Rollstack: Automating Slide Deck and Document Creation

In today's fast-paced business environment, slide decks and documents have become essential tools for presentations, financial reporting, client reviews, and other purposes. However, creating and updating them can be a daunting and time-consuming task, often taking up to 12 hours per week. This is where Rollstack comes in, a San Francisco-based startup that aims to revolutionize the way professionals create and update slide decks and documents. With Rollstack, teams can automate the process of collecting data from multiple sources, formatting charts and tables, and generating high-quality presentations with ease. In this article, we will explore the many features and benefits of Rollstack, as well as take a closer look at the founders' vision for the company.

Why is slide deck creation so cumbersome?

Creating slide decks and documents is often a time-intensive and frustrating process for businesses. One of the primary challenges is the effort required to collect data from multiple sources, such as BI tools, CRMs, and data warehouses. This manual data wrangling not only consumes valuable time but also introduces opportunities for delays and inaccuracies.

Once data is collected, transforming it into charts, tables, and visualizations that effectively communicate the intended message can be equally tedious. Formatting errors, inconsistencies, and the frequent need for updates—especially with dynamic or rapidly changing data—add another layer of complexity. Additionally, teams often reuse slides or templates, but updating them manually still consumes significant time and resources. These issues collectively reduce productivity and lead to frustration across teams.

Rollstack’s automated solution addresses these pain points by streamlining data collection, formatting, and updates, allowing professionals to focus on high-value tasks instead of repetitive manual work.

How Rollstack solves these problems

Rollstack is an automated solution that addresses the above challenges and offers the following benefits:

Automated Data Collection: Rollstack allows teams to connect to their favorite data sources, such as Tableau, Salesforce, or Looker, and set up a scheduled refresh. This ensures that the data is always up-to-date and saves time spent on manual data collection.
Automated Data Formatting: Rollstack generates insights automatically from visualizations and datasets, saving teams time spent on formatting and charting.
Automated Updating: Rollstack automatically updates slides and documents based on the scheduled refresh, eliminating manual intervention and reducing errors and inconsistencies.
Reusability: Rollstack saves formatting and visualizations choices, allowing teams to reuse the same slides or documents with minimal effort.
Programmatically Create Decks: Rollstack allows teams to create new versions of the same deck programmatically, saving even more time.
Version Control: Rollstack also offers version control, allowing teams to track changes and collaborate on the same deck.

Rollstack's Innovative Features

Rollstack's platform addresses the core pain points of slide deck and document creation by automating the entire process:

Live Data Integration: Connect directly to data sources like Tableau, Salesforce, or Looker, ensuring presentations always feature the latest data.
Scheduled Updates: Set refresh schedules for automatic updates, removing the need for manual interventions.
Scalable Content Creation: Transform existing presentations into templates for quickly generating multiple variants.
Effortless Distribution: Automate the sharing of documents through email and other communication channels, streamlining the end-to-end workflow.

With these features, teams can achieve consistent, high-quality presentations in a fraction of the time.

Who are the Founders?

Rollstack's founders have a shared goal of enhancing professionals' productivity by automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks. The company was established in 2022 by a team of three highly skilled individuals: Saad Bahir, Nabil Jallouli, and Younes Jallouli. Saad Bahir is an experienced software and DevOps engineer who has previously worked at AiFi, Implicity, and Credit Suisse SMG. He is passionate about open source and bootcamp workouts. Nabil Jallouli is an accomplished engineer who has led data, strategy, and revenue operations at prominent companies such as Pinterest, Deel, and Groupon. He is driven by his passion for execution, people, data, and growth. Younes Jallouli has held engineering and product roles at Tesla and SlimPay, and his experience and expertise have been invaluable in the founding of Rollstack. Together, these founders are committed to their vision of making professionals worldwide more productive by freeing them from menial, non-value added tasks.

A Milestone Year: Rollstack Raises $11 Million in Series A Funding

In an exciting milestone, Rollstack secured $11 million in Series A funding, led by Insight Partners and supported by Y Combinator. This significant investment, raised less than a year after the company’s seed round, highlights Rollstack’s exceptional trajectory and rapid market adoption. Despite a challenging funding environment, Rollstack’s innovative approach to automating slide deck and document creation has set it apart as a game-changer in the industry.

Over the past year, Rollstack has transformed workflows for a diverse range of clients, including mid-sized companies and Fortune 500 giants like SoFi and Monday.com. By automating thousands of decks and documents, Rollstack has helped these organizations reclaim millions of hours and realize hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity gains. This not only reduces the time spent on repetitive tasks but also enables faster decision-making by ensuring key stakeholders always have the most up-to-date information at their fingertips.

Rollstack’s ability to deliver value lies in its commitment to groundbreaking integrations. The platform has introduced industry-first integrations with leading BI tools like Tableau, Looker, and PowerBI, seamlessly connecting data sources to presentations. Its upcoming integration with Salesforce, expected in Q1, will further cement its position as a versatile solution for data-driven teams. These capabilities allow Rollstack to cater to a variety of use cases, from financial reporting to business reviews and client presentations, all while prioritizing ease of use and scalability.

In addition to product innovation, this funding will fuel Rollstack’s growth in other critical areas, including expanding its global reach, enhancing customer support, and investing in cutting-edge technologies like Generative AI. With this support, Rollstack is poised to redefine productivity for data-driven organizations, setting a new standard for automation in document and presentation creation.

The Series A funding represents more than just a financial milestone; it’s a validation of Rollstack’s mission and its potential to revolutionize workflows for businesses worldwide. Insight Partners, with its deep expertise in SaaS and data-driven technologies, is the perfect partner for this next phase of growth, bringing strategic insights to help Rollstack scale faster and smarter.

As Rollstack continues to innovate and expand, its vision remains clear: to empower professionals by eliminating non-value-added tasks, enabling them to focus on strategic initiatives that drive success.

Rollstack's Mission

Rollstack's mission is to empower professionals worldwide to be more productive by eliminating non-value-added tasks. With the automation of slide deck and document creation, Rollstack enables teams to redirect their efforts towards high-value activities, such as analysis, innovation, and strategy development. The company's values reflect its commitment to customer satisfaction, continuous innovation, humble learning, active listening, and acknowledging the strength in diversity. Rollstack's unwavering focus on the customer is reflected in its customer-centric approach, as they continually strive to identify and understand their customers' needs and deliver solutions that meet or exceed those needs. The company's commitment to innovation drives the development of cutting-edge technology that automates the tedious and time-consuming aspects of slide deck and document creation, freeing professionals to focus on high-impact work. Rollstack also recognizes the importance of learning without ego, which encourages the company's team members to be open-minded and humble as they continue to learn from their successes and failures. Additionally, Rollstack values active listening and recognizes that actively seeking out feedback from customers and stakeholders is vital for achieving the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Finally, Rollstack acknowledges that the strength of a team lies in its diversity, which enables it to approach problems from multiple perspectives and create more inclusive solutions.

Real-World Impact: Proven Results

Rollstack’s benefits are tangible and measurable. Professionals save 12 hours per week on average, with an 82% reduction in reporting time and a 511% return on investment. Beyond efficiency, the platform boosts team productivity and well-being by eliminating repetitive tasks.

Here’s what some industry leaders have to say:

“Rollstack significantly reduced the time we spend creating slides, allowing us to focus on strategic work.” – Michael McElvaney, Strategic Finance Director, SoFi
“It’s satisfying to generate executive-ready presentations from massive datasets with zero manual intervention.” – Brian Geier, VP Business Intelligence, Recurly
“By automating slides with insights, Rollstack improved operational efficiency across multiple departments.” – Adeline Roche, Manager Analytics, Just Eat Takeaway
“Our recurring slide decks are always updated with the latest data, saving us valuable time.” – Michael Kessler, Director Business Operations, Kargo

Conclusion

Rollstack is a powerful tool that saves teams time, money, and effort by automating the creation and updating of their slide decks and documents. With its ability to integrate with various data sources and automate the formatting and visualization process, Rollstack eliminates the need for manual data entry and formatting, allowing teams to focus on the content and analysis that adds value to their work.

The founding team of Rollstack brings a wealth of experience and expertise in software development, machine learning, data engineering, and product management. With a passion for building tools that make professionals more efficient at work, they have created a platform that addresses a significant pain point for many teams.

Rollstack's mission to make professionals more productive and free them from non-added value tasks is commendable, and their commitment to customer-centricity, innovation, and learning without ego is evident in their product and approach.

As more and more companies embrace data-driven decision-making, tools like Rollstack will become increasingly important. The ability to quickly and easily create and update visualizations and presentations with the latest data will be a competitive advantage for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve.

Overall, Rollstack is an exciting startup to watch in the data automation space, and their platform has the potential to revolutionize the way teams create and update their slide decks and documents.