The woman behind Canva shares how she built a $42B company from nothing | Melanie Perkins

In this interview, Lenny interviews Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of Canva, about her journey building the company. Melanie shares insights into Canva's success, which she attributes to "column B thinking"—envisioning a desired future and working backward to create it. She discusses the importance of setting "crazy big goals," operationalizing vision through project decks, and the "chaos to clarity" process. Melanie also recounts overcoming early investor rejection, the challenges of a two-year product rewrite, and the significance of company values, community feedback, and philanthropy through Canva's two-step plan: building a valuable company to do good. She also touches on the company's approach to AI integration and announces new product launches, emphasizing Canva's mission to empower the world to design anything and publish anywhere.