{"id":45587,"date":"2023-10-20T15:44:56","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/from-a-university-in-budapest-to-the-world-stage-the-story-behind-prezi-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:44:56","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:44:56","slug":"from-a-university-in-budapest-to-the-world-stage-the-story-behind-prezi-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/from-a-university-in-budapest-to-the-world-stage-the-story-behind-prezi-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"From a university in Budapest to the world stage: The story behind Prezi – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Prezi<\/div>\n

When three Hungarians started building a startup they had no idea that it would become a global game-changer.<\/p>\n

Peter Halacsy was a university lecturer when he met media artist Adam Somlai-Fischer, who had developed a unique storytelling tool.<\/p>\n

“He created his own way of talking about his projects and that was like having the conversation in front of the whiteboard instead of having slides,” Halacsy tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it sparked an idea in Halacsy.<\/p>\n

“What if we create a tool to help other people make better presentations to tell their stories?” he says.<\/p>\n

Global ambitions<\/h3>\n

Today their startup, Prezi, has created more than 260 million presentations worldwide and the platform signs up more than 1 million users a month.<\/p>\n

Prezi was always designed to be globally adopted, but it wasn’t always easy for the founders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was meant to be global from day one,\u201dHalacsy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, we gained the confidence on the way.”<\/p>\n

Halacsy and his team have grown rapidly and continued to learn along the way.<\/p>\n

Competing against major players like Google, Microsoft and Apple, Halacsy says they\u2019ve tried to take a collaborative approach that keeps customers in the front row.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not alone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are alone in a market that means you\u2019re in the wrong market.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says he mingles with leading executives at Microsoft and personally knows the general manager of PowerPoint.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk to each other,\u201d Halacsy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re in the office we don\u2019t think about competition, we think about what we can do to make Prezi better and help more people share their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halacsy and his team recently launched a new version of Prezi aimed specifically at modern businesses that are more likely to collaborate and develop presentations as teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrezi Business is a really good example of what happens if you invest time and your practice, and practice, and improve your skills,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the users<\/h3>\n

But their focus has always been the same: to help people tell their story in more memorable ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning we focused on customers and how we can help them,\u201dHalacsy says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a simple idea but one with massive potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a startup organisation, after seven years we basically do the same things, it\u2019s just always better and better,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we\u2019re focusing on marketing people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halacsy says they\u2019ve enjoyed 150% growth in the marketing sector over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe help marketing people help businesses tell their stories,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Starting small with big ambition<\/h3>\n

As Halacsy ventured into Prezi, his first business, he sourced inspiration from his great grandmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy great grandmother has a local hardware shop,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer business model is to make more money than your cost is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starting with this, Halacsy and his team sought to create a product that people use, love and are happy to pay for.<\/p>\n

Despite its creation in little Budapest, Halacsy was certain of one thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a proud Hungarian but we don\u2019t want to help Hungarians only, we want to help everyone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Bringing in cash from day one<\/h3>\n

Prezi started out with $US10,000 in 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the money that you need to start a small company in Hungary at the time,\u201d Halacsy says.<\/p>\n

Paying their developers from their own pockets, the team started building the Prezi platform while producing presentations for large events as a way of bringing income in to help them get the product up and running.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning we made money,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to fund our own development.\u201d<\/p>\n

They later raised $260,000 in seed funding before launching the platform in Budapest in 2009.<\/p>\n

After promoting the platform through social media, Prezi soon had millions of users around the world.<\/p>\n

Today, Prezi has 75 million users worldwide on the back of more than $US70 million in equity funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a business plan \u2013 I still have it,\u201d Halacsy says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said that, \u2018hey, if we have 20,000 paying customers who would pay $10 a month, that\u2019s 200,000 bucks, which is amazing money especially in Budapest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Switching to this mindset, made Halacsy and his team realise they could bring in the experts and hire engineers to help them really grow.<\/p>\n

Today, Prezi has 250 employees.<\/p>\n

It was their business plan that helped them realise they could achieve anything, something driven by Prezi CEO<\/p>\n

This mindset was brought in by Prezi\u2019s CEO Peter Arvai.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed him to change our perspective,\u201d Halacsy says.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter and <\/em>LinkedIn<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When three Hungarians started building a startup they had no idea that it would become a global game-changer. Peter Halacsy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,22,17,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}