We were elbow-deep in growing a startup when the 2020 pandemic hit. We went from a big team in multiple cities and growing, to doing one tenth of our revenue. We dropped our growth plans and moved everything we could remote. All hands meetings were the hardest. Personally, we were lucky to be able to quarantine in our home. Feeling close with friends and family was the hardest.
We started building Slides as a side project that was part wishful thinking, part wish fulfillment. We wanted to make being far from all of our people easier. We wanted to make meetings smoother and more fun. We wanted to have video calls with our friends without talking over each other or getting zoom fatigue. We wanted my mom's birthday to still be special.
And we wanted to help everyone going through this to have those things, as well. So this is a presentation tool that's got a bigger goal; keeping people connected while apart. We hope it can help you do that too.
We met in 2014, started working together in 2015, got married in 2018, and quarantined together from 2020 to 2022. We still like each other!
I'm Cecilia, and I've been working in startups, branding, design, marketing, and tech for over a decade. He's Mason, a full stack developer who's been starting businesses since he was 6 years old. We've started a few companies together, and Slides with Friends might be our favorite.
Slides With has been such an amazing addition to our team's remote work. This tool brings people together in a way that is rare across the internet. We use it for trivia at The Hustle, but could easily see how it could be expanded to other use cases!
My team absolutely loved SlidesWith. The interactions were so fun and it was easy to create a custom “around the world quiz” just for our group. SlidesWith has quickly become one of my favorite tools for online team experiences.
Slides with Friends is a great tool for anyone wanting to connect with and engage a live audience, whether online or in person. The user interface is easy and intuitive, and the outcome is fun, interactive, and involving.
(Oh and the soundboard, my teenagers loved it... a little too much!)