Rather than the regular presentation of slides, Prezi displays information in a more active way, spinning and moving images and video around a screen to keep an audience engaged. If you’ve ever nodded off in a dark room with a dull speaker and an endless selection of terrible slides, Prezi is designed to stop you snoozing by at least giving you something more fun to look at. The software has become a popular way to create more engaging presentations, so much so, that Prezi has double the amount of users in just six months.
Prezi CEO, Peter Arvai is clearly delighted with the latest figures and feels that introducing the PowerPoint import will also lead to further growth by offering users another alternative:
“With Prezi, people inspire change – in their schools, at the podium, and in the boardroom. There is a prezi created every second and the new PowerPoint import feature makes this evolution of collaborative, interactive storytelling accessible to all. It’s time to think outside the slide.”
The new PowerPoint Import means that users can upload their slides easily. They can insert an entire presentation all in one go or choose specific slides and add them in to Prezi wherever they like. The feature supports PPT and PPTX files and works on all web-based and desktop versions of Prezi. PowerPoint import will be a popular feature for the startup if the response to an early beta test of the product is any indication. More than 200,000 PowerPoints were uploaded during a pilot period.
It’s no surprise that Prezi has dispruted the market for presentations with a fresh method for sharing information. The service was designed by an architect and visual artist and it shows in the way that the software enables more creativity than the usual side-to-side slide switching.
Prezi was founded in Budapest, Hungary in 2009 by Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Halacsy, and Peter Arvai. Since then the company has also formed a team in San Francisco.
It closed $14 million in Series B financing led by Accel Partners in December 2011 and is one of the few companies to receive investment from the The Sapling Foundation, owner of the illustrious technology, entertainment and design (TED) conferences.
