Online presentation startup 9Slides buys Seattle’s Now Meeting

By John Cook, Crosscut

Two Seattle area startups are joining forces with the goal of helping workers communicate more effectively.

9Slides, the 3-year-old online presentation company started by former Microsoftie Ruchit Garg, is buying Now Meeting, the latest startup from serial entrepreneur Shane Jones.

As a result of the deal, Jones, who previously founded Seattle-based Daptiv, is joining 9Slides as president.

“My mandate is to help the company scale to meet the demands of our customers and to execute on the vision we have to be the leader in the next generation of mobile enterprise communication solutions,” said Jones.

9Slides has created an easy way to show video and presentations side-by-side, but the company is bolstering a new area of the business with the acquisition of Now Meeting. Specifically, it is focusing on quick status updates and employee communications in rich media format, areas that Garg said Now Meeting is especially strong.

9slides-app“This acquisition will help accelerate our growth and will allows us to leap forward 6-12 months in our strategic plan and increases our first mover advantage in the enterprise mobile communication market that we are convinced is going to be huge in the years ahead,” said Garg, adding that the two companies “product strategies and roadmaps were extremely aligned and complimentary.”

9Slides is backed by angel investors such as Rudy Gadre, Dave McClure and former vice president of Kindle software Felix Anthony.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.