In this age information technology, storage and sharing of information has come up as a major challenge. With infinite amounts of information being created everyday and being shared across channels creating a complex web, there was a need to have a forum where data could be streamlined and available in an easy and structured manner. Another important criteria is low cost or free especially in case of students. In this environment, came a saviour which not only managed to provide all this facilities but went much beyond the initial idea. Slideshare, a pioneer in presentation and data sharing that would forever change the landscape. It inspired many others to tread the same path and set the industry benchmark.Slideshare was founded by Rashmi Sinha, Jonathan Boutelle and Amit Ranjan in 2006.
SLIDESHARE - A STARTUP STORY
Article by - Shashank Kalucha, FMS Delhi
Amit Ranjan heads SlideShare's Delhi office. His previous employers include PepsiCo, Asian Paints and Godrej.
In a short time, the site exploded experiencing large number of hits. The concept of uploading data to download other data only added to the burgeoning library of slideshare. It soon developed a niche for itself amongst corporate and college students especially B-School students. While one cannot go as far as suggesting that it reached a level of “I don’t know, Google it,” it certainly became the first choice to look for presentations on any business topic. So yes, around me, I would often hear the phrase, “just check Slideshare, you’ll find it.”
The basic functionalities that Slideshare offers is uploading of presentations publicly or privately, downloading of presentations on any topic with reuse or remix, embed on blogs/ websites/ company intranets, share on Twitter/ Facebook/ Linkedin, Zipcast: free, no download, 1 click web meetings, Leadshare: generate business leads with your presentations, documents, pdfs, videos. Slidecast: sync mp3 audio with slides to create a webinar, Embed YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations, SlideShare PRO for premium features like branded channels, analytics, ad free pages etc. The best part about the success of slideshare was that it gained popularity through word of mouth. In terms of the virtual world, word of mouth is like wildfire. This explains the rapid rise of Slideshare which gained mass acceptance in the online community.
Apart from it growth story, there are other notable achievements. The site was recently voted amongst the Top 10 tools for education and e-learning, In 2009, the official website for the US President signed user agreements with eight of the world's leading social media websites. SlideShare was one of them. SlideShare is regularly used by many other US govt departments.
Jon is the CTO of SlideShare. He is responsible for building and scaling SlideShare. He was the brainchild behindSlideShare, and wrote the first version of the site.
Previously, he had worked as a software engineer at Commerce One. He holds a degree in Psychology and also studied Computer Science at Brown University.
He holds an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, University Of Delhi.
E CELL, FMS DELHI
Rashmi Sinha is currently the CEO of Slideshare. She was previously involved with another startup, MindCanvas, a game-like survey platform for customer research.
She holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology from Brown University and conducted research on search engines and recommender systems at UC Berkeley. She was recently named amongst the World's Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0.
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