Honoring the best tech startups in Europe, The Europas Awards 2014 ceremony was held on June 10 in London. Founded in 2009 and still run today by Mike Butcher, The Europas are the premier awards for Europe’s hottest tech startups, that celebrates the most forward thinking, progressive and innovative tech companies across over 20 categories.
Nominations were received and voted on by the public, then narrowed to a category of six for the final round of judging by a jury of entrepreneurs and investors. Judges this year included YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, Troy Carter (manager of Lady Gaga), investors from Accel, Balderton and Google Ventures, and journalists from The Next Web, TechCrunch, Wired, and more.
Peter Arvai, Peter Halacsy and Adam Somlai-Fischer from Prezi have won the coveted Europas award for "Best Startup Founder or Co-founders." The winner of the category was chosen based on the company's rapid global growth and their initiatives to drive innovation and support entrepreneurs in Europe.
"Prezi's founders not only instilled a wonderful company culture, but also showed how a winning product can attract 40 million users so quickly. Such success stories are rare and the Europas Awards wanted to emphasize this great achievement" - said Mike Butcher, the founder of The Europas.
This recognition of rapid global growth comes soon after Prezi turned five years old and doubled their user-base in one year, averaging 55,000 new sign-ups each day over the past six months. Prezi attributes this growth to the increasing need for effective communication in this era of information overload. In a larger effort to support this, Prezi is also available in French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Among the Prezi community are companies such as Crunch Fitness, which has noted a 30% increase in their franchise closing-ratio since pitching with Prezi and now has 88 locations in the United States. Many other forward-thinking companies, such as Autodesk, Bloomberg, Box, Discovery Communications, Edelman, Walgreens and Zendesk, have also moved beyond the slide.
A leading SaaS company revolutionizing the online workspace, Prezi is ideal for frequent business presenters such as creative agencies, sales reps who use the iPad app to boost field sales, and individuals who need a powerful way to pitch to investors or clients.
