Peter Arvai

The native Hungarian form of this personal name is Árvai Péter. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Peter Arvai, 2010

Peter Arvai (born October 26, 1979) is a Hungarian/Swedish businessman. He is CEO and co-founder of Prezi,[1][2] a cloud-based presentation software company. As an entrepreneur, he founded omvard.se in Sweden,[3] and co-founded Prezi along with other two co-founders Adam Somlai-Fischer, a designer and Peter "HP" Halacsy, a computer scientist and university professor; and officially launched it in 2009.[4] Peter Arvai was one of the developers of Patented Web feed message browsing along with Joacim Boivie and Joakim Hilj.[5]

Education and early career

He was born in Karlskoga, Sweden, his parents are Hungarians. He has been living in Tokyo, Stockholm, Singapore and San Francisco, he lives in Budapest. Peter Arvai attended Stockholm University in 2001 and graduated with a master's degree in business administration in 2006.[6] During his time at Stockholm University, Arvai participated in the 12 month Vulcanus in Japan programme,[7] established by the EU and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. During this time he studied Japanese and completed a training program at Fuji Xerox in Japan.[8] As part of his business program, Arvai studied economics in Singapore for an exchange semester. Arvai was one of the first batch of students to attend the newly introduced Master in Media Technology and Engineering program (1999-2005) at the Royal Institute of Technology.[8] After graduating Arvai co-founded the program's alumni group.[9]

Arvai launched omvard.se, a company that helps patients compare treatment outcomes between hospitals.[10] Omvard.se won best website of Sweden 2009.[11] He was also vice president for product portfolio at the Swedish mobile communications company Mobispine, where he worked with Joacim Boivie and Joakim Hilj to develop first mobile newsreader[5] to follow TED Talks from mobile devices.

When his mother became ill, he and three friends designed a Website, that compared Swedish clinics and hospitals. Internetworld, a Swedish magazine, awarded them with "best Website of the year in Sweden" in 2009.[12][13]

Prezi TED Investment

In 2009, Arvai co-founded Prezi, a presentation software, with Ádám Somlai-Fischer and Péter Halácsy. He approached TED Conference given the companies’ common vision of promoting the open exchange of ideas and he had pitched the investment idea to in the conference.[14][15] TED Conference, Accel Partners and Sunstone Capital were Prezi's investors that participated in Series A and Series B funding rounds.[16][17][18]

Personal life

Arvai speaks English, Swedish, Hungarian and Japanese fluently, is a Bikram Yoga enthusiast and has expressed interest in writing a Swedish-language cookbook on everyday Japanese cuisine.[8] He was the first openly gay CEO in Hungary.[19] He made his coming out in 2015 in a Forbes piece to have a gay role model for young people considering to be entrepreneurs.

Engagement

With his company Prezi, he became the first, who joined in the Budapest Pride Parade in 2010. Together with Google and espell, he founded WeAreOpen, a Nonprofit organization dedicated to openness, justice and change.[17][20] Arvai is co-founder and chairman of the organization Bridge Budapest, which publishes about 5 million inspirational stories each year.[21]

Awards
  • 2014: European Tech Startups Award for Best Startup Co-Founders[22]
  • 2014: European Web Entrepreneur of the Year[23]
  • 2015: Executive of the Year – Business Services: Bronze Stevie Winner[24]
  • 2016: Number 11 on the 2016 OUTstanding & Financial Times Leading LGBT Executives List of 100[25]

Publications

Peter Arvai is author of "Developing the Business Case for a New Mobile Service: An Exercise in Business Model Designing" -VDM Verlag June 25, 2008[6]

References
  1. 6 Questions With Prezi Co-Founder Peter Arvai, 2013/03/13 Mashable
  2. Now with over 20M users, presentation startup Prezi adds long-awaited audio features, 2013/03/12 Venturebeat
  3. Founded omvard.se in Sweden, Details on Prezi
  4. Prezi Team profile
  5. The patent was filed on March 9, 2007 in United States. Pub No 20080222241 A1
  6. Developing the Business Case for a New Mobile Service, ISBN 978-3-639-04815-5
  7. Vulcanus in Japan (2002/2003). "Vulcanus Alumni". Joomla. p. 8. Archived from the original on 2011-05-17. Retrieved 2013-03-08. Check date values in: |year= (help)
  8. "Peter Arvai's Path From Hungary to Leading Prezi". NYTimes.com. 2010-11-13. Retrieved 2012-01-29.
  9. Alumni group Archived 2013-04-18 at Archive.today
  10. Angry Birds (Finland) and Prezi (Hungary) Founders come to Stanford Archived 2013-04-09 at Archive.today
  11. "De gör Sveriges bästa sajt". Internetworld. 2009-11-11. Retrieved 2012-01-29.
  12. "The Hungarian Connection". The New York Times. 13 November 2010. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  13. "Topp100 2009: De gör Sveriges bästa sajt". IDG.se. 11 November 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  14. "Prezi Founders". Dailybrink.com. Archived from the original on 2012-01-06. Retrieved 2012-01-29.
  15. Detail about investment on Prezi Archived 2012-11-15 at the Wayback Machine
  16. Prezi Gains VC Funding And Jack Dorsey As An Advisor, Techcrunch, July 20th, 2009
  17. "Openly gay Hungarian CEO embraces inclusion". FINANCIAL TIMES. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  18. "Peter Arvai". IDcee. 2014. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  19. "For your information: I am gay (in Hungarian)". hvg.hu. 2015-02-04. Retrieved 2015-02-04.
  20. "How Prezi CEO and founder infuses core value of diversity into company's culture (video)". SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES. 14 June 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  21. "Peter Arvai". PICTURED FUTURES. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  22. "Prezi wins at The Europas, the awards for Europe's tech startups". Silicon Goulash. 18 June 2018. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
  23. "Prezi Co-Founder Wins European Entrepreneur Award". HUNGARY today. 7 November 2014. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
  24. "The Stevie Award Trophy". THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AWARDS. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
  25. "2016 OUTstanding and FT rankings". FINANCIAL TIMES. 24 October 2016. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
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