The Unicorn Factory: De/Coding and Leveraging Silicon Valley – Event with BootstrapLabs in Stockholm, Sweden

Nicolai Wadstrom, Founder and CEO of BootstrapLabs and Magnus Bergman, Venture Investment Partner at BootstrapLabs will share with Swedish entrepreneurs, local angels and the SUP46 community their journey and best tips on how to become the next unicorn!

Attendees will also receive valuable insights and learn how companies like Prezi scale from a small office in Budapest to a 300+ people company in Silicon Valley.

Guaranteed dose of inspiration will be provide to all the attendees!

EVENT AGENDA:

  • 17:00 / 17:30 – Registration
  • 17:30 / 18:00 – Keynote: Going Global? Why San Francisco? | Nicolai Wadström
  • 18:00 / 18:45 – Discussion and Q&A: Sharing stories about Prezi and Truecaller. How angel investors can groom startups to become Unicorns? | Magnus Bergman & Nicolai Wadstrom
  • 18:45 / 19:00 – Presentation of BootstrapLabs | Nicolai Wadström
  • 19:00 / 19:30 – Discussion, Q&A and Networking

SPEAKERS:

Nicolai Wadstrom Founder & CEOBootstrapLabsNicolai Wadstrom, Founder & CEO of BootstrapLabs

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Nicolai Wadstrom, a serial entrepreneur turned parallell entrepreneur as the founder of BootstrapLabs, a Global Venture Capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Nicolai advises all portfolio startups in their day to day operations, connecting founders with industry experts, advisors and investors to increase their likelihood of success, assisting with product design and development, positioning, go-to-market strategy and implementation, partnerships and fundraising.

Multiple time Startup CEO, CTO. Raised capital from Angels, Private Equity, Investment Banks and VC’s. Angel investor and adviser to Internet, Software, Mobile and Digital Media startups in Europe and Silicon Valley, including BootstrapLabs portfolio companies such as Prezi, Zerply, Audiodraft and Witsbits. Nicolai has been writing code since he was 10 years old, and still speaks Java fluently. He is very focused on product and technology development within the Big Data, Analytics, Internet, Mobile and Software/Cloud sectors. Nicolai is a frequent guest speaker, mentor and judge at Universities and Conferences in the US and Europe.

 

 

Magnus Bergman Venture Investment Partner BootstrapLabsMagnus Bergman, Venture Investment Partner at BootstrapLabs

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Entrepreneur and investor building global mobile internet companies. Has founded and invested in several successful companies including Prezi and Truecaller.
Specialised in mobile internet with a general knowledge of the special business logic of the Internet and its implications to many business verticals (e.g. telecommunications, media, financial services, retail, automotive and more).

Strategic computer scientist, product developer and general manager with 20+ years of experience covering many areas of information and communication technologies.  One of the pioneers in the Internet revolution, now specialised in the field of moble applications.

Magnus’ role as a Venture Investment Partner at BootstrapLabs is to identify and develop companies in Sweden and make them ready to move to San Francisco and BootstrapLabs with the aim to become Unicorns in the future. He is based in Stockholm at SUP46, but travels every month to SF.

Prezi raises $57M growth equity round, BootstrapLabs portfolio follow-on funding pass $90M

preziOur portfolio company Prezi, that has been eating away at Microsoft’s Powerpoint and Apple’s Keynote market shares for the last few years, is poised to become a far more mainstream product than some might have previously thought. It’s making two major announcements today.

The company announced this week on stage at Slush in Helsinki — that it has secured a $57M growth investment lead by Spectrum Equity, a growth private equity firm.

Prezi has passed the 50 million users mark, nearly doubling its user base in the past twelve months, and is attracting roughly 55,000 new users every day. Those users have now created 160 million ‘Prezis’ to date, allowing it to justifiably call itself the world’s largest publicly available database of presentations. By contrast Slideshare has only 15 million presentation. Prezi now employs 70 people in its San Francisco office, and 180 in its original home town, Budapest, which, in part thanks to them, has become a buzzing ecosystem for startups and innovation in Europe.

CEO and co-founder Peter Arvai says Spectrum has “a long term perspective, just like we do” which hints at his plans to take the platform to the next level.

Victor Parker, managing director at Spectrum Equity says they were attracted to the platform because it is “quickly becoming the preferred application for businesses, entrepreneurs and educators” and were impressed by its “growing user base and content library” as well as its “compelling business model”.

“We want to help make two billion people make better decisions,” he says. It’s not often you meet entrepreneurs quite so focused on their product, but Arvai is the archetypical product-focused startup founder, who delights in talking about his product, his team and his company.

Humans don’t just think in a logical, chronological order, they also think spatially. It’s so much easier to recall information if you can remember where it sat in relation to something else, whether that be location or by spacial association within the context of a story.

So it was that Prezi’s interactive, zoomable canvas which could show the relationships between a big story and the finer details, that created such waves in 2009.

This also means that follow-on funding for BootstrapLabs’ portfolio companies pass $90M.

Prezi invests $100M in the White House ConnectED initiative!

We just got the news from Peter Arvai (CEO and Co-founder of Prezi), as he gets ready to meet with President Obama this Friday the 28th. Peter will also show President Obama what makes Prezi the best way to share ideas and knowledge and share the story of how Prezi grew from 3 founders with big ideas and dreams in Hungary to Silicon Valley and to the World (Peter and me will share with those who attend Global Technology Symposium as well). This is part of Prezi’s commitment to join other industry leaders and invest $100M into the White House ConnectED initiative.

About Prezi’s support for ConnectED
Prezi, the software for delivering memorable presentations has joined other industry leaders in support of President Obama’s ConnectED initiative. Prezi’s commitment will provide $100 million in Edu Pro licenses to hundreds of thousands of high schools and educators across America. With Prezi, teachers will have a better way to help their students explore subjects, see how ideas are related, and collaborate with each other.

“Better education is our best chance to sustainably improve the world. Through the President’s ConnectED initiative, we’re making sure that more schools have access to the innovative tools that will inspire an expanding mind,” said Peter Arvai, co-founder and chief executive officer of Prezi. “Prezi, in particular, will help teachers convey ideas and enable students to understand and retain concepts. We are extremely excited to participate in the initiative and grateful to the nearly 40 million people in our Prezi community who have made it possible.”

The White House previously announced $750 million in commitments from 7 partners including  Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Autodesk, and O’Reilly Media. Prezi and Adobe are the latest technology companies to join the initiative, bringing the total ConnectED investment to more than $1 billion.

Short re-cap on Prezi today
Prezi is the presentation software that uses an open canvas instead of traditional slides to help people explore ideas, collaborate more effectively, and create visually dynamic presentations. More than 35 million people from over 190 countries use Prezi from their desktops, browsers, iPads, or iPhones.Founded in 2009, and with offices in San Francisco and Budapest, Prezi provides a unique solution for anyone who needs to deliver a “wow” experience or simply share an ideaanytime, anywhere.

Prezi hits 30M+ users, doubling annually, and has ‘not used a dime’ of investors’ money

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Our portfolio company Prezi is Zooming ideas from Budapest to the World!

Since 2009, Prezi has gone from 3 founders and a few early team members in Budapest to a US company scaling to the world from San Francisco Bay area/Silicon Valley.

Today there are 36,000,000 people zooming through to visualize their ideas, and they are joined by another 1.5M every month. And Prezi has a strong balance sheet, being profitable and the bulk of all funds raised have not been used.

But the most amazing part is that Prezi is an inspiration to a whole new generation of Hungarian entrepreneurs, and at BootstrapLabs we are seeing more and more exciting teams and ideas come out of Hungary. Today Prezi employees ~ 4 x the amount of staff in Budapest vs San Francisco. Prezi have a great impact for Hungary, even though they “left” to become a Silicon Valley company.

Read more at VentureBeat

Rediscovering my Inner Geek

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Pierre Ingmansson is working as a developer at PreziI used to live in Gothenburg, Sweden. I spent my days working as a software consultant, writing code and tests for customers on big projects spanning several years. The work I did was sometimes challenging and interesting, but mostly I just wrote code to fulfill the rules of a use-case in some document. I made a good living and got better and better at attending several-hour-meetings and writing extensive documentation that would never be read. However, deep down I felt something was wrong.
Read more…

Prezi Power Week part 2. – The Charity Renovation

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Every year as a Christmas tradition, we finish the winter Prezi Power Week with a special charity renovation. Since 2008, we have tried to make as many people’s winters better as we can. We also aim to give them a fresher, warmer start to the new year. Of course it’s more complex than that, providing help is not that easy, especially when you try to make a long term impact on a certain community.

This year we decided to go to Bag, which is a village of about 4500 inhabitants located just 43 km from Budapest. It has a settlement of about 500 Roma people that live definitively segregated from the rest of the village.
Read more…

Launching 2013 with the Prezi Power Week

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

At Prezi we like clean design, the calming white of a sheet of paper, the freedom of an infinite canvas. We also like listening, getting feedback, and exploring the stories of Prezi users or our own team members. How do these two – the clean canvas and having our pocket full of take-aways – fit together? Our not-so-secret weapon is to combine a few days of beautiful presentations and impactful discussions into something we call “Prezi Power Week!”


Read more…

Bidding Farewell to the Zebra

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

“. . . slicker, cleaner, and easier to use . . .”
As with any company, identity is all important at Prezi. However as something grows, its identity changes. Prezi has been changing ever since it started. Since 2010, we have increased dramatically in size, opened an office on the other side of the world, and completed a design overhaul, to name just a few of the points that can be plotted on the Prezi timeline. The company is growing, to be more exact, it’s growing up. The last working week of 2012 saw a development that is a real milestone in the maturing of our product, it also meant letting go of something that had been a big part of our identity. Many of you will doubtless already know what I’m blogging about, for it is with a lot of pride, and just a hint of sadness, that I announce the departure of the Transformation Zebra. The Zebra hasn’t totally disappeared. It’s still the essence of our logo, the icon on our desktops, and it still appears every time a prezi loads, but its days as a part of our user interface are over. As you might think, there are quite a few people sad to see it go: 

Read more…

The 10 best prezis of 2012

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

When you open a new canvas in Prezi, the vast, empty space holds a lot of opportunities and perhaps a couple of failures. This is why it is important to have a reference point that guides you in developing the structure, content, and visuals for your prezi. Afterall, that’s what inspiration is all about! Well-designed prezis work not only as a whole, complete story you can enjoy, but also as real-life examples that show the details and guidelines that make the result so fantastic.

In this post we have collected a top 10 list of the best prezis of 2012. These can act as a great board of inspiration for your next prezi, no matter if it is a university or a business presentation, or even a hobby project.


Read more…

Introducing Prezi U – a community hub for everything Prezi in education

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Based on many discussions with our edu users we’ve been working to create a community site where teachers and students can talk, share and learn how to use Prezi in education, from the smallest grade school classroom to the biggest Harvard and Stanford auditoriums. We are now pleased to introduce Prezi U, a dedicated community site for all things Prezi in education.

Visit Prezi U for access to diverse content on using Prezi in education for all levels– from Kindergarten to University and beyond.
Prezi U is a hub for your prezis, ideas and experiences. A channel to submit your own content and receive feedback, engagement and new skills from other Prezi U members.

On Prezi U you can:
1. Submit your own educational prezis to the dynamically growing edu library, which covers diverse topics and subject areas categorized by schools and curriculum.
2. Engage with others in the forums, or search for answers to your questions about Prezi in education.
3. Submit articles about your experiences using Prezi in education.

Visit Prezi U today.  We look forward to meeting you in our new community, and we can’t wait to see what you create!


Read more…

Prezi zooming where no one has zoomed before – with $14M from Accel Partners

During the past 3 years (our portfolio company) Prezi have reshaped how we share ideas. Sharing of ideas just to be a sequence of squares. Prezi have been challenging this 350-year-old format, not because it’s old, but because it’s how people enjoy exploring spaces, rather than slides. We hear presenters and audiences describe how they are taken on a visual journey, and lean forward to share the experience.
Accel Partners is now joining the mission with a $14M investment into Prezi, and also taking a board seat. Which means that Prezi is zooming on at an accelerated pace.

Read more on the Prezi blog, TechCrunch and Gigaom.

 

Prezi Night Tokyo II

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Prei Night Tokyo II

The second annual Prezi Night in Tokyo took place on Saturday, Dec 3, hosted by an awesome Japanese Prezi user community.

The fun event was a chance for Japanese users to meet each other and share experiences using Prezi. There were even Prezi quizzies and Prezi Karaoke. Check out more photos here and here.

The organizers allowed Prezi CEO Peter Arvai to show off his Japanese skills in his message to the community:

We look forward to Prezi Night Tokyo III – let us know if you’re interested in hosting your own!


Read more…

Prezi Hackathon II: 2 days, 37 hackers

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

Last weekend, 37 hackers, including Prezi employees and students from around the world, spent two days in the Prezi office to create fun, and (sometimes) useful projects using Prezi.

After two days, teams presented their incredible projects:

  • Prezi Kinect Hack: Control your prezi using body gestures
  • Prezi Wars: Use Prezi Meeting to play a third-person shooter with your friends
  • WebGL Prezi: The results are in, our developers tackled creating a rough version of Prezi in WebGL!
  • Prezi Usage Map: A zoomable map of prezi creations, visits, and tweets about Prezi
  • Whiteboard to Prezi application: Automatically create a prezi from a photo you’ve taken
  • Hipchat bot: Type in a command in hipchat, our HP bot will let the office know what’s up; break something in Prezi, sirens and lights!
  • Democratic Voting in Prezi: Make life’s toughest decisions using Prezi voting
  • Prezi Logo from Post-its: See the Prezi logo, made “pixel by pixel” from Post-it notes
Check out a nice video from Day 1 (stay tuned for Day 2 footage):

And some nice photos of the weekend (more to come!):

Third-person Prezi Meeting shooters are no joke
Hackers working on the hardware
Hackers taking a step back
Prezi uses Kinect motions to navigate
And the hackers seem to like the results
A zoomable map of real-time Prezi usage
One team created a third-person shooter in Prezi Meeting
Make life's most important decisions in Prezi
Prezi co-founder can be seen and heard, even when in SF
Prezi employees' children make circular art tool
Made from post-it notes


Read more…

How to succeed in Silicon Valley @ Innovate Sweden event at Stanford

A short presentation on some key things about connecting to the Silicon Valley eco-system, presented this Wednesday, BootstrapLabs founder and CEO, Nicolai Wadstrom presented at the Innovative Sweden event.

They made it with Prezi on iPad!

Fresh from the Prezi blog:

We reached out to top Prezi Viewer users, to ask how the Prezi iPad app helps their work. Middle school teachers Ben Robinson and Mark Davis, and PR communications expert Gonzalo Adriasola agreed: Using Prezi Viewer completely changes their work routines, and opens up new horizons in their careers. Upon our request, they kindly shared their experiences with everyone…

Read more…