Melanie Perkins: turning rejection into a clearer plan

While at university in Perth, Perkins taught design software part-time. She recalled students finding the tools difficult. Rather than immediately competing across the whole design market, she and Cliff Obrecht began with school yearbooks through Fusion Books, using her mother’s living room as an office. [Source 1: Melanie Perkins: early Canva and Fusion Books account]

A useful idea can come from watching someone struggle with work you understand. Pay attention to repeated questions, confusing steps and tasks people avoid. You can investigate whether a simpler process helps before deciding how large an opportunity might be.

Perkins describes borrowing to commission software, approaching developers and working around study and other jobs. In a later reflection, she said she put her studies on hold only after customer growth made the workload unmanageable. Her account makes the unfinished degree one decision in a developing business. [Source 1: Melanie Perkins: early Canva and Fusion Books account, Source 2: Melanie Perkins: ten-year reflection on study, rejection and support]

Testing an interest while retaining other commitments can reveal what the work actually requires. Track the tasks you enjoy and the ones you need help with. A project may teach you about a suitable employed role as well as about potential ownership.

Her early Canva account reproduces investor rejections involving distance, technical capability and the risk of an overseas startup. She also shows how the pitch changed. These were particular objections to answer, alongside the emotional difficulty of hearing no. [Source 1: Melanie Perkins: early Canva and Fusion Books account]

That distinction makes encouragement more useful. A rejection can concern timing, evidence or the proposed solution rather than your worth as a person. Ask what would need to be different, then decide whether the feedback points to something you can test.

In her ten-year reflection, Perkins credits supportive parents, education, a capable team and investors who eventually believed in the idea. She also describes seeking feedback after rejection and using it to improve the pitch. [Source 2: Melanie Perkins: ten-year reflection on study, rejection and support]

Perseverance does not require doing everything alone. A collaborator may bring a skill you lack, a mentor may challenge an assumption and a customer may explain why your first version is confusing. Learning to use that help is part of developing a serious plan.

Perkins’s later reflection acknowledges that being slow to give up can be unhelpful when changing direction would teach you more. It is a useful complication to a story often reduced to repeated rejection followed by success. [Source 2: Melanie Perkins: ten-year reflection on study, rejection and support]

You can keep a goal while changing its size, timing or first audience. Decide in advance what evidence would make you continue, seek training or stop a particular experiment. That gives you a way to learn without treating every change as a failure.

Talk to a few people who do a task regularly. Ask where they lose time and what they have already tried. Sketch a simpler process or build a small demonstration using tools you understand. Show it back to them and record what you learn.

You do not need to predict a worldwide business to make that exercise worthwhile. It can help you discover an interest in design, software, customer support or organizing projects, and give you a clearer reason to choose your next training step.