I read about this company called Napkin because I am always on the lookout for companies that get huge investments. This company got it’s seed capital from Charles River Ventures and Accel, but it only came on my radar when Anthropic decided to pump another round of capital into the company (Anthropic is the company behind Claude – the competitor of OpenAI, LLAMA, Gemini, etc.).
And when a biggun like that decides to play along, you bet your ass that this is not just one of those AI based presentation tools like Gamma AI that are popping up everywhere.
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So I decided to investigate.
Napkin is an AI-powered tool (of course it’s AI), that could potentially change the way I will do my presentations in the future.
No more snoozing through boring slides, for my audience…
That is at least its promise.
Because their business is in the “Art of Business Storytelling“.
Business Storytelling is a topic that I am very interested in. At the bottom of this article, you’ll find relevant articles about business storytelling, and a slide deck with 150+ free management consulting slides.
Back to Napkin…
Basically what Napkin does, is that it turns your ideas, which you scribble down on a napkin (hence the name, duh) into a compelling story, and then voila: Napkin takes your text and transforms it into rather impressive visuals (business impressive, aye… not “designer” impressive).
The people behind Napkin are Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler, maybe you’ve heard of them because they are the dynamic duo who brought us Osmo. That’s a bunch of traditional, simple games, they brought to the iPad about a decade ago.
So, if you are as old as I am, and happen to have kids back in the day, you will probably have played with their creations.
They used AI to make kids’ games come alive on iPads, and now they’re back with a new mission: to save us from the horrors of mediocre corporate presentations.
How does it work?
It’s so easy, even my grandma could do it.
Just paste your text or generate it from an AI prompt, click the “spark icon”, and watch as Napkin conjures up some visuals.
And if you don’t like what you see; No worries!
Just pick the next…
And you can always customize them with Napkin’s built-in editing tool.
You can use Napkin’s visuals in a lot of places.
Export it to Google Slides. Check.
PowerPoint? You bet.
Slack? Absolutely.
LinkedIn? Instagram? X? Yes, yes, and yes!
Napkin also has a design catalog that’ll make you speed up your designs. Mind maps, flow charts, Venn diagrams, bar charts—you name it.
And now, I am going to try it out for myself
See if I can become a Napkin convert.
Hold on,… Let me take this here article as the seed for the generation…..
I copy and past the content of this article in the editor. Including promotional stuff, etc. I like the cleanliness of the editor.
No visual distractions. That’s the positive thing.
No visual distractions could also be a lack of functionality, because there’s not a lot out there.
When it comes to functionality, Gamma AI really outperforms Napkin at this time.
It took me a few seconds to find the spark icon, because of my black system settings, but when I had it, it started to generate visuals
I am pretty impressed!
I think this could be a lifesaver for those without either templates (just download them from my site), or those without any design skills.
No more settling for subpar graphics, people, if you need to present to the board.
Oh, and did I mention that Sharma and Scholler sold their previous company, Osmo, for a cool $120 million? Yeah, they know a thing or two about building a big business.
I really think that with Napkin, they’re set to do it all over again.
Well, that’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I’ll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
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