Right, it’s true, it’s true. We didn’t think of ourselves as that, you know everybody … There’s an element of craft in the work, you know, we’re putting one foot in front of the other. Trying to get more experiments to work than fail but in hindsight, yes, there’s some truth in that.

I wish I had learned more from failure than just mortification. I don’t think you learn much from success, and I don’t think you learn much from failure, unfortunately. It’s one of the sad things. You certainly learn that it’s more fun to have a hit than a flop.

The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. So it was an extremely nightmarish experience. I had two little kids, and the third one was born during that. We lived in a little apartment, and I was basically frightened that they didn't like it. They had as much as said that, so when it was all over I wasn't at all confident that it was going to be successful, and that I'd ever get another job.

To launch Canva, we needed investment and a tech team. Finding the right people for both took two years but there is always a lot of rejection for entrepreneurs in their early days. But every time we got a hard question or a reason why people wouldn't invest, we stayed focused on what we could change. I revised our pitch deck after every meeting, more than 100 times in one year, to answer the questions or fix the reason for rejection from the last time. You just have to keep going. The normal thing to do after your 100th, 80th or even 20th ‘no’ would be to stop, but you just have to persevere.