Words by Montanna Macdonald

You may be familiar with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. But have we all heard about Marita Cheng, Cyan Ta’eed and Melanie Perkins? 

These three women are Aussie gals slaying the game in the tech world. With bright, innovative futures ahead of them, today we will ponder, support and celebrate these awesome chicks doing beautiful high-tech things. 

Marita Cheng 

• Did a Bachelor of Science in Engineering at the University of Melbourne;

• Designed a company that provided messages on phones to help manage drug prescription schedules, winning the best undergraduate business at the University of Melbourne. 

• Partnering with fellow engineering science students, Cheng Founded Robogals in 2008 while studying. Robogals is now an international student-run organisation empowering women to study engineering, providing workshops, robotics competitions and exhibitions. Robogals is sponsored by the likes of Australia’s Department of Defence, Telstra and Modern Teaching Aids. 

• On Forbes 2018 Worlds Top 50 Women in Tech. 

• Named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year.

• Founder and CEO of Aubot, the start-up robotics company, designing robots for people to log into from anywhere in the world where their robot needs to be. For example, for children with cancer who need to attend school and disabled people to attend work. 

• Google-funded Cheng to study at Singularity University, where she Co-Founded the app Aipoly in 2016, assisting blind people by helping them recognise objects using their smartphone.  
• Has done two TEDx talks, and so much more! 

Melanie Perkins 

• A Perth girl, Melanie studied Communications, Psychology and Commerce at the University of Western Australia. Perkins left university to create her first company, Fusion Books. 

• Fusion Books is an online design software made to create and print professional-quality yearbooks. This led to Perkins next big ‘Unicorn’ that would take over the world, Canva. 

• CEO and co-founder of Canva, the online publishing tool for graphic design, saying goodbye to InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. 

• Melanie is one of the world’s youngest CEO’s leading a tech start-up like Canva, that is valued at over two billion dollars. 

• Melanie fought for investors in Canva, with some of the first being Hollywood celebrities Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson. 

• Canva is used by millions of people worldwide in over 150 countries, and all started with her first business, Fusion Books, in her mum’s lounge room. 

Cyan Ta’eed 

• Creative Melbourne girl Cyan Ta’eed co-founded the tech giant Envato in 2006 with her husband at 26 years old from her parent’s garage. 

• Envato is essentially an online marketplace where you can buy and sell creative digital content and designs like graphics, stock videos, music, templates website themes and more. Envato now has millions of users worldwide. 

• Envato is the 88th most trafficked website in the world (according to Alexa), and over 48 sellers on Envato have earned over $1 million. 

• Envato’s revenue was 16 per cent to $134 million in 2017-18, with both Cyan and her husband Collis making the fourth place in the Financial Reviews “Young Rich List”, agreeing to be on this list solely to make women entrepreneurs more visible. 

• The “tech titan” also founded the new innovative Instagram website-building app Milkshake, and Hey Tiger, an ethical and incredibly delicious chocolate brand.