Professional content sharing startup SlideShare’s cofounders Amit Ranjan, Jonathan Boutelle and Rashmi Sinha have jointly launched an AI focused social document-sharing platform.
The venture, Jaunt, works similar to SlideShare, allowing users to upload files, share, like, and follow creators. However, it emphasises social interaction with features like post-specific comments to foster.
The platform offers a vertical feed showcasing presentations and documents across categories such as business, education, science, and tech, catering to a range of content from startup pitch decks to educational materials.
“We are going back to a space that others have left behind – formats like videos, photos, podcasts, reels, shorts, and spaces at all are cranking down furiously on innovation, but documents seem stuck in the distant past! We think this opportunity fits our skills, interests and temperament… we are venturing out to take another stab at it!” Ranjan wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“We built SlideShare and it was successful in capturing the zeitgeist of its times! But unfortunately it never kinda reached its true potential – hashtag#bigtech acquisitions don’t always pan out the way the founders visualised the opportunity,” the post added.
Ranjan further said that AI has brought “text” as a format back into action, with textual content serving as the foundational block of the web’s transformation.
Additionally, Jaunt uses hashtags to help users explore trending topics and discover content that matches their interests.
The platform uses AI tools like Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI to simplify posting. When users upload a file, the AI generates a summary for the caption and suggests a title, category, and hashtags. In the future, the AI will also translate documents into different languages and provide summaries for readers.
It provides a mobile-first, vertical scrolling experience with AI features to break down complex documents into key components. The platform also focuses on creators in fields like business and education, offering a space for document discovery and sharing, and features a swipe-based system for related content. Jaunt intends to address the lack of platforms dedicated to documents, following the success of platforms for video and photo creators.
Founded in 2006 by John Wilson, Ranjan, Boutelle and Sinha, SlideShare was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012 and later in 2020, US-based e-book and audiobook platform Scribd bought SlideShare from LinkedIn for an undisclosed amount.
Back then, Ranjan tweeted that the platform had become a shadow of its former self, as LinkedIn had ceased investing in its growth.
