Company: Prezi, San Francisco, CA
Entry Submitted By: Finn Partners
Company Description: Prezi is a presentation platform that helps users connect more powerfully with their audience. Prezi’s interactive, zoomable canvas lets users show relationships between the big picture and fine details, putting ideas in context so they can resonate, motivate, and be remembered.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Computer Software - Up to 500 Employees

Nomination Title: Prezi

Tell the story about what this nominated organization has achieved since January 1 2014 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms.

Prezi is a presentation platform that helps users connect more powerfully with their audience. Prezi’s interactive, zoomable canvas shows relationships between the big picture and fine details, putting ideas in context so they can resonate, motivate, and be remembered.

2014 was an exceptional year for Prezi: from exceeding major corporate milestones and launching new platforms to making a difference across the U.S. public school system. The following points only scratch the surface of the company’s achievements.

In particular, 2014 was a year of significant growth. The company - which was founded in 2009 - grew to 50 million users in five years, nearly doubling its user base in 2014 alone. In April, the company celebrated its five year anniversary, and commemorated the milestone with a birthday party in their San Francisco headquarters. To bring the importance of storytelling that Prezi believes in to life, Patricia Wilson of the Make-A-Wish Foundation shared her experience creating the Bat Kid phenomenon with the entire staff, reminding everyone that stories can spark ideas, and bring dreams to life.

The same week, Prezi achieved the significant milestone of surpassing 40 million users worldwide. It was only six months later that the company rocketed past the 50 million users mark, validating the strong demand for effective communication that Prezi’s presentations provide. In fact, Prezi maintains the world’s largest publicly available presentation library, with more than 160 million prezis.

Due to this exceptionally rapid global growth, Prezi sought more funding to fuel its expansion trajectory. In November 2014, Prezi secured an investment of $57 million from Spectrum Equity and Accel Partners.

In an effort to encourage creative expression and a passion for learning in young people across America, Prezi partnered with the White House’s ConnectED initiative, which provides students with the skills they need to succeed through personalized learning experiences driven by new technology. Prezi pledged $100 million in educational licenses, which will go to hundreds of low-income schools across America to help students and educators share their ideas in impactful ways.

On the product side, Prezi is constantly evolving and improving to keep up with all the ways people want to share their ideas. To this end, Prezi introduced two significant mobile initiatives in 2014: Mobile Presenting and Prezi for Android. Mobile Presenting is a first-of-its-kind app that allows users to present prezis and watch presentations anywhere using their mobile devices, PCs, or Macs. Prezi for Android connects the more than one billion Android users with their presentations anytime, anywhere, so they can present remotely, gain offline access to recently used prezis and much more. Additionally, in 2014 Prezi localized its platform in three additional languages - French, German, and Hungarian - driving a significant uptick in users.

Prezi is also committed to fostering creativity and innovation. In this spirit, Prezi developers noticed that people were using Prezi’s zoom-able presentation canvas to share life events, and decided to create an app singularly focused on making it easy to capture and share life’s moments. Nutshell Camera is a storytelling app that combines the simplicity of photos, the compelling nature of video and the fun of animation to create short, shareable cinematic narratives. Nutshell is the first new product that the company has launched since its creation, yet continues with the company’s mission by allowing users to share their ideas in a more engaging way.

Finally, to round out the year’s accomplishments Prezi’s co-founders - who spend their time between the company’s two HQs in San Francisco and Budapest - received the “Best Startup Founder or Co-founders” award from the 2014 Europa Awards. The Europas celebrate Europe’s most forward thinking, progressive and innovative technology companies.

In summary, as Prezi continues to grow exponentially, it also continues to provide its users with innovative and creative products allowing them to better express their ideas and share their messages with the world.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief accomplishments of this organization since the beginning of 2014 (up to 150 words).

-Reached 50 million users, nearly doubling its users in the past twelve months.
-Celebrated its 5 years anniversary after being founded in 2009 by Peter Avrai, Péter Halácsy and Adam Somlai-Fischer.
-Received $57 million in investment from Spectrum Equity and Accel Partners.
-Partnered with the White House ConnectED Initiative to help ensure that more low-income schools have access to innovative tools that will inspire and expand the mind.
-Introduced Mobile Presenting, allowing its users to present anytime, anywhere while using their mobile devices, PC, or Mac.
-Launched Prezi for Android giving the more than one billion Android users worldwide ability to access their presentations on the go.
-Created Nutshell Camera App, a storytelling app that combines the simplicity of photos, the compelling nature of video and the fun of animation to create short, shareable cinematic narratives.
-Prezi’s co-founders won a Europa 2014 Award, “Best Startup Founder or Co-founders.”

Of the following measures of success, which ONE do you want the judges to most appreciate about your organization's story of achievement since the beginning of 2014?

Fast Growth