Lenny's PodcastMelanie Perkins: How 'column B' thinking built Canva's $42B
Designing the future first, then working backwards into mission pillars; Perkins folded 100 investor rejections into clearer pitches and a two-step plan.
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 5:25
Canva’s origin story: 100+ investor rejections, pivots, and the big mission
Lenny sets the stage with Canva’s improbable trajectory: repeated fundraising rejection, major early pivots, and a long technical rebuild. He frames Melanie Perkins as a rare guest and previews themes like vision, goals, setbacks, and Canva’s expanding product surface area.
- •Canva’s early fundraising: 100+ investors said no
- •Early pivot from yearbook publishing (Fusion Books) to Canva
- •Two-year code rewrite that stalled feature shipping
- •Canva’s scale today (valuation, revenue, user base) contrasted with early struggles
- •Preview of topics: vision, culture, goals, and product expansion
- 5:25 – 8:08
“Column B thinking”: planning from a dream future, not today’s constraints
Melanie introduces the idea of building a “Column B company”: starting with an ideal future and working backward, rather than stacking the “bricks” available today. She relates this mindset to her early conviction that design would become online, simple, and collaborative.
- •Column A = incremental planning from current constraints; Column B = future-first planning
- •Metaphor: building a magical castle vs stacking nearby bricks
- •Canva began as pure Column B because the realistic starting point was ‘nothing’
- •Design’s inevitable shift: online, collaborative, simpler tools
- •Fusion Books as a stepping-stone toward Canva’s larger vision
- 8:08 – 11:49
How to build a Column B company: envision 10 years out, then climb the ladder
Melanie lays out a practical approach: articulate “wild success” and “terrible failure” over a long time horizon, then define small, compounding steps. She emphasizes making deliberate time for vision work because daily noise pulls teams into short-term thinking.
- •Start with a crisp picture of the future you want (10+ year lens)
- •Define wild success vs terrible failure to sharpen direction
- •Build a ‘ladder to the moon’ with small rungs that compound
- •The hardest part is bridging massive ambition to microscopic next steps
- •Protect time for long-range thinking amid day-to-day distractions
- 11:49 – 14:50
Operationalizing vision: “Chaos to clarity” decks, prototypes, and visual communication
They unpack how Canva turns hazy ideas into concrete plans using a ‘chaos to clarity’ process—writing, pitching, designing, prototyping, and refining until others can see it too. Melanie explains why early ideas feel embarrassing and fragile, and why clarity-building artifacts (like decks) are essential for momentum.
- •Every idea starts as ‘chaos’ and must be moved toward ‘clarity’
- •Clarity comes from incremental artifacts: notes → deck → designs → prototype
- •Early-stage ideas are ‘embarrassing’ because you lack mastery and answers
- •Pitch decks clarify thinking and make visions legible to others
- •Visual communication is foundational to scaling shared understanding
- 14:50 – 21:50
Crazy Big Goals: mission pillars, sequencing ambition, and celebrating progress
Melanie describes Canva’s value of “crazy big goals” and how they’re made actionable by breaking the mission into pillars (anything, every ingredient, every language, every device). They discuss the balance between ambition and morale, and Canva’s ritualized celebrations that reinforce progress and motivation.
- •Crazy big goals create urgency and commitment when obstacles appear
- •Mission broken into pillars to translate vision into yearly goals
- •Examples: expanding formats (docs, websites, whiteboards, video) and languages (including RTL)
- •Timing can be inaccurate, but goals tend to be achieved eventually
- •Celebrations (plates, doves, La Tomatina) make milestones rewarding
- 21:50 – 26:29
Hard seasons: systems breaking at scale and the two-year product ‘dark tunnel’
Melanie explains that each doubling in company size breaks existing systems and forces reinvention (e.g., goal-sharing rituals evolving into ‘season openers’). She recounts Canva’s painful two-year front-end rewrite that prevented shipping, why it was strategically necessary, and how they kept morale afloat.
- •Scale breaks processes; rituals must evolve without losing context and alignment
- •Season openers: company-wide context, launches, and goals—eventually too long at scale
- •Two-year front-end rewrite initially estimated at six months
- •Rewrite enabled cross-platform parity, collaboration, RTL languages, and engineering scalability
- •Morale tactics: gamifying progress with a board and ‘bath toy’ markers
- 26:29 – 30:58
Fundraising gauntlet: turning 100+ ‘no’s into a stronger pitch (without changing the vision)
They revisit the famous rejection story with new detail: investors’ objections became a roadmap for iterating the pitch deck. Melanie describes systematically pre-answering concerns (market size, competition, category education) and shifting the story to be more problem-led while keeping the core vision intact.
- •Rejections provided structured feedback (market size, differentiation, category context)
- •She continuously updated the deck with slides addressing each objection
- •Most investors lacked design category context—so Canva educated early in the deck
- •Big change was articulation (problem-first framing), not the underlying vision
- •Advice: control what you can (pitch, volume of meetings), don’t take it personally
- 30:58 – 34:48
Leadership growth: authenticity, ‘not borrowing other companies’ bricks,’ and delegation
Melanie reflects on leadership evolution as a continuous search for what’s authentic to Canva rather than importing playbooks from larger companies. She emphasizes ‘giving away hats’ (delegating roles) as the company scales, and notes that being based in Australia helped Canva build its own operating style.
- •Imported operating models often don’t fit—‘bricks from someone else’s house’
- •Confidence in Canva’s own approach grew over time (after experiments failed)
- •Delegation is central: founders must give away hats to better owners
- •Systems must be reinvented and reimagined at each scale stage
- •Australia distance from the Bay Area helped maintain independence in thinking
- 34:48 – 35:47
A goal-driven operating system: connecting mission on the wall to what teams do daily
Melanie argues that missions often become decorative unless operationalized into pillars, measurable goals, and celebrations that reinforce what matters. She describes Canva’s structure as an ‘underloved’ but powerful way to ensure authenticity—customers feel the company is actually doing what it says.
- •Mission → mission pillars → goals → celebrations as a closed loop
- •Prevents drift where revenue work diverges from stated purpose
- •Creates customer trust through consistency and follow-through
- •Not easy to run, but high leverage when aligned
- •Reinforces culture by rewarding progress toward mission pillars
- 35:47 – 38:04
Sustainable performance: boundaries, deep focus, and stepping back to regain perspective
Melanie shares how her approach shifted from nonstop work to building sustainable habits that protect health and decision quality. Key tactics include removing Slack/email from her phone, creating clear on/off boundaries, and using breaks to avoid ‘working harder on the wrong thing.’
- •Early years: constant work across Fusion Books and Canva
- •Long-term pace requires sleep, exercise, journaling, and mental recovery
- •No email/Slack on phone; emergencies come via calls/pages
- •‘All in’ while working, ‘all out’ when not working
- •Stepping away helps see the forest, not just the trees
- 38:04 – 40:36
Community-driven product development: 1M+ requests and the ‘close the loop’ machine
Melanie details Canva’s large-scale system for collecting, tallying, and routing product requests from users, then explicitly ‘closing loops’ by shipping and communicating back. She pairs this with heavy user testing (including her own) to identify friction and validate improvements.
- •Over a million community requests per year with a dedicated processing team
- •200+ closed loops in a year; improvements range from small (gradient text) to big (Sheets)
- •Example: enabling Magic Write for teachers with safety controls after demand
- •Two inputs to product: build the future (mission-led) + build what users ask for
- •UserTesting.com and lightweight online tests reveal surprisingly representative insights
- 40:36 – 45:07
The two-step plan: building a top company to fund real-world impact at scale
Melanie explains Canva’s ‘two-step plan’: (1) build one of the world’s most valuable companies, (2) do the most good possible—and how the two steps can reinforce each other simultaneously. She highlights the 1% pledge, committing a major share of equity to giving, and large direct-cash initiatives via the Canva Foundation.
- •Two-step plan: value creation paired with maximal positive impact
- •Step one fuels step two; step two can strengthen step one (meaning, motivation, trust)
- •1% pledge (time, money, equity, product) as a compounding early commitment
- •30% equity commitment from founders toward philanthropy via Canva Foundation
- •GiveDirectly: $50M donated + $100M committed; education/nonprofit programs at massive scale
- 45:07 – 48:24
Canva’s biggest launch: expanding formats and embedding AI across the workflow
Melanie previews what she calls Canva’s biggest launch yet: deeper video capabilities, new products like email and forms, and AI embedded throughout the editor and asset workflows. The focus is reducing friction between idea and finished communication, including AI help inside comments through an @canva collaborator.
- •Major launches: video upgrades, email design, forms, and more
- •AI embedded in core editor surfaces (design tab, elements tab) for creation across formats
- •Generate assets and outputs: presentations, videos, websites, photos, code
- •@canva in comments enables contextual AI assistance in-place
- •Reinforces ‘design anything’ by making creation faster and more accessible
- 48:24 – 52:39
Where Canva expands next: designing + publishing anywhere, and the creativity–productivity overlap
They discuss Canva’s expansion logic: taking the mission literally—design anything and publish anywhere—while staying centered between creativity tools and productivity tools. Melanie also describes Canva’s early wedge as solving a real, underserved problem (yearbooks) and scaling from observed customer needs rather than competitor obsession.
- •Expansion is mission-driven: ‘design anything’ and ‘publish anywhere’ taken literally
- •Examples: global print fulfillment; upcoming 3D capabilities
- •Strategic position: middle of creativity and productivity Venn diagram
- •Early wedge: solve concrete pain points (yearbook coordinators) via deep customer contact
- •Don’t over-focus on competitors; find gaps and solve problems exceptionally well
- 52:39 – 55:23
AI philosophy and personal workflows: integrate where it helps, plus ‘AI walks’ for thinking
Melanie emphasizes that AI should be embedded where it materially helps users achieve goals, not adopted for hype. She shares personal workflows: using AI as a first stop to explore ideas, tagging Canva for in-context suggestions, and doing ‘AI walks’—voice-dictated brain dumps that she summarizes into actionable steps.
- •AI should reduce real workflow friction, not be ‘front and center’ by default
- •Community feedback guides refinement of AI features
- •Canva pursued AI-adjacent ideas even in early decks before the current wave
- •Personal workflow: ideation via AI + in-design context using @canva
- •‘AI walk’: voice brain dump into Notes/Canva Docs, then summarize and extract actions
- 55:23 – 1:06:09
2050 vision wall: imagination as a lever for a better ‘Column B world’ + lightning round close
Melanie explains why she built a 2050 vision wall: concern that society is on a troubling ‘freight train’ trajectory, and a desire to imagine an alternative future. She connects imagination to collective purpose, discusses goals like basic needs and education for all, then closes with lightning-round reflections and final advice on values-driven building.
- •2050 wall: turning fear about the future into an explicit alternative vision
- •Themes: basic human needs, education as a right, community over loneliness
- •Small daily decisions can be steered by a visible long-range vision
- •Lightning round: recommended books, Calm app, life mottos about harmony and imagination
- •Final advice: engage with Canva, submit requests, take the 1% pledge, build toward the world you want
