Many white-collar professions entail the creation of presentations, a process known for its time-consuming and labor-intensive nature. These presentations often incorporate vital data points, and ensuring the accuracy and currency of this data presents its own set of challenges.
A recent study by Coveo revealed that the stress and frustration associated with locating pertinent information in the workplace are contributing to employee burnout. According to the study, employees spend nearly four hours each day searching for information, and over 31% of those surveyed attributed their burnout to the frustration of not finding the information they need.
To alleviate this burden, Nabil Jallouli, Bahir Saad, and Younes Jallouli co-founded Rollstack, a platform designed to automatically update metrics and figures in slide decks, reports, and documents. Rollstack, a member of Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 cohort, has secured $1.8 million in seed funding from investors such as Y Combinator, UpHonest Capital, Kima Ventures, Monte Carlo Capital, and Roosh Ventures.
Nabil explained in an email interview with TechCrunch, “Recurring reporting isn’t merely a task; it’s a fundamental aspect of teams’ decision-making processes. Teams continually engage in data extraction, synthesis, and presentation, both for internal strategy development and external communications. Traditionally, this workflow has been labor-intensive, but Rollstack is purpose-built to address these challenges.”
Before founding Rollstack, Nabil held leadership roles in data, strategy, and revenue operations at companies like Pinterest, Deel, and Groupon. Bahir worked as a software and DevOps engineer at the cashierless checkout startup AiFi, while Younes held various engineering and product positions at Tesla.
Rollstack empowers teams to automatically update their presentations using data sources such as Tableau, Salesforce, and Looker. Users can connect to various data sources, including business intelligence tools, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and databases. They can also schedule data and visualization refreshes for presentations and reports created with Google Slides, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Word, or Notion.
Rollstack streamlines data refreshes and preserves formatting and visualization preferences for future use. Additionally, it enables users to generate new versions of the same presentation programmatically and implement version control to revert to historical data snapshots (e.g., data from a previous fiscal year).
Nabil emphasized, “These automations allow employees to focus on their core responsibilities, such as analysis, strategy, or sales, rather than the tedious task of generating data reports.”
While Rollstack faces competition from tools like Coefficient and Actiondesk, Nabil highlights that Rollstack offers broader support for document types than most of its competitors.
Rollstack claims to be experiencing 50% month-over-month growth in its customer base, which includes startups and large publicly-listed companies. Although Nabil did not disclose specific revenue figures or burn rate, he mentioned that Rollstack plans to double its seven-person team’s size by the end of Q1 2024.
Nabil concluded, “Rollstack’s primary competitor is manual work. With the team’s expertise in the field, Rollstack is well-positioned to leverage AI to further enhance its clients’ efficiency. The focus remains on delivering real value and impact to its users, rather than merely following trends.”
