Episode 65: Cecilia Razak

Join Lori and her guest, Cecilia Razak, as they talk about how a company or product can provide value to customers and have a positive social impact. Cecilia co-founded Slides with Friends, an interactive presentation builder designed for human group connection. She shares her desire to create tangible value for others and how that purpose relates to her business and daily life. Stay tuned!

Here are the things to expect in this episode:

• How a business pivot resulted in the creation of Slides with Friends

• The social impact aspect of corporate philanthropy

• Building a tool that creates value for its users

• And much more!

About Slides with Friends:

We were elbow-deep in growing a startup when the 2020 pandemic hit. We went from a big team in multiple cities and growing, to doing one tenth of our revenue. We dropped our growth plans and moved everything we could remote. All hands meetings were the hardest. Personally, we were lucky to be able to quarantine in our home. Feeling close with friends and family was the hardest.

We started building Slides as a side project that was part wishful thinking, part wish fulfillment. We wanted to make being far from all of our people easier. We wanted to make meetings smoother and more fun. We wanted to have video calls with our friends without talking over each other or getting zoom fatigue. We wanted my mom's birthday to still be special.

And we wanted to help everyone going through this to have those things, as well. So this is a presentation tool that's got a bigger goal; keeping people connected while apart. We hope it can help you do that too.

Connect with Cecilia!

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ceciliarazak/

Slides with Friends: www.slideswith.com

Connect with Lori Kranczer!

Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the positive impact philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Philanthropy is a personal journey and through the stories we will share here. We hope that it sparks something in you, and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist. Together we're gonna explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted on Wednesdays. So today I'm really excited because this is an incredible tool for many of us to be able to use. I want to welcome Cecilia Razak. She's the co-founder of Slides with Friends Welcome, Cecilia.

Hi. I'm glad to be here.

So why don't you tell us more about what you do? Sure.

So I'm the co-founder of Slides with Friends, which is an interactive presentation tool. So basically what it is, is like a PowerPoint or Google slide presentation, you can build a slide deck, but our tool makes it interactive. So your audience can join in to your content and play along. So whether you're running like a trivia quiz, or a meeting where you want people to give feedback and brainstorm. Everybody can send in responses. They can answer your questions, they can send emojis or sounds, basically making an ecosystem of your presentation rather than just static content. So that's what the tool Slides with Friends is and the way the reason that we started really had kind of a philanthropic bent to it because we were really interested in helping people connect with each other, both in a one to many larger group setting because I'm sure many people have had that chain of, you know, sitting in a room of 50 people feeling completely lost. And then also during we started during the pandemic, so it was kind of a goal of letting people be close to each other even when they couldn't physically be close to each other. So that's kind of our mission statement. Is that connection that making positive social impact?

Yeah, thanks for sharing that because you know, everyone thinks about philanthropy in a certain way and on the podcast, we like to share different stories of what is traditionally thought of as philanthropy and also social impact in the businesses, especially those that haven't found it in the past few years or have pivoted in the past few years to have more of a social impact and be more vocal about it, which is most certainly what you're doing which is fantastic. So what's your background? And is it tech related? Or how did you come up with this idea?

Yeah, my background is not really at all tech related. I went to school for English literature. So I like to say I'm a recovering English Lit major. I went right after school I got a job working in the in academia in the humanities, and that's kind of where I got my tech start because we were working to create the complete work of Edmund Spenser who was a poet from the 1590s for like Shakespeare contemporary to digitize his entire corpus. So we were creating basically this was, you know, back in the day before everything's online, we were creating a complete body of work digitized of all of his writings. I went from there to as many literature majors do I went from there to advertising and I started working in digital media and branding and marketing. I work with some pretty big agencies and larger clients. And then it got to a point where I decided I wanted to do something that created a little more concrete value rather than just you know, putting forward products for other people. And that's kind of how I snaked my way here. So I quit my advertising job. I started a company. We grew pretty quickly into a few cities we were about to hit a million dollars in annual recurring revenue when it became 2020. So that brings us up basically, to now we paused that company as booted up because it was, you know, a real spaces company. And we pivoted basically into building this interactive tool. It started out kind of as for the previous company, we needed some onboarding and ability to still work with our employees and our workers remote. So we built this tool. It's kind of became something bigger and we pivoted into it, and that's what how we met up with that.

So amazing. So it really it sounds like it was inspired by the need that you had for yourself within your own team. Exactly. To create something full. Yeah, that's fantastic. So, you know, we so I always say that, sharing philanthropy or being involved and giving back doesn't start in a vacuum and we can look back at our childhood and our earlier experiences and kind of figure out where this may have come from and because I am sure that this wasn't the first event that you did, or first occasion of having a social purpose and what your work involves. So can you share more about anything you've done in the past that is related to having more of a mission or a social purpose behind it?

Sure, I have always felt the need to be someone who not just doesn't do harm in the world, but does good in the world. I've had jobs where I was like, I'm not sure. Not only that, I you know, I know I'm not doing good, but am I doing harm here? And that kind of spurred me I didn't you know, when you're younger when you're in your early 20s You kind of get take whatever job you can get. And then you kind of learn what works and what doesn't work for you. And I kind of learned early on that it was important for me to feel as though I was doing something of value and something that was helpful. So that kind of led me there. I've always had that, you know, I've been volunteering at the same shelter for the last almost 20 years. Just have that background of having the experience of having enough and seeing others not having enough really affected me from a very early age. I went to Inner City public school in Philadelphia and I was always very comfortable. Most of my friends were not. I think that had a big impact on the way that I view the world. I think I had a lot I was given a lot. I was very lucky. And it was very clear that you know, that's just kind of luck of the draw. So when you look at it, there is a kind of for me an instinctual urge to help even the playing field or at least not, you know, partake in a system. That is an uneven playing field.

That's pretty amazing to be so self aware when you're growing up to understand that I mean, were there other individuals that also share that with you inspired anything in you because that's pretty you know, I'm having to tweens myself right now. I don't think they're aware of that as much as they could be if they were older.

Yeah, I mean, my parents were very careful with that they you know, they always understood that it really has nothing to do with you personally. It's just what you do and how you do it and where you started. A lot of people start with more and a lot of people start with less so it's a it's not fair. And then recently I have been actually so last year I moved into a Buddhist Monastery for a month and I found that incredibly shaping, it was centering and also the Zeitgeist behind Buddhism is one that I can really get behind because it's a lot of you know, like, understanding everyone's value, making sure that everybody is treated in a way that is equal and I really I really love that about it.

So this I didn't know so this is like a really interesting bit of information we can explore this. How did you get involved and what inspired you to spend a month there?

So I started meditation practice crashed me through four years ago now kind of during just before the pandemic. And for anyone who is thinking about it or considering it I highly recommend it. It has taken me from a kind of anxious reactive person to a more centered and calm person. It has made my work easier. It has honestly made my work better. You know, my business has benefited from it. It's a lot of like a lot of benefits that you wouldn't naturally expect. Especially from a I don’t want to say religion, but like a framework that is not necessarily interested in physical goods and growing money or business size it actually works very well with that if you can find the place where you are feeling as though what you're working on is valuable and important and as though it is not a struggle. And I think that's a lot of what I liked about it is it took my daily work from being a struggle to being something that was fun and valuable for me.

And it follows through I mean, it comes through with your work and your product, what you're doing. I mean, a lot of what I'm hearing from you is communication with your background as an English literature major which I was as well but right, and community and creating value and so it just it all seems aligned. So thanks for sharing that bit of information. So when you're looking at your social impact that you're doing currently and then what vision you may have for the future as well for your current product and also anything else that you may have on the horizon. Do you find it to be more are you being strategic about it or you have a vision you're following a plan or is it more intuitive?

Well, I think there's parts of both in any business. If you are launching the business you need a plan in as much as you need to understand where the people that you're targeting are and follow that path. So for us our particular niche of customer is we have a lot of you know management and HR people who are looking to create team cohesion with this tool using it kind of as a game and also using it as a brainstorming and meeting tool. We have a lot of teachers and education folks using us. Where you know they use us for quizzes they use us for like socratic lessons. So a lot of what our plan is finding that particular niche and building a tool that creates value for those users. And so that's kind of our guiding light is how can we make something that has enough value for these people? That it is a daily tool that they can use? What do they need every day? How can we help them achieve their goals which are kind of in alignment with ours, you know, especially with teachers. I love getting behind the idea of helping people learn in a more interactive and more engaging way. I love the idea for management and HR of helping teams feel closer to each other and feel more connected with each other through interactive and pro social activities. So in the tool, we have a ton of pre made like games and decks so there's like an employee wellbeing check in and there is a you know icebreaker for my meeting types of decks that we build very mindfully to kind of help craft a pro social interaction, even if it lasts, you know, six minutes, starting the meeting off that way or getting a lesson together where you're having your students actually involved and interacting with you, I think makes that social interaction more powerful, more beneficial. For everybody.

I agree. Absolutely great. And I've also have taken a look through them. I think they're pretty amazing. So you may be too well maybe you've thought about this already, and it could be too new, but have you thought about how you're tracking this the impact that you're having? I mean, I have a lot of questions from individuals that create businesses, you know, for when you're giving to nonprofits a little bit easier to track that impact with for profits. There's a lot of inquiries about that, like how do they find out what they're doing, what they're what their goal is, is actually having an impact. Have you put it into place where I've thought about how you track that impact that you're having for your community?

Yeah, not on a grand scale, but we do a lot. We talk to our customers a lot. We get a lot of feedback. So that's been the main sort of metric that we've been using and you know we also have basic metrics, like how much traffic do we get and how many conversions do we get that sort of thing. Which is it's actually kind of a nice, clean way of looking at it because how useful are we and how valuable are we is a big metric for me and how useful we are as kind of a direct corollary to you know, how many people sign up how many people convert into a paid customer. So that's a good metric for us and then just kind of talking to people and understanding, you know, how they're using us, why they're using us and kind of creating just an idea, a larger idea of the larger vantage of what we're doing and how we're doing it. And we get a lot of positive feedback. We have a lot of people being like, Hey, I love that you're free tier. So we have basically it's a freemium product where you can use pretty much every part of the tool for free with up to 10 players and then when you want to get bigger you can sign up for a paid account, but we get a lot of teachers being like, Hey, I love that your you know, free tier for me is so robust, and that I can use it for my students ongoing. So that's a great way for us to kind of have our ear to the ground.

Just a quick question. I'm probably you could find it online on your site, but your teachers and your educators are where are they is it college level mostly? Is it high school, younger kids?

Yeah, it's all over the map. I think majority higher ed and high school. I don't like younger kids, because the way that the tool works requires, you know, a kid has to be looking at the presentation and also have their device out because that's how they send in responses. So, you know, second graders, maybe not with the iPhone, but you know, a lot of high school students we actually have a fair amount of church and like ministry, youth groups using us to, you know, engage their congregations. So like, and especially like youth groups, so high school age.

Oh, that's great. So, it's an incredible platform that you've built, and I really encourage everyone to check it out. And what do you consider your legacy to be Cecilia?

Well, I'm pretty young. So not yet is what I currently consider it. I think, if I were to try to put a point on it I would love to be to have a legacy of having created something of value that was helpful for people. Whatever it is, if it's technology, great, you know, this is my second tech company, or whatever it ends up being I would love to have something have done something that was considered value in a pro social and human way.

Great. Thank you for sharing. So where can people find out more information about you and also Slides with Friends?

Yeah, so we are at slideswith.com And you can go and check it out. And as I said, you can create a free account and play around with it. All the way up until 10 people you can check out our blog slides with.com/blog And, you know, read more about all the kinds of things that we do and there are tons of pre-made games and decks that you can try out. So I highly recommend just checking it out with a group and I'm actually in the midst of making a baby shower deck for a friend of mine. So basically, you can use it for anything that you like. So slideswith.com

Great, thank you so much. So for everyone listening, please go check it out. It is I already have done it. I'm completely hooked. It's a great platform, and it's a really wonderful social purpose behind it. So thanks for joining us, Cecilia. We hope that we provided everyone listening with some insights and inspiration that everyone can use for their own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when we drop new episodes and we'd love to hear your feedback. So go ahead and leave a comment and a rating about what you liked and what you would like to hear more about. Till next time. See you soon. Thank you for joining us. I hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when new episodes are dropped. We'd love to hear your feedback. So leave a comment and a rating about what you liked. And what you'd like to hear more about. And if you liked the episode today, make sure to share it to raise awareness about the story to inspire other women to take action. I'm Lori Kranczer And until next time, you can make a positive impact through philanthropy every day. Thanks for listening.