A new way of making slides: Talking with Ludus’ CTO
We are Central, a design studio that helps organizations create digital products and instil design culture internally. Every month or so, we organize an Umami Talk: an event during which we have a casual interview with a digital product professional and a Question & Answer session with our friendly audience. This article is a shortened and slightly edited version of the chat we had with Vincent Battaglia.
Vincent is the CTO and co-founder of Ludus, a tool that aims to change the way we create presentation slides and share knowledge. Before founding Ludus, Vincent studied Computer Science in Mons (Belgium) and then specialized in development. He then took his first steps as an entrepreneur and co-founded an SEO company called WooRank and a design agency called 1MD. A few handshakes later, he got the opportunity to work for start-ups like Storify and Instaply in San Francisco. In 2015, he moved to Barcelona to open Instaply’s European Head Quarters and decided to stay (we think jamón ibérico must have something to do with it).
Welcome Vincent! You’ve built 3 companies so far. What have you learned as a founder?
Of course, you always have to build a great product (or do great work, generally speaking) if you’re a service provider. But I think what’s most important is to create a great company culture. People need to be happy. I know a lot of companies that say ‘customers first.’ I would tend to say ‘employees first and customers second.’ If your employees are happy, they will do great work and your customers will be happy. And ultimately, your investors and your shareholders will be happy too. It’s often overlooked, but it’s important. Many companies focus on the product and don’t care about the people. The ‘customer first’ ideology can sometimes be an excuse to make your employees’ lives miserable.
I’m still learning but I think it’s important to hire the best people and give them as much freedom as possible. Then, great things will happen. The most difficult part is hiring the best people. When I hire, I want someone who is better than me at one or multiple things. It’s stupid to hire people who are not as good as you. It’s an ego thing. Many people want to hire people whom they can manage. It makes more sense to hire someone who’s better than you and who will elevate the level of your company.
Now you’re CTO and co-founder at Ludus. Could you tell us what Ludus is about?
Ludus is a new web-based presentation tool for designers. We like to call it the Sketch of presentations. We noticed a lot of problems with existing tools so we decided to build this one. We called it Ludus because we eventually want to revolutionize knowledge-sharing. In Latin, ‘ludus’ is an ambiguous word that can mean playing and learning. That’s what we want to achieve with Ludus: learning while having fun. It’s proven that it’s the best way to learn. We found this term in a book called Ready Player One. Steven Spielberg is working on a movie adaptation of it. The characters in the novel live in a virtual world and Ludus is the name of the planet where they go to school.
Ultimately, you want Ludus to be used in schools?
Yes, that’s the idea. We know that the education field is a little old-school, if I may use that expression. So, at first, we’re focusing on designers because we’re solving a problem for them. We know that education is difficult to disrupt, so we need to come with a proven solution before widening the target audience.
What’s your role at Ludus?
Being a CTO means that I’m responsible for technical stuff but also that I’m responsible for the technical vision of the company. I need to know where we want the company to be in 10 years, even if that’s difficult to predict because there will be changes in technology. If you ask me to define myself, I wouldn’t say I’m a CTO. I’m a product engineer. What I like to do is work with technology, but not for technology’s sake. I’m not in love with Python or React. I just like those tools because they help me build great products. I won’t participate in debates about React vs. Angular. They’re just tools to build products. I choose them to do what I want to do.
On a day-to-day, I code a lot. I think I’ll always code a lot. I also work on the product. We don’t have a CPO. The CPO is the both Lionel and me. We don’t really have a process. It’s very organic. We all work together at one point or another.
What are the weaknesses you found in PowerPoint, Keynote and other presentation tools?
PowerPoint, Keynote and other desktop applications have 3 main issues. The first is sharing. For example, if you want to share a presentation with a big video, you’ll most likely have to share it through WeTransfer or other tools and it’s a nightmare. The second is compatibility. If the person you want to share your presentation with has an older version of the software or doesn’t have the fonts, it’s an issue. The third one is collaboration. Even though Google Slides kind of solves these 3 issues, it doesn’t provide features that designers want. If you ask designers whether they like Google Slides, they’ll probably say no. What we already provide that Google Slides doesn’t are things like blend modes, color overlay, uploading fonts, etc. Another thing that Google Slides doesn’t do well is integration. The only integration they currently have is YouTube*. We started Ludus 6 months ago and we already have more than 20 integrations such as Framer, InVision and CodePen. It’s really stupid for them not to take advantage of being on the web.
*Note: A few days after our Umami Talk, Google created a few new integrations in Slides. Coincidence? We think not ;)
From a design standpoint, how do you re-invent something that already exists without getting bogged down by what’s out there?
It may seem counter-intuitive but we avoid using tools that already exist. We don’t want to be negatively influenced by what they do. Our biggest source of inspiration is Sketch, which is not a presentation tool but a graphic editor. We do that because all the tools that try to kill PowerPoint, like Canva or Slides, copy what already exists. We want to invent something new. Of course, we’ll be inspired by software we like, but not by our direct competitors.
It’s sometimes difficult for users because they expect to see features that we don’t provide. For example, they want templates but we have a different approach. We want to provide a blank sheet and let people be creative. We don’t want to be creative for people. It’s like the difference between a box of LEGO blocks and a Barbie doll. With a Barbie doll, you can just play Barbie. With LEGO blocks, you can create whatever you want.
You launched in May in private Beta and you came on top of the Product Hunt list. How did you do that?
You’ll see a lot of Medium articles that say: if you want to get to the top of Product Hunt, do this, this and that. We kind of followed that but ultimately if you have a shitty product, it’s not going to work. The important thing when you launch on Product Hunt is to have a good product that solves a problem. After that, you can optimize a little. For example, we made a good video which helped with promotion. We also contacted a famous hunter. If you’re helped by a hunter with a lot of followers, then you’ll have more exposure. But if you did that and had a shitty product, it wouldn’t work anyway. You need to have a product that solves a real problem. There’s no magic trick you can use to be the first product in the list.
What has the reception been like so far?
It’s been very good. For us, that’s more important than the numbers. We like to see that people are enthusiastic about the tool. They know the product is not perfect but they don’t hold it against us because they know that we already make their lives easier and that we‘ll continue to improve.
Users help a lot. It’s great to build that kind of community so fast. That’s what we’re the most proud of. It’s nice to be able to put ‘3000 votes’ and ‘11,000 users’ on a slide, but what we really care about is happy users.
How do you integrate all the feedback you get?
We don’t have a strict workflow. We have a 1-year roadmap that we try to keep updated. After that, it’s pretty much dictated by user feedback and our internal discussions. We don’t implement everything that people ask for. Sometimes, it’s not in line with our vision. We don’t implement the feedback directly but it helps prioritize the tasks. If we see that a lot of people have a problem with a specific thing, we try to fix it. We also try to use analytics. We can see how people are using the product. For example, if we notice that many people have a problem with the same step when signing up, we’ll try to take care of that.
Reading your blog, I noticed that you have a very positive view of the future. You seem to be a techno-optimist. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
I try to see the big picture. If you take a step back and look at the way people lived 100 years ago, you’ll see that we have lives today that even the richest people back then couldn’t have dreamt of. If you extrapolate, things should be better in 100 years than they are now. Also, I see a lot of things that make me optimistic: breakthrough innovation in the field of transportation, in renewable energies, education, the blockchain, etc. I think we could see the end of nations, capitalism and democracies as we know them. I know I can sometimes be a little idealistic. But again, if you look at how it was in the past, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be better in the future. I think it’s really important to have utopian ideas; that’s how we’ll improve the world. If you’re pessimistic, you won’t want to do anything anyway. I think that’s why I’m an entrepreneur. I see a lot of things that can be improved in education, transportation, energy. There are so many things to do. Why spend your time doing something that will not ultimately fix those issues?
We want to thank Vincent and the entire Ludus team for sharing so much with us. More thanks go to Nádia and Delphine for helping us make this event a success. We’re also very grateful to Paul for sharing his pictures with us.
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