Haiku Deck raises $3M to kill PowerPoint

No one likes PowerPoint presentations. Haiku Deck offers a better way.

You know what kind of meeting it’s going to be when they bust out the PowerPoint presentation. Someone should really patent a sleep aid in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

Haiku Deck is trying to solve the problem of delivering presentations that don’t make people want to cut their own throats out of boredom. The company announced Wednesday that it has raised $3 million in a Series A round led by Trilogy Partnership, with help from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, tech entrepreneur Sarah Leary, and several angel investors.

Launched in September 2012, Haiku Deck already has 500,000 users, ranging from lawyers to retail personnel.

“Haiku Deck has a broad range of customers, from sales and marketing people who use the app to win clients and forge partnerships, to realtors who use it to win listings, to lawyers who use it at trial, to teachers and students, to small business owners and entrepreneurs who use it to pitch ideas, to speakers, leaders, and community organizers,” said co-founder and CEO Adam Tratt.

The company got its start when Tratt and fellow co-founders Kevin Leneway and Kyle Kesterson joined forces at TechStars to create a social media/entertainment company known as Giant Thinkwell. You might recall the name from the hype surrounding Mix-N-Match, the Sir Mix-A-Lot branded Facebook game. When that flopped, the trio went on to try a social video venture. When that also didn’t pan out, they turned their attention back to their original pitch deck, which won them a lot of accolades at TechStars.

They may not have been able to pull of social gaming or Web video, but they were damn good at making presentations.

The app allows anyone with an iPad to create an engaging, visually appealing presentation. The app gives users tips and pointers on creating the right presentation, allows them to import pictures and graphs, or create graphs and charts in the app itself.

“We believe Haiku Deck is well positioned to disrupt an industry that’s seen surprisingly little innovation in the past two decades,” said Trilogy’s Yuval Neeman, in a statement. “The consumer response and product reviews have been extraordinary, and we’re excited about the potential for this next phase of growth.”

In addition to its seed funding, Haiku Deck has raised $3.9 million altogether. The company plans to use the new capital to grow the team, expand to other platforms, and develop a premium offering.