just 8 months ago.
 

The funding round was 10 times oversubscribed, with a lot of interest from the VCs and institutions looking for a good home for their money. Cliff says “Even our existing investors were looking to deploy between $50 million and $100 million, but we said ‘Oh, gee, we really don’t want to be diluted that much because we have a lot of conviction in the business and we don’t need that much money.”
 

“We could’ve raised $2 billion, but I think that would have been a really stupid thing to do.”
 

So they settled for $60 million and are now focused at both doing well, and doing good. Melanie says “Companies have a huge role to play in helping to shape the world we live in. Earlier this year, we launched Canva for Education and opened it up to all students and teachers worldwide for free.”
 

“We believe the old adage ‘do no evil’ is no longer enough today and hope to live up to our value to ‘be a force for good’.”
 

Cliff adds: “But it just never really feels like enough. You see what’s happening and it’s a bit of a sh*t show and it’s not aspirational at all. It doesn’t look like it’s getting fixed quickly by the adults who are in government.”
 

“They’re not doing the right thing, and if they’re not, who will? So we really believe we should have a heavy part in trying our best to make sure the sh*t show doesn’t continue.”
 

How about you? In crazy times where there are many struggling, yet there’s more investor money than ever looking for a home, are you finding a way to build both income and impact?
 

At a time when trust in Government is at an all time low, are you sitting back, or stepping up?"
 

There has never been a better time than now.
 

“Stand up straight and realise who you are,
That you tower over your circumstances.”
- Maya Angelou

For more on how Canva started, here's a story Roger Hamilton wrote about Melanie 4 years ago when the company was $300m in size - 5% of what it is today 😊
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157300400705411