Melanie Perkins on Canva, Column B Thinking, and Crazy Big Goals

Speaker:
Melanie Perkins
Source:
Melanie Perkins on Canva, Column B Thinking, and Crazy Big Goals · ~2024–2025
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Melanie Perkins on Canva, Column B Thinking, and Crazy Big Goals

Key ideas

  • Column B thinking: start from the dream, not the bricks. Column A is the current-state list — what you have, what is feasible given existing constraints. Column B is the list you write starting from the imagined end state — what the world would look like if everything worked. Perkins argues that most founders and PMs implicitly plan from Column A and incrementally extend it. Column B thinking requires ignoring Column A entirely at the start; the current-state constraints are reintroduced only once the destination is clear.
  • Crazy big goals work because they produce a specific feeling. “The thing that I love about a crazy big goal is that you feel completely inadequate before it.” That feeling of inadequacy is signal, not noise — it means the goal requires genuine growth rather than execution of already-mastered skills. Small goals feel achievable; crazy big goals force the recognition that you have not yet become the person who can achieve them.
  • Chaos to Clarity: the embarrassing first step is mandatory. Every new idea begins in chaos — the first version is always embarrassing because you do not yet have mastery. Moving from chaos to clarity is a sequential, step-by-step process: each step reduces ambiguity enough to reveal the next step, but none of the early steps look like mastery from the outside. Founders who refuse to make embarrassing first steps never progress to the clarity stage.
  • Rejection as pitch deck iteration data. Perkins received over 100 investor rejections before closing Canva’s first round. Her practice: treat each rejection as structured feedback, identify the objection, and strengthen the deck on that specific axis before the next meeting. The pitch deck becomes a compounding asset. By the time Canva closed funding, the deck had been shaped by hundreds of expert objections.
  • The two-step plan. Canva’s strategic frame is deliberately sequential: (1) build one of the world’s most valuable companies; (2) use that position to do the most good in the world. The sequencing matters — step 2 is not funded by sacrifice from step 1, and step 1 is not corrupted by trying to do step 2 prematurely. Perkins and co-founder Cliff Obrecht have donated over $50M to GiveDirectly with an additional $100M pledged; the 2050 vision wall at Canva imagines a world where basic human needs are universally met.

Overview

Melanie Perkins is CEO and co-founder of Canva, which at the time of recording had a $42B valuation, $3.3B ARR, 240M monthly active users (including 100M in education), and had been profitable for eight consecutive years. She was a competitive figure skater with 4:30am training sessions before building Canva from Fremantle, Western Australia — receiving over 100 investor rejections in the process. The episode covers: Column B thinking and how to escape incremental planning, the Chaos to Clarity model, crazy big goals as a motivational and growth mechanism, the 2-year technical rewrite (Perkins used a rubber duck game board to maintain team morale through the delay), the Canva AI walk (brain-dumping via voice into Canva Docs while walking), and the two-step philanthropic plan. Her favourite books are The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath and Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman Jr. Her favourite product is the Calm app.