There may not be a lot of prominent women leaders in the tech industry but we’re just getting started. Millennials are paving the way for more female technopreneurs and Melanie Perkins is one of them. At 33, she has successfully built a company that helps over 20 million people across 190 countries create beautiful designs — to be exact, 1 billion designs at 33 designs every second! In fact, 85% of the Fortune 500 companies are using her platform.

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The company is called Canva, a startup unicorn launched in 2013. Perkins built it from her hometown in Australia. At the start of 2019, Canva had a valuation of USD 1 billion after having raised a USD 40 million round. By June this year, it raised more than USD 600 million including early funding and this skyrocketed its valuation to USD 6 billion!

The concept of Canva is simple — design templates one can use so easily that everyone can be a designer. It started as an idea when Perkins was teaching a university design program wherein students struggled to learn even the basics.

With the success of Canva, Perkins was named one of Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list in 2016. If that’s not enough reason to be her fan, here are six more..

1. She was in her teens when she first started doing business

When Perkins was in her teens, she made scarves and sold them to women’s boutiques in Perth, Australia. This ignited her passion in entrepreneurship which was fully realized when she started Fusion Books. This was a sort of forerunner to Canva but focused solely on yearbooks.

She was only 19 when this venture’s co-founder Cliff Obrecht helped many schools in Australia design their own yearbooks. At the beginning, it was just her and a couple of friends, working in her mother’s living room. Within five years, it became Australia’s largest publisher and the company expanded to France and New Zealand.

2. She knows work-life balance

As a boss, it’s no surprise that Perkins’ work takes up a lot of time. However, she makes it a point to always have time to relax and rejuvenate.

“I find going away on holidays, even for the weekend or a week, can be incredibly refreshing,” explained Perkins on LinkedIn.

Perkins also said that she likes to go on adventurous holidays since it gives her time to think about other things.

“It’s important to give your brain a break sometimes so it can come back refreshed,” she said.

With her undeniable zest for life, it’s no surprise that in 2016, Business Insider ranked Perkins as the third coolest person in tech in Australia.

3. She is nationalistic

She could have moved Canva to Silicon Valley or another tech hub in the world, but Perkins chose to continue running the main office in Sydney. In a LinkedIn article, Perkins revealed the reason why she decided to do this — because she wants Australia to become a country known for technology and innovation.

“I would love to see in years to come Australia becoming synonymous with a disproportionate number of great innovators who are hard at work solving the world’s real problems with great products,” said Perkins on LinkedIn.

4. She conquered her fears

Would you believe that Perkins is actually an introvert and afraid of networking? Yes you heard that right! Perkins said it was daunting to meet potential investors at first but she knew it was critical to get Canva off the ground. She even went to Silicon Valley, worked for hours on end on pitch decks, and presented her ideas to strangers.

“I was really nervous and I felt out of my depth, trying to pitch Canva with a paper print out of our slide deck,” she said.

In the end, it was worth it. Years of networking and pitches (that got better and better) bore fruit in the form of investment from celebrities and executives from well-known tech corporations.

5. She knows how to give back

With the success of Canva, she has been known to support 25,000 non-profit organizations.

When Perkins was interviewed by Entrepreneur, she said that Canva currently houses 25,000 non-profits that use Canva for fundraising.

“That’s what makes all of the work worth it,” she told Entrepreneur.

6. She is not afraid to fail

Perkins may be a force to be reckoned with now but just a few years ago, she was being rejected right and left by investors. And she is not afraid to tell her story.

“Any adventure will be filled with rejections and littered with obstacles — somehow makes the adventure a little less lonely. And it’s most important for people who feel like they are on the outside to know this,” she said in an interview with Forbes.

In fact, she was rejected more than a hundred times in a course of three years before she got her first “yes!”

“But I just kept learning, refining my strategy and updating my pitch deck until we got a yes,” she said in another interview with Inc.

“Today, we are constantly assessing which projects to tackle next and having the determination to invest in these projects to make our users happy is absolutely critical. Every day at Canva we’re creating something entirely new, and I’m incredibly lucky to get to work with an incredible talented team of people who are just as determined to see our vision through.”

This article was originally published on Gina Romero’s LinkedIn and was republished with permission of the author.