Prezi Bags $14 mln Funding From Accel, Others

Cloud-based presentation software company Prezi has bagged a series B round of financing from Accel Partners and other investors worth USD 14 mln. The company’s software allows users to develop and create non-linear presentations with zoom, pan and rotate features that are glaringly absent from slide-based presentation tools such as Microsoft’s PowerPoint. A recently launched iPad app from the company has quickly risen to the top 10 free iTunes productivity applications; the app facilitates a touch-screen-based presentation version on the Prezi product. The recent funding will enable the company to expand its product compatibility across a variety of platforms, as well as to increase its employee count.

Prezi (prezi.com)

Prezi is a Budapest, Hungary, based company founded in 2009 by Peter Arvai, Peter Halacsy and Adam Somlai-Fischer. The product, a free non-linear presentation tool that far outstrips the capabilities of the traditional slide-based methods, is immensely popular and already boasts a user-base of seven million registrants in two years, with companies like TED Conferences backing funding, and IBM, Google and Facebook all using the product for their presentation needs. Organizations like Stanford University and the World Economic Forum use the product as well, and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is currently among the company’s advisors. The product also offers variations such as the Prezi Desktop for offline presentation editing, and Prezi Meeting, which allows users to collaborate online in real-time. The iPad version of the Prezi app is now one of the 10 most popular free productivity applications on iTunes.