Peter Arvai
Encyclopedia
Peter Arvai is CEO of Prezi
, a cloud-based presentation software company. Originally from Karlskoga
, Sweden
, Peter has lived and worked in Budapest
, Tokyo
, Stockholm
, Singapore
and San Francisco. He is an entrepreneur
and thinker
who has grown a variety of technology companies.
"The TED folks did not think I was going to pitch an investment. They thought they’d only get a demo of Prezi — in fact nobody else at Prezi knew about this, either. I usually get my most outrageous ideas on planes, and I was on my way to New York to meet Chris (Anderson, TED Curator) when I decided to pitch the investment idea. Our missions are so similar: we’re all about helping people to share ideas, and they are all about ideas worth spreading. I gave a demo. I was extremely focused because I really wanted to make the deal happen, but Chris was very calm and super smart as usual. I walked away feeling great about our short meeting."
TED Conference, joined by Sunstone Capital, invested in Prezi in an undisclosed round in 2009.
Peter holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in engineering and media technologies from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He also studied Japanese and completed a training program at Fuji Xerox in Japan.
Prezi
Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for exploring and sharing ideas upon a virtual canvas. Prezi is distinguished by its Zooming User Interface , which enables users to zoom in and out of their presentation media...
, a cloud-based presentation software company. Originally from Karlskoga
Karlskoga
Karlskoga is a locality and the seat of Karlskoga Municipality in Örebro County, Sweden with 27,500 inhabitants in 2005.-Geography:It is located at the northern shore of lake Möckeln, and the small settlement was initially called Möckelns bodar...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Peter has lived and worked in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and San Francisco. He is an entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and thinker
Thinker
Thinker may refer to:*Intellectual, one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate on, or ask and answer questions with regard to a variety of different ideas...
who has grown a variety of technology companies.
Prezi TED Investment
In 2009, Peter Arvai approached TED Conference given the companies’ common vision of promoting the open exchange of ideas."The TED folks did not think I was going to pitch an investment. They thought they’d only get a demo of Prezi — in fact nobody else at Prezi knew about this, either. I usually get my most outrageous ideas on planes, and I was on my way to New York to meet Chris (Anderson, TED Curator) when I decided to pitch the investment idea. Our missions are so similar: we’re all about helping people to share ideas, and they are all about ideas worth spreading. I gave a demo. I was extremely focused because I really wanted to make the deal happen, but Chris was very calm and super smart as usual. I walked away feeling great about our short meeting."
TED Conference, joined by Sunstone Capital, invested in Prezi in an undisclosed round in 2009.
Prior to Prezi
Before joining Prezi, Peter worked with omvard.se, a company that pushes transparency in healthcare by publicly comparing the treatment outcomes of clinics based on performance data. Omvard.se won best website of Sweden 2009. He was also vice president responsible for product portfolio at the Swedish mobile communications company Mobispine.Peter holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in engineering and media technologies from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He also studied Japanese and completed a training program at Fuji Xerox in Japan.