Young Kitesurfer Built $3.2B Startup

Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva

Guy Kawasaki presented Enchanted to the Santa Cruz New Tech Meetup in May 2014. Yes, we were all there to learn about his book “Enchanted”. But we got a huge bonus: the debut of Canva.

And that was when half of Santa Cruz started using Canva.

We recently learned that Melanie Perkins - the founder & CEO of Canva - is a kitesurfer. Had we known that in 2014, the other half of Santa Cruz would have started using Canva. Melanie is now one of the highest-valued, woman-led unicorn companies in the world. Forbes India

In 2014, Melanie asked Guy to become Chief Evangelist for Canva. We asked Guy how he got to know Melanie, and more about Canva.

SCW: How did you meet Melanie?

Guy: The folks at Canva saw that I was using the product to make Twitter graphics and reached out to me. The co-founders happened to be coming to America in two weeks, so we met up. The rest is history.

SCW: Some of the top tech superstars love to kitesurf. This includes: Melanie, Richard Branson, Bill Tye, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and your son Noah. Why haven’t you learned to kite?

Guy: I have not started kitesurfing because my concerns for climate change prevent me from driving to Scotts or Waddell Creek. :-)

SCW: Well, that could change very soon. We will get you a Joby Aviation air taxi: a clean green flying machine!