Cyan Ta’eed is the co-founder of Envato, the largest online marketplace for creative assets and creative people. Cyan has also co-founded Milkshake and is the founder and CEO of Hey Tiger, an amazing ethical chocolate brand handmade in Melbourne.

Born in New York and raised in Sydney by creative parents, Cyan studied graphic design and launched her own freelance business shortly after graduating. Later with a co-founder and now husband Collis Ta’eed, she launched the first of a group of online markets for designers and developers, now selling everything from WordPress themes, to invitation design and audio files. They personally funded the business, working freelance out of a garage to pay for the site build that was originally expected to take three weeks but blew out to six months.

Shortly after launching, the pair went travelling. Having established a business they could run from “anywhere that had Wifi”, they sold almost everything they owned in a garage sale, packed everything else into two suitcases, and got on a plane to Hong Kong.

They spent 18 months travelling while growing the business, starting with 30-hour weeks before doubling those hours as the operation got larger. By the time they returned home, they had an office in Melbourne and a number of full-time staff, including developers.

Envato has flourished ever since, now boasting a community of more than 5 million members and is on track to hit its goal of $1 billion USD in author payouts by 2021. Making up the milestone figure is at least 140 authors have made at least $1m USD in gross sales across Envato, and a further 2200 authors who have made more than $75,000 USD in gross sales.