Cecilia Razak, Co-Founder and COO of Slides With Friends, is on a mission to bring remote teams together through the power of engaging virtual meetings.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Cecilia had an entirely different startup in mind, but business growth started declining rapidly. Simultaneously, she started Slides With Friends as a side project to close the distance between people who were separated. Eventually, Slides With Friends transitioned into Cecilia’s full-time focus and has since unlocked a larger goal of finding creative ways to spark connection—virtually.
We asked Cecilia about how Slides With Friends began, what she believes to be the biggest misconception around entrepreneurship, and the advice she’d give herself if she started her entrepreneurial journey all over again.
Q: Tell us the story behind the founding of Slides With Friends: How and why did you start working on Slides With Friends?
A: We were fully invested in a different startup when the pandemic hit. In the start of 2020, we went from a big team in multiple cities and growing, to doing one tenth of our revenue in the span of three weeks. We dropped our growth plans and moved everything we could remote. All-hands meetings were the hardest.
We started building Slides With Friends as a side project. It was part wishful thinking and 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 our team to feel connected with each other and our mission, without getting Zoom fatigue from too many calls. We wanted my mom's birthday to still be special.
And we wanted to help everyone have those things as well. So this is a presentation tool that has a bigger goal: keeping people connected even if they have to be apart.
Q: What problem does Slides With Friends solve?
A: When we’re working remotely, it can be so difficult to maintain team cohesion and alignment. Slides With Friends is aimed to help create engagement and bring teams together. It’s an interactive presentation builder that lets you play along with the content. Think of it like PowerPoint, but where your audience can participate by sending in answers, with emoji responses, word clouds, fun sounds, questions, survey responses, photos they love, and so much more.
Our interactions are mindfully designed with positive group dynamics as a base principle. So whether it’s playing a warm up icebreaker, giving everyone in your large group a voice during your meeting, or enabling your employees to come together over a fun team-building game, our decks are built to smooth social interactions and promote positive connection.
Q: Have you ever felt like you’re “different”? If yes, in what ways has this contributed to your journey as an entrepreneur?
A: I feel different in that I have been given so much, compared to many who haven’t been as lucky, be it with support, education, or intellect. I think I have a strong drive to not waste what I’ve been given—that it’s my job to give back, even if it’s only in small ways. I’m trying to do that now by creating companies that help humans.
Q: What are the biggest mistakes you’ve made?
A: Starting a real-world services tech business and expanding to multiple cities just before a pandemic. When everything went remote, this was a really tough shift for us.
I wish I knew then what I know now about enabling company communication and cohesion. I learned the hard way, as we grew across cities and then had to be remote in our home base, that working separately with larger teams is a very different beast. If you don’t communicate and enable your team to come together, your team won’t work well together.
Q: What’s the biggest misconception that others have around entrepreneurship?
A: That you can do it alone. There’s this “lone genius” cultural concept we’re enamoured with in America. Sure, you might be the special one who is able to go it on your own, but the majority of successful entrepreneurs have support, mentors, access to information, and often, at least a little investment capital. I think it’s incredibly important to bring support to those who lack resources, and to widen the platform so more and more types of founders and entrepreneurs have the support needed, if they want it.
Q: Have you felt like giving up? What made you persist?
A: All the time. But making my own way and creating value how I best can beats every alternative for me, every time.
Q: Has your definition of success evolved throughout your journey as a founder?
A: I used to be interested in creating a unicorn—we did the whole YC application and talked to VCs. As I get older and find more stable success without the pressure for rocketship growth, I realize I’d rather create something good for the world first. The end goal of private business is to create value for shareholders. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but I don’t believe this is the right life goal for my personal day-to-day happiness.
Q: What would you tell your younger self if you were to start your entrepreneurial journey all over again?
A: Start from your base principles—you’re lucky enough to be able to have time to breathe, so spend time determining what you want your life to look like and then work backward from there. Don’t just do something because you’re good at it.
Cecilia is a member of Dreamers & Doers, a private collective that amplifies the entrepreneurial pursuits of extraordinary women through thought leadership opportunities, authentic connection, and access. Learn more about Dreamers & Doers and subscribe to their monthly The Digest for top entrepreneurial and career resources.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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Gesche Haas
Gesche Haas is the Founder/CEO of Dreamers & Doers, a private collective that amplifies the entrepreneurial pursuits of extraordinary women through visibility opportunities, resource exchange, and collective support.
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