Mette Lykke, CEO of Too Good To Go was recently interviewed by BBC.

For many people, leaving the stability of a well-paid job to join a start-up might seem daunting. For Danish entrepreneur Mette Lykke, it’s a leap she’s made not just once, but twice. Back in 2007 she was working for management consultancy firm McKinsey, but decided it was time to change direction. “I was missing the feeling of having a real impact,” she says.

In a serendipitous twist she was in New York when a stranger came over and handed her a postcard. It read: “Whatever our wildest dreams may be, they only scratch the surface of what’s possible.” “It was just a nice sign,” the 38-year-old recalls. “She gave it to me when I was waiting at a red light, and she just walked away.”

Mette decided to go for it and partnered with fellow Danes and McKinsey colleagues, Christian Birk and ­Jakob Jonck, to launch the personal training app Endomondo. “I might have done it anyway,” she says. “But it definitely didn’t feel like a coincidence at that time.”

Mette was a competitive horse-rider and for the three sports enthusiasts, launching an app to “make fitness fun” was a logical fit. Making a success of their Copenhagen-based idea was no walk in the park though. At that time – 13 years ago – most phones lacked GPS. In the first few months of Endomondo there were days when no one signed up at all. “It really felt a little bit uphill,” she says.

Mette says that her upbringing helped prepare her for the hard graft. She grew up alongside her family’s timber business in Ringkobing, a small town in Jutland in western Denmark. “I grew up seeing that there are ups and downs,” she says. “Most days are just hard work, [but] if I had known back then that I wouldn’t see any salary for the next two years, I might have reconsidered,” she laughs. “You just don’t know.” As an entrepreneur, “you’re definitely an optimist,” she explains. “We always thought next month is going to be different.”

The game-changer came when the Apple App Store opened in 2008 and smart phone sales boomed. But it still took Endomondo six years to make its first profit. By 2015, the app had 20 million users and caught the attention of American sportswear giant, Under Armour. “They were particularly interested in increasing brand awareness in Europe,” says Mette. “We could help with that, with the vast majority of [our] users being based here.”

The US company bought Endomondo for $85m (£65m). Mette was just 33 at the time, and she and her two co-founders were suddenly multimillionaires. “It’s a strange thing to sell a business you were part of creating,” she says. “While the deal was a big success from a business perspective and I was happy with the decision, it was still hard to let go of my baby on a personal level.” After the sale she continued to work for Endomondo and its new parent, managing teams both in Copenhagen where she was based and also in Texas.

It was following a chance encounter on a bus outside Copenhagen in August 2016 that the Dane embarked on her next mission – fighting food waste. She started chatting to a fellow passenger who showed her an app called Too Good To Go. “I was not fully aware of how big of an issue in society food waste really is,” recalls Mette. After doing more research she was shocked to learn about its climate impact. “That was mind-blowing to me.”

Five young Danish entrepreneurs had launched the online marketplace several months earlier. Restaurants and shops post what leftover food they have available, together with a time-slot for collection.

Members of the public can then purchase discounted meals or groceries through the app. The surplus food is saved from being thrown away – the firm makes money by taking a cut on meals sold. “The fact that we can help solve such a massive issue and then leave everyone as winners in the process, I thought that was really powerful,” says Mette. She found the start-up “so exciting” that she invested. Several months later she left Under Armour and joined Too Good To Go as chief executive. “I wouldn’t have jumped into this if I didn’t think I could contribute,” she says.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, one-third of the world’s food is wasted. When ranked alongside countries, food waste is the world’s third-largest producer of carbon dioxide after the USA and China. In recent years dozens of firms have set out to tackle this, including similar platforms like Olio, Foodcloud and Karma. Alan Hayes, from food and grocery research group IGD, says these apps have “helped to raise awareness of food waste in businesses and in schools” as well as empowering consumers.

When it comes to changing behaviour about food waste, Trish Caddy, an analyst at fellow research firm Mintel, thinks consumers respond better to rewards. “The Too Good to Go app is particularly good at normalising eating leftovers by promoting end-of-day food at a discount,” she says.

Mette has overseen a rapid expansion. The firm now employs 450 people, operates in 13 European countries and is due to roll out in Sweden. “Endomondo took three years to get to the first million users and with Too Good To Go it took 15 months,” she says. “It’s just a completely different time… the technology is ready.” Mette says it is one of Europe’s fastest-growing apps with 18 million users and is gaining an additional 45,000 daily. Customers range from bargain-hunting students to environmentally-conscious young families, while women over 50 are another big market. It has also partnered with more than 30,000 food suppliers, from Yo Sushi to Accor Hotels.

Mette describes it as a “social impact” company. “Every time we make a euro in revenue, it’s because we did something good.” It aims to ultimately be profit making, though Mette says the timeline for delivering returns isn’t yet clear. “At the moment, every revenue we make goes back into the business. Just growing it and expanding it to more and more countries. That’s our focus.”

So far the Too Good To Go team reckon they have helped save more than 25 million meals. “I feel like this is just the beginning,” says Mette. “It doesn’t feel like we’re anywhere near the goal line at all. Within the next five years, we want to have saved a billion meals.”

Luiza Trajano, founder of Magazine Luiza, was recently interviewed by BBC.

With inflation hitting a whopping 3,000%, and new currencies being introduced and then quickly ditched, it was not easy to be a retailer in the Brazil of the early 1990s. That was the tough economic backdrop faced by Luiza Trajano, then 40, when she took up the top job at her family’s chain of shops selling home electronics and household appliances in 1991.

Magazine Luiza had a small chain in the southern state of Sao Paulo. But Luiza had ambitious plans to expand nationwide. And she had a cunning plan. With inflation that high, and the Brazilian government introducing and then abandoning no fewer than four different currencies between 1989 and 1994, it would have been risky to start opening more large stores stocking the entire range of products.

So Luiza decided to open a chain of micro shops that didn’t stock anything. Starting in 1992, customers would instead sit down at a computer terminal, and browse a computerised catalogue of all the items on sale. They would then order what they wanted, and Magazine Luiza would deliver it to their homes from a network of nationwide distribution depots.

It was a precursor to online sales, from a time before Brazil got the internet – access to the net only became available to consumers in Brazil in 1997. In addition to enabling Magazine Luiza to quickly and cheaply expand, the small “electronic shops” also meant that the company didn’t have to keep printing out new physical price labels in response to inflation or a new currency. It just had to update the prices on its computer system.

Looking back, Luiza, who is now 68, says: “It was a big revolution, we introduced a new way of virtual sales. It prepared us for the internet before anyone else.” She says that she also made sure that the company put a lot of effort into explaining the expansion plans to staff, to ensure that they were happy and motivated, and therefore offering good customer service. “We did intense work with our team, explaining our targets and how we need everyone. We were very transparent with how they played an important role in this new movement.”

Within three years Magazine Luiza had a few hundred of its shops across Brazil, with some large cities having as many as 58 outlets. Today the company has more than 1,000 stores across Brazil and 30,000 employees. Meanwhile, its website accounts for 48% of sales and it has total annual revenues of 19.7bn real ($4.9bn; £3.7bn). The success of the business has made Luiza one of the richest people in Brazil. Her net worth is $3.5bn (£2.7bn), according to Forbes magazine.

The first Magazine Luiza shop was opened in 1957 by Luiza’s aunt and uncle, in her home city of Franca, 400km (250 miles) north of the city of Sao Paulo, The word “magazine” was chosen as a variation of the French word for shop, “magasin”, while “Luiza” was also her aunt’s first name. Luiza started helping her aunt and uncle at the shop from the age of 12, working in the afternoon and early evening after she had finished school. “I was a saleswoman, and it was still a very small shop [at the time],” she says. “I loved the experience, and it was a success.”

When Luiza went to university to study law, she still made time to work at the shop. And after graduating she joined the family business full-time. Over the next two decades she filled a number of increasingly senior roles, before coming chief executive in 1991, as her uncle and aunt stepped back from the day-to-day running of the business.

Another innovation Luiza introduced was opening the stores very early in the morning during sales periods. This might have long been common practice in the UK and North America, but in 1990s Brazil it was a novel development. “We opened the shops at 5am, something that we had never seen before in Brazil.” she says. “Other retail shops started to do the same.”

Today the company is one of the largest retailers in Brazil. With almost half of sales now coming online, the small non-stock shops have been replaced over the years with larger ones that do have some or all products there to take away. The focus on staff happiness remains though, and Magazine Luiza consistently tops the list of the best Brazilian retail companies to work for.

“We have been in first place since 2006,” she says. “It is one of my greatest joys after all these years.” While she has no plans to retire, in 2016 Luiza passed the chief executive role over to her son Frederico, while she switched to chairwoman.

Headspace, founded in 2010 and based in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, says that it is committed to advancing the field of mindfulness through clinically-validated research, with one of the largest research pipelines of any digital health and wellness company.

The company operates a B2B business (Headspace for Work) to offer its mindfulness products and services to more than 700 companies, such as Starbucks, Adobe, GE, Hyatt and Unilever, to help them build healthier, more productive cultures and higher performing organizations. It also supports government entities like the UK’s NHS to offer digital mental health tools.

It partners with many of the world’s most-recognizable brands, including Apple and Amazon, as well as with Nike, NBA and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team to offer sport and movement content. Headspace Health is Headspace’s digital health subsidiary pioneering new ways to incorporate the Headspace mindfulness experience into digital medicine.

Headspace has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, Apple’s Best of 2018, Samsung’s Best of 2019 and one of CB Insights’ top digital health companies, along with being selected for five Webby Awards in health and fitness between 2018 and 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_yXe_6mYTA

Andy Puddicombe and Richard Pierson, co-founders of meditation app Headspace. In an extract from a BBC interview they talked about their journey:

It was a series of tragedies that sent Andy Puddicombe’s life onto a completely different path. When he was 22, Andy was standing outside a London pub when a drunk driver ploughed into a group of his friends, killing two of them. A few months later his stepsister died in a cycling accident, and then an ex-girlfriend passed away during surgery.

Andy was doing a sports science degree at the time, but amid the grief he dropped out. Seeking a complete life change, he decided to travel to the Himalayas to train as a Buddhist monk. He ended up spending the next 10 years as a monk, which took him all over Asia, and involved him meditating for up to 16 hours a day.

He says that the meditation helped him come to terms with everything. “It gave me a shift in perspective – it taught me to focus less on oneself, and instead bring greater happiness to others,” says Andy, now 46. His friends and family however, were a little shocked and worried. “None of them really knew what to make of it. But despite this they were incredibly supportive and encouraging.”

In 2005 Andy returned to the UK to set up a meditation business, but it still wasn’t a widely-appreciated practice in his home country at the time. “Some people were put off by the language behind meditation, or saw it as a bit of a hippy thing to do,” he says. “It was quite inaccessible. People didn’t have time for it, or know how to do it.”

Setting up his own small private practice in London, Andy taught burnt out professionals how to use meditation to help them in their daily lives.

Today he and his co-founder Richard Pierson, 38, run popular meditation app Headspace, which has been downloaded more than 54 million times around the world, and has annual revenues said to be more than $100m (£82m).

Back in 2005, Richard was one of the struggling professionals who booked an appointment with Andy. After university Richard had gone into the advertising industry in London. He had risen quickly through the ranks, but it had taken its toll.

“When I met Andy I was pretty desperate,” says Richard. “I had continuous social anxiety, and that was very challenging. I didn’t have a friendship group where I could be open with them about these pressures.

“After the first session it highlighted how many thoughts I had in my head, and just how manic my life was – I found it exciting that there was a pathway.”

Once Richard realised how much he benefited from the meditation, he decided that he wanted to go into business with Andy, to help spread the word.

“It was very much a skill swap,” says Richard. “He taught me meditation, and I came up with a bunch of ideas for him on how to make him more visible. I just thought it was such a shame that he was in a room on his own.”

By 2010 they were doing events around the UK, where they would talk about the benefits of meditation, and even do group meditation sessions.

Using this money, and help from friends, they created the first version of their Headspace app that year. Users could choose from a number of 10-minute guided meditations to follow.

Striking lucky early on, the UK’s Guardian included a Headspace booklet in every newspaper one Saturday, while airline Virgin Atlantic added bespoke Headspace meditation content to its planes’ entertainment system. This led to a growing number of people downloading the app, which today costs £9.99 per month.

Andy, who is the voice of the app, says: “In the early days it was just us, no one would give us any more money, so we’d just ask for favours from all our friends.

“One of our friends gave us a recording studio for free, and another an office for free. Some people really believed in what we were doing, and took pay cuts to come and work for us – we’re so grateful for that now.”

In 2013, Richard and Andy decided to move the business and themselves from London to Los Angeles, where their headquarters has been based ever since.

“It is not that we didn’t love London,” says Andy. “But both of us dreamed of living in California and having a more outdoorsy lifestyle – we love to go surfing and hiking, and it suited our families too.”

Largely self-funded at the beginning, Headspace started to take investment from 2014 in order to expand the app and business. It has now secured more than $75m of external funding, but Andy and Richard still own a majority stake.

Whereas at the start they’d both been involved in everything, as they started to grow they took on different roles. Richard became the chief executive, looking at the management and overall running of the whole company and its 300 employees.

Andy’s primary job is to still focus on expanding the app, and being the voice. But does it ever get recognised when he is out and about?

“People will normally recognise my voice in an airport or a restaurant,” he says. “[And], my dentist couldn’t work it out the other day. It wasn’t until we started talking about meditation, and I realised that she used Headspace, that I could see in her eye that the penny had dropped.”

Neil Seligman, author of books on meditation, says that Headspace has “led the mindfulness revolution in the digital space”.

“The genius of Headspace was to take something as difficult and nuanced as teaching mindfulness meditation, and break it down into bite-sized, snackable videos, audios and practices,” he adds. “This is how they transformed the industry and penetrated the global market.”

But Headspace isn’t just an app. The company has more than 300 business clients, such as Google, Linkedin, General Electric and Unilever, for whom it helps managers and staff meditate. It also works with US universities including Harvard and Stanford, and the UK’s National Health Service, on studies into the health benefits of meditation.

Andy still meditates every day, albeit less than the 16 hours of old. Richard also makes time for it. “We both practise meditation every day,” says Richard. “We do really believe in it and that’s important for the team and anyone that downloads the app to know.”

Bravado is the only global, 360 degree full service merchandise company that develops and markets high-quality licensed merchandise to a world-wide audience. The company works closely with new and established entertainment clients, creating innovative products carefully tailored to each artist or brand. Product is sold on live tours, via selected retail outlets and through Web-based stores.

Bravado also licenses rights to an extensive network of third-party licensees around the world. The company maintains offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney. Under the Universal Music Group umbrella, Bravado is able to leverage a global sales and distribution network from the world’s largest record company, as well as the group’s significant marketing strength.

After Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? debuted, in March 2019, hordes of Gen Z fans purchased hoodies, shorts, and shoelaces that came with a digital album, boosting the album’s sales and helping it top the Billboard Hot 200 list. (This so-called bundling has become so ubiquitous that Billboard recently changed how it records these sales.)

But Mat Vlasic, CEO of Bravado, the merchandising division of Universal Music Group that works with Eilish and dozens of other artists, including Justin Bieber and Blackpink, sees these souvenirs as more than just a means to boost album sales. “In the past, people bought CDs or vinyl,” he says. “We want to provide something physical that they can hold onto.”

To give fans that tangible connection, Bravado designs, produces, and sells artists’ own hypebeast-worthy items, from T-shirts to skateboards, and coordinates product collaborations, such as the recent Ariana Grande x H&M collection. The company even sets up artist-themed pop-ups: one celebrated the Rolling Stones’ recent No Filter tour by selling all sorts of items featuring the iconic tongue logo, from leather jackets and tees to Away suitcases and Ladurée macarons.

It took drone delivery pioneer Zipline, which specializes in sending medical supplies autonomously over long distances, nearly three years to create its first countrywide network. Launched in Rwanda in 2016, the San Francisco–based company now transports roughly 75% of the country’s blood supply outside its capital city, Kigali.

In May 2019, Zipline moved into Ghana—and in less than a year reached 2,000 hospitals, covering 12 million people. “We knew how to work with [the country’s] civil aviation regulator, integrate with the public healthcare supply chain, set up distribution centers, and run maintenance [on the drones],” says cofounder and CEO Keller Rinaudo.

Zipline also develops its own hardware, avionics, and flight-control algorithms, which allows it to iterate on its technology. (It debuted a new drone model at the end of 2019.) The company is now applying its knowledge around the globe: It’s launching in India later this year, and has recently been tapped by Novant Health to bring medical supplies to areas in North Carolina.

Canva’s graphic-design templates help people create everything from posters and invites to business cards and web ads. The company’s core product is the increasingly flexible slideshow-maker Presentations, which now lets users edit slide decks on mobile devices (and optimize them for small screens); embed them with video, maps, and social media posts; and share them via live URLs.

Before Canva, creating a professional looking design was a complex process – you had to purchase expensive software; learn how to use it; purchase stock photography and fonts for the software; decide on a layout; slice images; receive photos and content via email; design something; upload and email the pdf only to find revisions needed to be made … and then finally be able to prepare your design for web or print.

Since launching in August 2013, Canva has been changing the way in which we communicate. Today our design tool has attracted over 15 million happy users across 190 countries, who have collectively created more than 1 billion designs.

With an integrated marketplace that has both free and paid stock photography, fonts, illustrations, and thousands of templates; a paid subscription that offers the ability to set up a brand kit so users can save their brand colours, fonts and assets, and ensure consistency across their designs; and a print service that gives our users the ability to produce professional prints in a variety of formats and sizes, delivered straight to their doorstep – Canva is disrupting the way we design.

“We want to give presentations the interactivity that people have come to expect online,” says Melanie Perkins, cofounder and CEO. A new enterprise tool, released in the fall, lets companies set their own templates (with controls for colors, fonts, and logos), helping to maintain brand identity across large workforces.

2013

• Canva launches to the world: Canva officially launched(opens in a new tab or window) to a waiting list of more than 50,000 people.
  

2014

• Launched design marketplace for pro designers: Professional graphic designers could now contribute layouts and earn royalties(opens in a new tab or window) every time their designs are purchased.
• Opened campus in Manila: As our team expanded, we unveiled our first office outside of Australia.
• 100,000 people using Canva: By the end of our second year, 100,000 people were using Canva to design.
• Welcomed Guy Kawasaki as Chief Evangelist: The renowned author, entrepreneur, and startup advisor(opens in a new tab or window) developed an evangelism program. for Canva and helped it grow internationally.
• 1.8 million designs created in Canva: Less than a year into launching, our design community had created nearly two million designs.
• Launched Canva’s iPad app: Our new app(opens in a new tab or window) brought everything people loved about Canva to the iPad.
  

2015

• Announced Canva for Work: Launched Canva for Work(opens in a new tab or window) (now known as Canva Pro) to bring even more design capabilities to professionals
• 50 employees at Canva: Our team of Canvanauts started to grow rapidly.
• 50 million designs created: From posters to social media posts, more than 50 million designs have been created with Canva by over 1.5 million people each month.
• Announced $165M valuation: Raised our $15M Series A(opens in a new tab or window) from investors including Blackbird Ventures and Matrix Partners, valuing Canva at US$165 million.
  

• 100 Canvanauts: Our team grew to 100 people across Sydney and Manila.
• Canva launches in Spanish: Hola España! Canva launches in Spanish as our first language other than English.
• Launched our iPhone app: Expanded our reach with the launch of our highly anticipated iPhone app.
• 3.6 million users: Our global community grew exponentially.
  

• Launched Canva Print: Made it possible to print and deliver designs to your door with the launch of Canva Print.
• Held our first Season Opener: We kicked off the first of our quarterly Season Openers to celebrate our team.
• Launched animations: Canva designs could now be brought to life with animations(opens in a new tab or window).
• We became profitable: Marked our first year of profitability.
• 500 million designs: From blog banners to thumbnails, Canva celebrates over 500 million designs being created.
• Launched our Android app: Android users could also use Canva on their mobile devices.
• Launched in 100 languages: Doubled down on our mission to empower everyone to design in every language.

• Announced $1B valuation: Raised $40M(opens in a new tab or window) from investors including Sequoia China and Blackbird Ventures, making Canva one of Australia’s first unicorn companies.
• Launched Canva Presentations: Took designing, sharing, and interacting with presentations to a whole new level with the launch of Canva Presentations.
• Acquired Zeetings: Made our first acquisition(opens in a new tab or window) as we doubled down on building the world’s best presentations product.
• Canva China launched: Canva launched in Mainland China to empower China’s 1 billion internet users to design.
• #1 Best Place to Work: Canva awarded #1 Best Place to Work(opens in a new tab or window) in Australia by Great Places to Work.
• One billion designs: Hit the milestone of one billion designs created in Canva.
  

• 500 Canvanauts: Celebrated hitting 500 Canvanauts as we continued expanding our team to deliver on our goals.
• Acquired Pexels and Pixabay: Massively expanded our content library with the acquisition of Pexels and Pixabay(opens in a new tab or window), bringing more than one million free images to Canva.
• Launched Canva Apps: Apps(opens in a new tab or window) in Canva opened up a whole raft of new ways to take designs to the next level.
• Launched Canva for Education: Made it possible for any teacher to bring the power of visual communication to the classroom(opens in a new tab or window) at zero cost.
• Joined Pledge 1%: Pledged 1% of our time, product, profit and equity towards doing good in the world through the Pledge 1% movement.
• 24 million people using Canva each month: Our community grew to 24 million people using Canva each month to achieve their goals.
  

• Opened our first US campus in Austin, TX: Celebrated our first US office opening in Austin as we marked the milestone of more than 1,000 Canvanauts around the world.
• Canva valued at $6B: Raised $60M from investors including Bond, Blackbird Ventures and General Catalyst; taking our valuation to US$6 billion(opens in a new tab or window).
• Named to Forbes Cloud 100: Canva was recognized among the world’s top cloud computing companies on the Forbes Cloud 100 list(opens in a new tab or window).
• 40 million users: Celebrated 40 million people using Canva(opens in a new tab or window) every single month to achieve their goals.
• Launched Canva Video and Desktop App: Made video creation simpler and more accessible than ever with the launch of Canva’s Video Suite.

• Valued at $15B: Raised $71M from investors including T. Rowe Price and Dragoneer, more than doubling our valuation to US$15 billion(opens in a new tab or window).
• Acquired Smartmockups (now known as Mockups) and Kaleido: Welcomed world-leading product mockup creator Smartmockups and groundbreaking visual AI platform Kaleido(opens in a new tab or window) to the Canva family.
• Valued at $40B: Raised $200M, nearly tripling our valuation to US$40B(opens in a new tab or window), making Canva one of the world’s most valuable private companies.
• Unveiled our 30% pledge: Announced our Two-Step Plan and commitment to pledge 31% of Canva(opens in a new tab or window) towards social good through the Canva Foundation.
• Rebranded with a new Canva logo: We refined our logo(opens in a new tab or window) to reflect the evolution of the company and product.
• Signed the Climate Pledge: Became the first Australian company to sign the Climate Pledge(opens in a new tab or window), a global commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, and meet The Paris Agreement 10 years early.
• Launched One Print, One Tree: Committed to planting a tree for every product printed through Canva Print(opens in a new tab or window), and planted one million trees(opens in a new tab or window).
• 75 million monthly users: Celebrated the milestone of more than 75 million monthly active users as visual communication accelerated across the globe.

• Acquired Flourish: Welcomed data visualization platform Flourish(opens in a new tab or window) and announced our expansion plans for the UK and Europe.
• Launched Canva for Teams: Brought visual communication to the workplace with the launch of Canva for Teams(opens in a new tab or window).
• Opened Canva Space: Opened the doors to Canva Space(opens in a new tab or window), our newest community event space.
• Launched the Visual Suite at our first Canva Create: Unveiled the biggest change to Canva in a decade with the launch of our Visual Suite(opens in a new tab or window) including Docs, Websites and Whiteboards at our first global event, Canva Create(opens in a new tab or window).
• Fortune ‘Most Powerful Women’ cover: Canva CEO Melanie Perkins featured on the cover of Fortune magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Women’ issue.
• 100 million monthly users: Celebrated the milestone of more than 100 million people(opens in a new tab or window)designing with Canva each month.
• 15 billion designs: Celebrated our global design community creating 15 billion designs(opens in a new tab or window)in Canva.

• Launched AI ‘Magic’:Infused AI across our Canva products(opens in a new tab or window) and launched a suite of brand management tools(opens in a new tab or window).
• Named TIME100 Most Influential Companies: With more than 200 new designs being created every second, Canva was named one of TIME’s most influential companies(opens in a new tab or window) for empowering the world to design.
• Opened new Melbourne, London, and Austin campuses: Continued expanding our team and global presence with new offices in Melbourne(opens in a new tab or window), Austin(opens in a new tab or window) and London(opens in a new tab or window).
• Expanded Canva for Education: Introduced Canva for Districts(opens in a new tab or window) and Canva for Campus(opens in a new tab or window)into our Canva for Education program.
• Continued our GiveDirectly partnership: After a successful pilot program we entered phase two of our GiveDirectly partnership(opens in a new tab or window), donating $20 million in cash transfers to help uplift people from extreme poverty.
• Held ‘Force for Good Week’: Held our first week-long event dedicated to volunteering(opens in a new tab or window).

  4000 Canvanauts: We now have a team of 4000 talented individuals around the globe.

  135 million monthly users: Today, our global community is made up of 135 million incredible people.

Inc Magazine recently pulled together 10 facts about Canva’s CEO Melanie Perkins:

Stemming from the same problem of clunky graphic design software, Perkins started a  company focused specifically on yearbook designs, allowing schools to choose their layouts and colors. To launch the company, she set up shop in her mother’s living room, and eventually took over most of the family home. Fusion Books is still operating today and is the largest yearbook publisher in Australia, where Perkins is from.

2. She loves to start her day on Twitter.

While most believe mornings shouldn’t be for social media, Melanie disagrees. For her, logging onto Twitter, along with journaling, jump-starts her day. “I love reading tweets from our Canva community and have just started using the Five Minute Journal, where you write the answers to a few questions, such as ‘I am grateful for…’ and ‘What would make today great,'” said Perkins in an interview with Thrive Global. “It’s a lovely way to start the day and helps to ensure I’m proactively shaping my day ahead.”

3. She’s known as one of the coolest people in tech.

In 2016, Business Insider ranked Perkins No.3 on their list of the coolest tech people in Australia. She follows Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founders of the multibillion dollar software company Atlassian.

4. Getting investors wasn’t easy.

Living in Australia made it hard for Perkins to reach out to large tech investors, many of whom were based in Northern California. Before striking it lucky, Perkins lived with her brother for three months in San Francisco, pitching to over 100 venture capitalists — all of whom rejected Canva. “I remember thinking, ‘Why is this so hard?'” Perkins said in an interview. Her luck, however, would change soon enough.

5. Hollywood celebrities were among the first to invest.

While Perkins struggled to get investors early on, she eventually caught the interest of actors Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson. After learning how to kite surf to impress venture capitalist (and kite surfing connoisseur), Bill Tai, Perkins was introduced to the celebrities. Both of the Hollywood stars liked her idea and invested in Canva, along with Tai.

6. Everyone struggles in the beginning, says Perkins.

Perkins wants people to know that everyone fails, even if it’s not apparent. “I think it’s pretty important to know that every single person is going through their own trials and tribulations,” she said. “Knowing that it’s tricky for everyone, that 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.”

7. She’s ranked as one of Australia’s richest women.

Not only is Perkins one of the coolest people in Australia, she’s also one of the richest women in the country. According to Australian Financial Review, Melanie ranks No.17 on their 2018 Young Rich List, which highlights the country’s wealthiest young people, from supermodels to entrepreneurs. As Canva’s CEO, Perkins is reportedly worth $177 million.

8. It’s important to set time aside, says Perkins.

Perkins has acknowledged that running Canva can take up a lot of time. That’s why she finds it so important to carve out time for herself. “I find going away on holidays, even for the weekend or a week, can be incredibly refreshing,” explained Perkins on LinkedIn. “I personally like to go on quite adventurous holidays, as it doesn’t give me time to let my mind think about other things. It’s important to give your brain a break sometimes so it can come back refreshed.”

9. Perkins is proud to support 25,000 nonprofit organizations.

While Canva supports many businesses or customers, Perkins loves to hear how her company supports charitable organizations. In an interview with Entrepreneur, Perkins said her platform currently houses 25,000 nonprofits that use Canva for fundraising. “That’s what makes all of the work worth it,” said Perkins.

10. Australia is still home.

While Canva is used all over the world, Perkins is still based in Australia. The company’s main office is based in Sydney, and Perkins hopes her home country will soon be a leader in entrepreneurship. “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.

With a look of concentration on her face, a worker guides the sheet of denim through the sewing machine, and a pair of jeans starts to take shape. As the needle goes up and down in a blur of movement and rattling noise, a line of stitching starts to form a neat trouser leg.

When most people think about the global fashion industry it is safe to say that a sleepy town in far west Wales does not immediately spring to mind. Yet Cardigan, on Wales’ Irish Sea coast, has for the past five years been home to a high-end jeans-maker – the Hiut Denim Company.

Beloved by a growing number of fashionistas from New York to Paris, and London to Melbourne, Hiut ships its expensive jeans around the world.

As orders arrive via its website, Hiut’s workforce of just 15 people gets to work hand-cutting and sewing the trousers from giant rolls of indigo-coloured denim that the company imports from Turkey and Japan.

Despite only making around 120 pairs of jeans a week, founder and owner David Hieatt has big ambitions to expand.

While it may seem a little incongruous that a posh jeans business is based in west Wales, Cardigan (population 4,000) actually has a long history of jeans-making.

For almost 40 years the town was home to a factory that made 35,000 pairs of jeans each week for UK retailer Marks & Spencer. But in 2002 the facility closed with the loss of 400 jobs when production was moved to Morocco to cut costs.

Fast forward 10 years, and when Mr Hieatt – a proud Welshman – was looking to open a factory to start making jeans, he chose Cardigan. The company name is a combination of the first two letters of Mr Hieatt’s surname and the word “utility”.

“Where better to locate ourselves than in a town with a history of jeans-making, where the expertise remains?” he says.

Employing machinists who had previously worked in the old factory and not lost their years of jeans-making skills, Mr Hieatt says he was confident that Hiut could be successful if it concentrated on selling directly to consumers around the world via its website.

“Without the internet we’d have been dead within 12 weeks,” he says. “But the internet has changed only everything. The internet allows us to sell direct and keep the [profit] margin… it enables us to compete.”

Now exporting 25% of its jeans, it takes Hiut about one hour and 10 minutes to make one pair, compared with 11 minutes at a highly mechanised jeans industry giant.

And rather than staff doing just one part of the manufacturing process, such as sewing on the pockets, each machinist at Hiut makes a pair of jeans from start to finish.

Hieatt refers to the workers as “grand masters”. This is in reference to the fact that some of them have more than 40 years of jeans-making experience, and new joiners have to train for three years before they can start making jeans for customers.

In running Hiut, Hieatt and his co-owner, wife Clare, have benefited from their experience of previously owning a clothing firm called Howies, which they sold to US firm Timberland for £3.2m in 2011.

But what has also been invaluable is Hieatt’s previous career working in advertising.

This advertising nous has enabled him to very effectively market and promote Hiut, from its snazzy website, to its extensive use of social media; both adverts in people’s Facebook feeds and arty photos of people wearing its jeans.

“The interesting thing about social media for me is that up until Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and SnapChat you had to have a huge budget in order to tell your story,” he says.

“In effect you were locked out of telling that story because the costs of advertising and wider marketing were too high. But social media has actually allowed the smaller maker small firms that manufacture things to go and tell his story.

“And actually, if David wants to beat Goliath, the best tool in the world is social media.”

Hieatt also sends out free jeans to what he calls “influencers”, either fashion bloggers or famous people, in the hope that they will write or talk positively about the brand.

Successful examples of this have been an increase in orders from Denmark after Hiut sent a pair of its jeans to celebrated Danish chef Rene Redzepi, and also UK TV presenter Anthony McPartlin of the duo Ant & Dec tweeting about the company.

As Hiut continues to win overseas orders for its jeans costing up to £230 ($300) a pair, Hieatt admits that one negative issue the company has to deal with is a return rate of “about 14%” – people sending them back because they don’t fit.

To counter this problem Hiut is exploring using technology that can accurately tell from a photo a person’s perfect jeans size.

Hieatt says the long-term aim remains to recreate 400 jeans-making jobs in the town. “Our aim is to get 400 people their jobs back. If you ask me when is that going to happen, the honest answer is I don’t know.

“But I believe in compound interest. Small things over time gather huge numbers.”

Unsurprisingly for the vegan food enthusiasts at New Roots, Switzerland – the home of Gruyère cheese – proved to be a hard nut to crack. With the population consuming increasing amounts of cheese per capita, each year – almost 22kg per person – the team at New Roots decided they’d heard enough of the line, “We can’t live without cheese”, and did something about it.

The result is eight incredibly convincing cheesy non-cheeses – including camembert, goats cheese, cream cheese and even an aged hard cheese. These ‘fauxmage’ masters have crafted an ethical alternative to the dairy favourite, offering Swiss consumers the option of reducing their dairy intake while still indulging their cheese cravings.

According to WWF, there are approximately 270 million dairy cows in the world, while animal agricultural industries contribute up to 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. New Roots uses all-natural, vegan and organic ingredients for their cashew nut-based range, allowing you to get your fix and feel good about it.

Air pollution isn’t something most people like to keep around. It kills around 7 million people annually, according to the World Health Organization.

MIT spin-off Graviky Labs is stock­piling soot emitted by diesel-­burning engines to recycle into black ink. “Pollution is bad, but pollution happens to be a really good raw material to make inks,” says Graviky co-founder Anirudh Sharma. “Our mission is to up-cycle carbon emissions for global sustainability through new material innovation”

Most of the black ink we use in pens and printer cartridges comes from burning fossil fuels. To reduce that, and cut existing pollution, Sharma and his team came up with a technology called KAALINK that harnesses one of the world’s most health-­damaging particulates, known as PM 2.5.

The carbon from that pollution is then transformed into a certified-safe AIR-INK pigment that can be used in pens, textiles, packaging and artwork. For now, AIR-INK is commercially available only in marker form. But in the coming months, Graviky plans to launch an online platform for customized printing.

​KAALINK™ is patent pending retrofit technology used to capture air pollution particulate. Depending upon several conditions, the unit captures up to 99% of the particular matter pollution without inducing back-pressure on the engines. ​ It is currently in an advanced prototype stage, and can be designed to fit diesel generators and other fossil fuel chimney stacks, and is presently under testing process and commercial pilots, and available for private demonstrations. The unit works hard to capture outgoing pollutants, and is designed with heat and water-proof electronics and materials.  It can also capture pollution from the ambient air and can be customized for all sizes and use-cases for outdoor pollution capture.

Here is an extract from a recent article in SBR magazine:

Engineer Anirudh Sharma has come up with a creative approach. While walking in Mumbai in 2013, the MIT Media Lab student and “chronic inventor” noticed that the plumes of diesel exhaust emitted by buses and cars were staining his clothing black.

“I thought: what if we could cleverly recycle all this soot that is making the world dirty, and use the pigment to make something beautiful, like ink?” Sharma says.

He formed a startup called Graviky Labs and has spent the past three years developing an exhaust filter that can capture 95% of the carbon soot from cars, generators and ferries and turn it into ink and paint. The result is Air-Ink, the world’s first line of art supplies made from air pollution. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign last month, the startup’s oil-based paints, markers and spray cans are set to ship in June. Sharma is now travelling to smog-choked cities around the world and challenging 19 street artists to create billboards and murals illustrating the effects of carbon waste, starting in London.

​

“There are 15 billion pencils made annually, and three million of those just in the United States. That’s a lot of pencil stubs thrown away,” said Michael Stausholm, CEO of Sprout World.

Denmark-based Sprout World wants to shrink this waste. The startup makes plantable pencils that grow into vegetables, herbs or flowering plants once you’re done using them.

Stausholm said the pencils, made from cedar in Pine City, Minnesota, are the perfect sustainable product because one “dying product is literally giving life to a new product.”

Where a typical eraser would be, these wooden pencils have a capsule made from biodegradable material that contains a small mixture of seeds and peat.

You plant the capsule in a pot of soil and use the stub end of the pencil as a marker. The capsule dissolves and the seeds grow into a plant.

The pencils come in 14 varieties ($9.95 for a pack of eight), including tomato, lavender, basil, sunflower and green pepper.

The pencils were developed by three MIT students in 2012.

“At the time, I was living in Denmark and working a lot with sustainable companies,” he said. “But sustainability is hard to illustrate to consumers. I was searching for a product that could easily do that.”

A year later, he came across Sprout Pencils when it was a Kickstarter campaign.

“I loved the idea. It was a perfect way to explain what sustainability is all about,” said Stausholm.

Stausholm partnered with the students and convinced them to let him sell the pencils in Denmark. “We sold 70,000 pencils in the spring of 2013. We realized there was definitely demand for them,” he said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4pcMYKmaVo

By 2014, the startup had sold a million pencils across Europe.

Later that year, Stausholm acquired the patents and rights to the brand and became Sprout World’s CEO.

He said Sprout World now sells an average of 450,000 pencils a month and has logged more than $3 million in revenue.

“We know we can’t save the planet just with our products,” said Stausholm. “Our mission is to at least educate people on how to be more conscious in what they buy and look for products that are reusable.”

In 2020 Sprout World was ranked one of the most innovative companies in Europe by Fast Company magazine in its annual ranking.  The judges said “It packs a lot of innovation into a small, everyday object, demonstrating that everyone can make a positive difference. Surreal, yet brilliant.”