Canva Pty Ltd
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2012 to present
Melanie Perkins is the CEO of Canva, in the role since 2012.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cliff Obrecht | Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer | 2013 | Present | 13 |
| Melanie Perkins | Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder | 2012 | Present | 14 |
Canva is the large, Australian software startup that successfully democratized graphic design. Before Canva, creating a simple flyer or a social media graphic required buying expensive Adobe software and spending months learning how to use it. Canva disrupted this entirely by building a greatly successful, drag-and-drop, web-based design tool. By focusing heavily on extreme ease of use and providing millions of pre-made templates, Canva empowered millions of small business owners, students, and social media managers to become their own graphic designers. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.
Canva makes money through a freemium subscription model. The core editor and a large template library are free, which pulls in more than 260 million monthly users (2025). Revenue comes from the roughly 31 million of them who pay for Canva Pro, Canva Business, Canva for Teams or Canva Enterprise to unlock premium content, brand kits, Canva AI features and team controls. Professional apps Affinity and Cavalry are free, and Canva uses them to draw designers toward its paid plans and the Canva ProSuite. Canva Print adds transaction revenue from printed products. Canva does not disclose a revenue split by plan.
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
2013 – Present
13 years (current)
Obrecht drove Canva's aggressive expansion into the enterprise sector and led the strategic acquisitions of Affinity and Flourish.
As COO, he built the global operational infrastructure that allowed Canva to scale past 135 million monthly active users without losing gross margin efficiency.
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
2012 – Present
14 years (current)
Since founding Canva in 2012, Melanie Perkins has overseen its transformation from a simple yearbook design tool into a global visual communications powerhouse. She led the strategic acquisition of Affinity in 2024 to directly challenge Adobe's professional creative monopoly, launched the generative AI Magic Studio suite, and steered the company to consistent profitability and about US$4 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2025, all while pledging 30% of Canva's equity to eradicate extreme global poverty through the Canva Foundation.
Founding who launched Fusion Books at 19 and endured 100+ VC rejections to build Canva; scaled the company past US$3.5 billion in 2025 revenue and a US$42 billion 2025 valuation, pledged 30% equity to eliminate extreme poverty, and directs global corporate strategy.
Canva operates in an increasingly crowded visual software landscape where Adobe (with Adobe Express and Firefly AI) is investing billions to reclaim non-professional design users, and specialized tools like Figma and pitch software like Pitch compete for enterprise presentation and UI mindshare. Other key challenges include navigating price adjustments for legacy Canva for Teams subscribers, integrating the newly acquired professional Affinity desktop suite into its cloud-native stack, defending against commoditized generative AI image-generation tools, and preparing for a dual-market initial public offering (IPO) in the United States and Australia.
Melanie Perkins is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Canva. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1987, Perkins founded high school yearbook software startup Fusion Books from her mother's living room at age 19 before co-founding Canva, which launched in 2013, building it into a multi-billion-dollar global design leader.
Between 2011 and 2012, Melanie Perkins was rejected by over 100 venture capital firms in Silicon Valley who dismissed a graphic design platform from Australia, until well-known technology investor Bill Tai and Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen recognized her vision.
Cliff Obrecht is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Canva (and husband of Melanie Perkins). Obrecht directs global corporate operations, enterprise sales, real estate, people operations, and strategic international acquisitions (including Affinity, Pexels, Pixabay, and Flourish).
Cameron Adams is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Canva. A distinguished user interface designer and former senior software engineer at Google (where he helped build Google Wave), Adams joined Perkins and Obrecht in 2012 to architect Canva's intuitive UI and product experience.
Damien Singh is Canva's Chief Financial Officer, steering the company through years of reported profitability, secondary liquidity rounds, and scalable global financial planning.
In 2021, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht signed the Giving Pledge, committing to give away most of their combined stake of roughly 30% of Canva, largely through the Canva Foundation, to fund global poverty alleviation, climate action, and crisis relief.
Melanie Perkins has been named to Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women, Fortune 40 Under 40, Bloomberg 50, and awarded the Australian EY Entrepreneur of the Year, celebrated as one of the most successful female technology founders in modern history.
Perkins's vision is to empower the whole world to design and communicate visually, providing an all-in-one AI visual worksuite for every human, school, and organization on Earth, while fulfilling Step 2 of the Two-Step Plan to do the most good possible for humanity.
Melanie Perkins is the co-founder and CEO. She famously pitched over 100 venture capitalists who completely rejected the idea before finally securing early funding from prominent tech investors.
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