Canva Owners Offload Surry Hills Loft Apartment Investment

Successful Surry Hills residents, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins, the co-founders of the billion-dollar graphic design platform, Canva, have decided to offload a loft apartment they’ve bought as an investment.

The pair has reportedly asked for more than $800,000 for the one-bedroom dwelling, which they originally bought for $667,500 in 2015. The property’s exact value and address have not been publicly divulged.

Obrecht and Perkins, who serve as the chief operating officer and chief executive officer of Canva, respectively, are currently living in a $1.5 million Surry Hills home. Since moving into this terrace, the couple has renovated the property by adding a third floor with a rooftop garden.

The Canva couple, who have been together since their days at the University of Western Australia, has quite the success story which started with Perkins, who launched the concept of her graphic design platform more than a decade ago in Perth. It was her third shot at establishing her own business after two major failures.

Then in her mid-20s, Perkins wanted a professional-quality design system for web users, regardless of their artistic expertise after experiencing frustrations herself on using design software. With Obrecht’s help, they tested Perkins’ idea with Fusion Books, which high school students use for their online yearbooks.

Fusion Books took off not only in Australia but also in France and New Zealand, which emboldened Perkins to pitch Canva to Silicon Valley investors. It took her three years to get a break until Cameron Adams, a former executive at Google, got on board.

By 2013, Canva was ready. A few years later, Canva’s financial assets climbed from $6.8 million to $23.5 million. By 2018, the company’s value was estimated at over $1 billion with 10 million registered Canva users across 190 countries.

The impact triggered moving Canva’s headquarters to Kippax Street in Surry Hills as the company expanded to 1,500 workers around the world.