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It’s robust to think about two phrases that appear extra at odds with one another than “lovely” and “presentation.” I imply, have you ever seen a PowerPoint slide deck currently?
That disconnect is one thing Mitch Grasso’s been grappling with for years. Actually, it wouldn’t be a stretch to explain it as motivating his life mission at this level—to realize the impossible-seeming feat of turning mundane digital shows into one thing each lovely to behold and pleasing to create.
“‘I like PowerPoint’ isn’t one thing you hear lots of people say,” Grasso deadpans. “Folks hate PowerPoint, and so they’re all the time annoyed . . . nevertheless it’s not likely PowerPoint that’s the issue.”
Grasso firmly believes the difficulty is much less the software itself and extra the course of it places you thru—one thing that applies equally, he says, to Google Slides and different PowerPoint options. And that’s why he’s provide you with a web-based and native desktop presentation platform referred to as Beautiful.ai, which he describes because the “anti-PowerPoint.”
That is truly Grasso’s second stab at fixing the presentation puzzle. In 2007, he founded SlideRocket, a startup he sold to VMware a number of years later. However earlier than you soar to conclusions, grasp on a sec: Whereas his newest creation does sport two more and more widespread letters on the finish of its title, Stunning.ai isn’t one more rushed-out generative AI also-ran. Stunning.ai has been round for practically a decade now. And the seeds of its soul stretch again to Grasso’s earlier creation, when he first began exploring how shows could possibly be reinvented.
As somebody who’s used the service for some time, let me let you know: Even for those who’re late to the Stunning.ai get together, you’ll be very glad you bought there.
The Stunning.ai presentation philosophy
The very first thing you discover if you get into Stunning.ai is nearly surprising: The service is, dare I say it, truly pleasant to make use of. Grasso actually did determine an space ripe for reinvention: Stunning.ai takes all the standard ache factors out of presentation creation and turns it right into a easy course of that’s surprisingly swift and nice.
The crux of the entire expertise revolves round Stunning.ai’s clever algorithms for serving to you discover one of the simplest ways to format and design no matter sort of presentation you’re constructing. For those who’re ranging from a clean slate, the app provides you a handful of instructed themes to get issues going—motifs like “Minimal,” “Basic,” “Daring,” and even “Cheeky.” Or, for those who’d moderately, you possibly can choose from a library of starter templates for every little thing from gross sales pitch shows to advertising and marketing experiences and all types of different widespread firm wants.
But it surely’s when you get into the presentation that the magic actually turns into obvious.
With every new slide you create, Stunning.ai encourages you to choose from a sprawling menu of widespread slide design frameworks, all of which can be found as a part of the service’s $144-a-year Professional-level subscription (which features a 14-day free trial). You can use easy textual content bins, for example, or a flowery photograph grid. You can construct all types of data-centric charts and visible data representations. You can create a timeline graphic of an organization’s journey, with key moments highlighted alongside the way in which. Or you could possibly give your self blueprints for org charts, quote showcases, crew member introductions, and even slick-looking product screenshots—all with a single click on.
After which, as you’re engaged on slides, Stunning.ai intelligently adapts the design at each step alongside the way in which—placing formatting on “autopilot,” as Grasso describes it. As you add further parts, the software program immediately shifts different parts round and makes every little thing look good—with nearly no time or effort required. You completely can take management and customise issues as you see match, if the urge strikes, however in my expertise, little or no adjustment must be performed.
This automation is the place the AI in Stunning.ai’s title comes into play. Whereas AI has now colloquially come to be understood as involving generative chatbot-like know-how—à la ChatGPT or Google Gemini—Grasso latched onto the time period within the pre-GPT days, when it referenced all manners of algorithm-driven adaptation.
“I used to be much less involved with the set of applied sciences that had been behind us and extra concerning the expertise of automating and influencing the way in which your shows are created,” he says.
It’s one thing the Stunning.ai crew has come to check with as “design AI,” a flowery approach of referencing the logic surrounding how parts on the display are mechanically laid out and optimized for you as you’re employed. And that’s crucial worth Stunning.ai gives. It’s what drew me to the service a number of years in the past and has stored me coming again to it ever since.
Reimagining the ‘AI’ component
So simple as it already was to begin a brand new Stunning.ai presentation, the comparatively current addition of generative AI into the service provides even extra comfort into the equation, for anybody eager to go down that path.
Now, I don’t need to overhype it: This a part of the service might be its least distinctive and helpful component. But it surely works admirably properly as an additional possibility, and it presents some intriguing prospects for going past the usual gen-AI capabilities current in so many instruments today.
When creating a brand new Stunning.ai presentation, for example, now you can decide to begin by offering a plain-text description of what you want—”a presentation on the office transformation and the way forward for work,” “an investor pitch deck for a Collection A SaaS firm within the B2C FinTech area,” or “a board deck for Q1 income, development, and new clients,” to make use of a number of of the service’s pattern prompts. Stunning.ai will then pull in publicly accessible information and construct an entire presentation for you. You’ll nearly actually have to edit and refine it, however you’ll begin with one thing, at the least—and also you would possibly simply discover a truthful quantity of your legwork completed earlier than you even start.
You may as well present additional context for coaching the AI round your particular data and information—by importing a file, referencing an online hyperlink, or pasting in textual content—and when you’re within the midst of enhancing a presentation, you possibly can click on a particular AI button to summon instruments for producing textual content, shortening or lengthening textual content, and rewriting textual content to all types of different specs.
The sweetness, although—because it had been—is how that is only a first step with Stunning.ai. It’s what occurs subsequent, with the software program’s design smarts, that makes all of it matter.
“Generative AI is nice for getting you began,” Grasso explains. “However the continued enhancing and the continued manipulation of the content material that it’s created is the essential half and why we’ve continued to achieve success.”
Grasso says solely about 20% of the service’s one-million-plus customers are usually accessing the generative AI options, however their presence alongside the general public fascination with AI in the meanwhile has completely led numerous new folks to search out Stunning.ai currently. The service’s lively person base elevated 3 times over in 2023, in what Grasso describes as an “unprecedented” stage of development. And plenty of of these explorers have ended up sticking round for the lengthy haul—not due to the generative AI parts, Grasso believes, however due to Stunning’s longer-standing central benefits.
“It made us extra highly effective type of in a single day and added this nice performance, nevertheless it doesn’t actually change the core cause for why Stunning exists,” Grasso says. “You may’t simply wrap ChatGPT in an interface and name it a day.”
That realization makes Grasso particularly optimistic about Stunning.ai’s future, even at a time when the time period “AI” is getting tossed round endlessly and everybody from Microsoft and Google to smaller startups are experimenting with inserting additional smarts into presentation software program.
“What it actually comes right down to: Is it one thing that you simply’re going to make use of time and again and [that] actually gives worth?” Grasso asks. “And at the least to date … I haven’t actually seen that a lot from the opponents but.”
Grasso is concentrated subsequent on each increasing Stunning.ai’s generative AI capabilities even additional and discovering different locations the place the service’s method could possibly be helpful—whether or not that’s inside paperwork or different visible creations the place design and information work intersect.
“Productiveness is about making folks extra productive [and] making their work lovely, whether or not meaning how they work or the output of their work,” he says. “And there are lots of alternatives to take this know-how that we’ve been perfecting over the past half dozen or so years and apply it to those different mediums.”
For now, Grasso is content material with the information that he’s constructing on the dream he’s been chasing since 2007 and—for the second, at the least—leaving tech’s conventional presentation titans within the mud behind him.
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