We all know the feeling of excitement when we come up with what we think is the ‘next big thing’, but what separates many founders from the few and far between game - changers is the ability to make a comeback after what may seem like a soul-crushing setback.

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Take Canva’s Melanie Perkins, co-founder of the go-to design platform for non-designers. Currently the world's most valuable female-led startup, it is estimated to be worth over $26 billion.

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As the platform makes its way to pretty much everyone’s roster of marketing and design tools, Canva is proving to be the new age staple of the professional world. And while their journey to success may seem swift on the surface, there’s lots to take away from it.

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⚡Persistence is key…

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While teaching design to other students during her time at university, Melanie realised how complex and expensive a lot of the platforms were for the average user. This was what sparked her initial mission to help make design more accessible to as many people as possible.

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To test this out, along with her partner and co-founder Cliff Obrecht, she launched a platform called Fusion Books, which was created to help students design and contribute to their school yearbook pages.

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After some years of growth, they decided to broaden their offering into what we now know as Canva. However they were soon met with scepticism by many venture capitalists, with over 100 rejections.

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For Melanie, failure was simply not an option. Determined to see her success through, she went back to the drawing board and reworked her pitch deck before finding initial backing in Silicon Valley.

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⚡Start simply, test quickly.

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Although the end goal was always to make design simple for everyone, Melanie started with the audience that was accessible and known to her - schools. Having a mum that was a teacher showed her that school yearbooks were a labour of love, and so a platform to help bring designs and ideas together was a good place to start

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She found a student to build a flash website, cold-called schools and used her mum's living room as an office. Its success fuelled her search for real investment and a CTO to help develop Canva into what it is today.

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Melanie built a simple version of the product that she could quickly get into the hands of her audience, solving the real problem they face.

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⚡A mission focused on audience needs…

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At the end of the day, this is what it really comes down to. While Canva isn’t the first design platform to exist, it does have an edge over the likes of household names like Adobe and Microsoft. This is mainly because of its easy-to-use approach.

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For a long time, graphic design required the help of professionals with branding and content basics. This meant these online spaces often felt gate-kept or took too long or cost too much for many to use. Canva arrived as the sought after solution. This is mainly because of their grasp of their audiences' needs.

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For example, many don’t have the time or foundational design knowledge to use apps like Photoshop or Illustrator, however many need access to high quality graphic design for basics like company logos or social media posts. Canva has grasped this with their incredibly user-friendly layout and archive of ready-to-use templates.

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Their focus on providing a solution to a very common problem is also why they’ve grown so quickly. With Fusion Books and Canva, Melanie and Cliff were able to spread their reach from word of mouth recommendations, due to so many suggesting them to others. This and the fact that it’s free for all to use.

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The key takeaway here is the power of resolve. While there’s an undeniable allure in the concept of an overnight success, there is in the power of perseverance. Remember - we all need to get through the first pancake before we start to see the good stuff.

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