How We Got Here
Storytelling is at the heart of being an entrepreneur. Over the years, I’ve figured out that I’m way better at the “telling” part than I am at the “story” part. And by “story,” I mean the visuals that go with the words. I’ve also discovered that when I have an amazing deck to back up my message, I feel practically unstoppable.
I felt this when we first went to investors with the most beautiful professionally designed PowerPoint deck I’ve ever held in my hands. I felt the opposite of this a year later when, without a professional designer on staff, I had to go back to the drawing board to tell a new story to the same audience.
When my partner Kevin first proposed the idea for Haiku Deck, it was a complete departure from our previous experiment in social games, but we instantly felt a magnetic pull towards the idea. This was something we both wished we had, and the more we asked around, the more we realized how few people love the tools available for making presentations.
We spoke with hundreds of people and stood over their shoulders while they made presentations. We saw how existing tools don’t really help non-designers create things of beauty. Sure, PowerPoint and Keynote have templates, but these aren’t exactly stopping anyone in their tracks. Even products that have come along more recently don’t address the fundamental problems we all face: Make it easy to create something beautiful. Make it impossible to mess it up. Make the stories look as good as they sound.
And so, Haiku Deck was born.. We want to live in a world with powerful stories and images that move us. We want to live in a world where stories, pitches, lectures, updates, lessons, and ideas grab us by the collar and pull us forward in our chairs.
Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Haiku Deck is the change we want to see in the world. We hope it inspires you to set your story free.
–Adam
