Lenny's Podcast · November 2, 2025

She turned 100+ rejections into a $42B company | Melanie Perkins

with Melanie Perkins

Discover how Canva founder Melanie Perkins transformed 100+ investor rejections into building a $42 billion design platform using unconventional strategies like 'Column B thinking' and 'chaos to clarity' frameworks. Learn the counterintuitive approach of setting Crazy Big Goals that make you feel inadequate, turning rejection into product improvement, and why starting with your dream vision and working backwards enables breakthrough innovation that incremental planning can't achieve. This episode reveals the specific methodologies behind one of the world's most valuable companies and how to integrate purpose-driven growth with massive scale.

Featured insight

Crazy Big Goals make you feel completely inadequate, which motivates you to work really hard to achieve them. With smaller goals, you give up when problems arise, but crazy goals are worth persisting through obstacles. — Melanie Perkins

Best for: Founders scaling from startup to growth stage, Product leaders building category-defining companies

Loading the full episode…