Adam Tratt: Creating Presentations that Inspire

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Adam Tratt is the co-founder and CEO of Haiku Deck, a software company based in Seattle. Haiku Deck’s motto is “Presentation software that inspires.” Adam has years of experience in marketing, business development, startups, and of course, he is an outstanding speaker who loves storytelling.

The Story of Haiku Deck

Adam met his co-founder Kevin Leneway at a startup accelerator and they had the idea of building a celebrity-based Facebook game. Among their team, there was a very talented designer who made extraordinary presentations for pitching the product. However, the game failed and at some point the talented designer quit. Challenged by this loss, and seeing opportunities with the iPad, Kevin came up with the idea of “What if we did for PowerPoint what Instagram did for Photoshop?”

Four best practices in presentations

According to Adam, presentations experts say that there are four main best practices. These best practices are productized to create Haiku Deck:

1. Use one idea per slide
2. Reinforce your idea with a very powerful, beautiful image
3. Have consistency in your formatting
4. If you use a graph or chart, make it simple

Haiku Deck aims to make it very difficult for users to create an ugly presentation.

Related: Common mistakes in company presentations

Storytelling

People don’t remember facts as well as remember stories. Throughout history, people has been telling stories and writing them on walls. Today, there are many opportunities to tell your own story via social media and tools such as Haiku Deck. Adam wants people to achieve success through storytelling.

How to Get Started with Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is available for iPad and as a web app, for free. They just launched Haiku Deck Zuru, which is powered by artificial intelligence to analyze your text and suggest the best pictures and design. It is available today as a Pre-sale with a 50% discount.

His favorite quotation

“Start with Why.” — Simon Sinek

Recommended book

Bright Lights, No City by Max Alexander

Routine to Shine

“I do a lot of my best thinking when I’m moving.” Adam uses a treadmill desk. So, “be moving.”

Links

Adam at Twitter

Haiku Deck

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