LEADERSHIP

Home of tropical climates, perennially warm seas and a growing community of global business leaders. There are, it’ s fair to say, worse places to pitch your startup to potential investors, as Canva’ s Melanie Perkins found in 2012. Adrift in the ocean and treading water while waiting for a rescue boat, the then 25-year-old had shown the kind of tenacity and drive it takes to turn a living room idea she developed with co-founder and her now husband Cliff Obrecht into a US $ 42bn business. And it had been quite the journey. Perkins had never kite surfed until she met legendary venture capitalist Bill Tai. At this brief encounter in 2010, she and Obrecht crashed a small pitch contest in Perth, Australia, delivering a hurried presentation on Canvas Chef, a previous iteration of what became Canva. The founders left without any capital, but with Tai’ s business card and an invite to“ look him up” if they ever came to his native San Francisco. Taking Tai at his word, Perkins flew to San Francisco in 2011. There followed countless meetings with potential investors, with Perkins pitching constantly – she famously received 100 + rejections during this period, several of which came from investors directly from Tai’ s network.“ I thought he didn’ t like my pitch because he was on his phone the whole time,” Perkins told CNBC of one of her first meetings with Tai after arriving in the US.“ I was trying to pitch the future of publishing, and he was just busy on his phone. I found out later he was actually introducing me to people via email right there and then. One of those emails was to Lars Rasmussen, the co-founder of Google Maps.” After months of rejections, Perkins continued to meet with Tai. In these meetings he spoke less about her pitch decks and more about kite surfing, telling her that if she wanted to meet the kind of high-profile investors who could actually fund her and Obrecht, she needed to be where they were: out on the water. In 2012, Tai invited Perkins outright to his exclusive MaiTai retreat, an inviteonly gathering of some of the world’ s most powerful VCs, with an important catch – attendees were expected to kite surf. After spending the next few months hurriedly packing in lessons on the water, Perkins and Obrecht rushed to Maui. It was a gamble that paid off. By 2013 they raised US $ 1.6m of private venture capital – with investors including Rick Baker’ s Blackbird ventures, Tai, Lars Rasmussen and actors Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson – and a technical co-founder, Cameron Adams, onboard, meant the path was finally clear for Canva’ s development and launch. businesschief. com

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