Melanie Perkins Keynote (Canva), Sunrise North Island

Key ideas

Perkins uses Canva's 10-year story to argue that founders need perseverance through rejection and should plan from a dreamed future, reached through small, celebrated goals.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Expect rejection on the way to any goal

   Perkins says the natural reaction to rejection is to stop, and that she would have been among those ready to give up, yet she argues rejection and perseverance are both needed for any goal. She describes investors citing distance, valuation and market size, and says three years passed between first meeting an investor and landing investment. Each time, she says, the team refined its strategy and tried again.

2. 2

   Don't compare your struggle to highlight reels

   Perkins calls the 10-year story she just told her highlight reel, and reads a note she wrote herself at a low point in 2011, saying she was tired, in a hard situation she had chosen, and would pull through. She argues everyone is on the same roller coaster and no one has had it easy, which she suggests can be slightly encouraging. Her instruction is to keep planting seeds until one grows.

3. 3

   Plan from the city, not only the Lego

   Perkins says most planning starts from the Lego blocks you have now, which makes sense, but urges also picturing where you want to be in 10 years even without the tools to build it. She offers three prompts: what your industry will look like in 10 years, what you would like the world to look like, and what wild success and wild failure would look like in 10 years. She says Canva runs that last question with different groups all the time.

4. 4

   Build a long ladder, take small steps

   Perkins warns against a short ladder that runs out and a tall one with no steps, which she says is only dreaming. She wants a ladder to the moon climbed by tiny steps, each teaching you something for the next. Her example is Fusion Books: at 19, with no relevant experience, she took on school yearbooks in Australia rather than the entire world of design.

5. 5

   Turn the dream into seasonal goals

   Perkins says a clear destination speeds decisions and helps show investors and team members where the company is heading; Canva walks each new team member through its vision deck. The mission is the big moon and goals are the steps, set each season, such as 20 languages in 2016, 100 in 2017 and right-to-left languages in 2018. Teams, she says, choose their own celebration when they hit one, such as throwing tomatoes.

In Melanie’s words

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