SlideRocket blasts off with $5 million

Online presentation tool lands funding to grow company and hire Salesforce executive

SlideRocket, an Online presentation tool, has raised $5 million in Series B financing led by Azure Capital Partners.  Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which previously invested $2 million into SlideRocket, also joined the round.

The San Francisco-based startup is one of the many companies shifting people away from the Microsoft Office Suite, into online, cloud based-applications.  SlideRocket is run and hosted Online using Adobe Air technology.  It functions sort of like PowerPoint, but seems to be quite a bit more powerful.

First of all, it takes full advantage of the Web by allowing for sharing capabilities across users.  For example, users can collaborate across the tool by sharing images and other assets they’d like to incorporate into their slideshows.   

I’d also like to add, the resulting presentations look incredibly professional and sharp, (based on a demo I saw).  SlideRocket has a library of glossy effects the user can take advantage of, to make presentations look like something you’d see at an Apple keynote.  Below you can see the different textures and effects put on a simple image.  And remember, this is all provided remotely, in the cloud.

Along with the fundraising, SlideRocket has added Chuck Dietrich, a former GM & VP at Salesforce, as the new company CEO.  It’s an obvious choice for SlideRocket, being that Salesforce also resides in the SaaS space.

SlideRocket, which was opened into public beta in November of 2008, now offers a 30 day trial for potential users.  After that, users are required to upgrade to a limited ‘free’ plan which allows 250MB of storage, an ‘Individual’ plan with 1GB of storage that costs $10/month, or a ‘Business’ plan which costs $20/user/month and allows 1GB per user along with plenty of features – like collaboration, analytics, and web meetings.

The company is very optimistic about the funding.  SlideRocket said it will use this round of financing to help accelerate its growth trajectory, hire some new people and continue to build on its success.