Tome, a tech startup founded by former Facebook and Instagram executives, launches with $32 million in funding to transform storytelling at work

There’s a popular saying that “Storytelling is an art and Persuasion is a science.” However, when you marry the two together, you end up with a game-changing idea with the potential to take your business to the next level. That’s exactly what Tome co-founders Keith Peiris and Henri Liriani are doing to the way storytelling is done at work.

It’s 2021 and most companies are still stuck with the old idea of using slide decks in their presentation. However, slide decks haven’t changed in over three decades. Slide decks are ripe for disruption. It’s for this reason that the duo left their executive positions at Facebook and Instagram to make storytelling at work as easy and intuitive as storytelling on social.

Tome has been working behind the scenes for nearly two years—designing, engineering, and testing the tool for widespread use. Today, Tome announced its official launch with $32.3M in funding from Greylock and Coatue, along with angel investors including the CEO and co-founders of Zoom, the CEO of Airtable, and the CPO of Adobe.

Tome is built for people to express themselves intuitively so they can stop designing slides and start sharing ideas. Tome combines intuitive design with powerful functionality to create an experience that feels like magic. Tome empowers storytellers to express ideas naturally so they can stop designing slides and start sharing ideas.

The experience of using Tome is more like Instagram than it is PowerPoint. Tome is designed for both mobile and desktop, and its clean, flexible layout allows users to quickly and effortlessly bring ideas to life. Tome co-founders Keith Peiris and Henri Liriani, former Instagram and Facebook product leads, sought to create a new format for storytelling that better aligns with how we work today. With dynamic pages and foolproof formatting, Tome allows users to skip time-intensive slide design and get straight to the story.

“Storytelling is the force behind every product, company, and industry; it’s what shapes personal views and public opinion. Tools like Instagram and TikTok have given us a creative and easy way to connect with people through simple stories, but tools for sharing more complex ideas haven’t kept up,” said Keith Peiris, co-founder of Tome.

“Tome allows you to express nuanced concepts and technical work without wasting time on things that don’t matter. It’s built so that your ideas can flow naturally.”

Using Tome feels like magic. Anything on the internet can be easily embedded in a tome, including Figma prototypes, Airtable spreadsheets, YouTube videos, Tweets, and Gifs. Users can play with 3D models and interact with live data tables that update automatically. Tome pages are fluid—they adapt to what you want to say, not the other way around. Built with mobile users in mind, Tome’s layout engine works seamlessly on any smartphone or tablet, and it’s highly collaborative: users can edit, comment, and annotate each other’s work from anywhere.

“It’s an ambitious goal to disrupt an industry that’s been dominated by two of the largest companies in the world, but if anyone is going to do it, it would be Keith and Henri,” said Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Partner at Greylock and Tome board director. “Tome is giving people an entirely new way to express ideas and has the potential to become an essential tool for business.”

“The slide deck hasn’t changed in over 30 years. It’s still stuck in the paradigm of the desktop PC while everything else about the way we work is drastically different,” added Dan Rose, Chairman of Coatue Ventures and Tome board director. “Tome is leading a categorical shift in the way we tell stories at work. It’s the intuitive, collaborative, and mobile-first storytelling tool that we’ve needed. It’s finally letting us focus on what we want to say.”

Tome is currently used by employees at companies such as Snap, Stripe, IDEO, Unity, and Notion are among Tome’s early adopters. Today, Tome is available for limited release. To create a tome yourself, visit Tome.app.