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Mayuresh Patole and Tejas Gawande are on duty.Founder of Chronicletoday announced a $7.5 million seed funding round, believing the world needs new ways to tell stories. “We live in an epidemic of bad information design,” Patol says. “The tools we use today to create presentations make it easy to create poor quality presentations.”
Chronicle argues that the way people approach presentations, from students doing class projects to large corporations publishing important business information, is rooted in the analog world. “The slide format was created in the 1980s when overhead projectors came along,” says Gawande. “After 40 years, the way we work has completely changed, but the presentation tools are still the same concept.”
Chronicle therefore developed another. That tool helps users create presentations using ‘blocks’. It’s a pre-designed element that you can easily drop and move, just like you move apps around on your iPhone screen. Its purpose is to provide many new and interesting ways to present information and to make it easier for users to take advantage of this functionality.
Chronicle-enabled presentations are much more interactive, allowing consumers to zoom in and out of each area rather than proceeding in a completely linear fashion. “We want to empower everyone to create high-quality, inspiring presentations in new formats that are more engaging and interactive,” he says. “Users don’t have to face design challenges they feel unprepared for. They can focus on telling stories with pre-designed blocks.”
This is a purpose that resonates with those familiar with the idea of ”death by Powerpoint.” In a world where a Microsoft study suggests that attention spans may have shrunk by as much as a third of his in the past two decades, audiences no longer have a desire for long, one-dimensional presentations. Do not have. According to some studies, ten minutes of his information in its present form is the amount most people can stay focused on.
“I have absolutely no objections to tools like Powerpoint, actually,” says Patole. “There’s just a lot of work to be done to make such a tool really successful. We need to enable users to create visually stunning stories in seconds or minutes, not hours.” .”
Chronicle founders Mayuresh Patole and Tejas Gawande
Naturally, the proof is in the pudding. Chronicle hopes to have created a new way to create presentations with an intuitive feel that supports adoption. But the founders realistically believe that if people have been doing something the same way for a long time, it will be hard to convince them to do it differently. “It takes time to change people’s behavior,” says Gawande. “But we want Chronicle to be the perfect tool for any presentation use case.”
The company’s backers clearly believe Chronicle can deliver on its ambitions. Today’s funding round was led by Accel and Square Peg and is supported by a number of business angels from leading technology companies including Apple, Google, Meta, Slack, Stripe, Superhuman, OnDeck and Adobe.
Accel partner Shekhar Kirani believes Chronicle has the determination and imagination to make it happen. “Chronicle is reimagining storytelling,” he says. “The team is obsessed with making the experience of solving problems and creating impactful stories not only endurable but enjoyable.”
Square Peg founder Paul Bassat agrees, pointing to Patole’s long-standing obsession with developing better presentations. Pattor’s interest in the subject began during his college days, where he spent hours helping his fellow students create presentations. And he continued in a series of consultant roles, constantly bombarded with low-quality decks and dedicated to creating better ones.
“It’s rare to find a founder who has such a special relationship with this issue,” says Basat. “Mayuresh is completely obsessed and uniquely skilled at creating new storytelling mediums. , it quickly became clear that they thought very differently about this.”
Still, the company has some way to go in commercializing its innovations. Currently in a closed beta stage where the product is being tested and refined with a small number of key customers, the company’s new funding will provide the means to build and accelerate development.
Ultimately, the founders envision a move to the Flemium model. Students and other users have free access to a limited set of tools. Larger organizations pay a monthly subscription to use Chronicle’s full functionality. “This will eventually become an enterprise solution,” he says Gawande.
Chronicle itself provides evidence of the impact that better storytelling can have. The pitch deck to investors was created using a proprietary tool that helped convince them to back the company. Now the company has to convince everyone else to ditch the same old slide deck in favor of a new approach.
