Collis Ta'eed co-founded Envato in 2006 with Cyan Ta'eed and Jun Rung. The marketplace let designers and developers sell WordPress themes, stock photos, fonts and templates. The build was expected to take three weeks and took six months.
The founders paid for it with their own freelance work, out of a garage. Envato never took outside investment. Collis and Cyan owned about 68%, Collis's brother about 16%, and Jun Rung held part of the rest.
The couple then spent about 18 months travelling while running the company remotely, before returning to a Melbourne office. Envato later moved to an unlimited subscription, Envato Elements, and cut back to fewer products.
Cyan left in 2018 to launch Hey Tiger. Collis stepped down as CEO in 2020, with Hichame Assi taking over. In May 2024 Shutterstock agreed to buy Envato for $245 million in cash, about A$375 million.