Li left a partner-track venture career to build the slide tool he wished he had at 2 a.m. in a consulting war room.
Daniel Li is co-founder and chief executive of Plus AI, a Seattle, Washington, company whose assistant creates and edits presentations inside Google Slides and PowerPoint. He co-founded Plus with Chloe Qi after leaving Madrona Venture Group.
Leaving Consulting for Venture Capital
Li grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania's Huntsman Program, graduating summa cum laude, according to YesPress. He worked at Boston Consulting Group, where he has said half his time went to mindless slide formatting, then spent about six years at Madrona backing companies including Snowflake, Rec Room, and Common Room.
Leaving Madrona to Found Plus
In 2021 he left a partner-track path to co-found Plus with Qi, a former BCG colleague who had also worked at Webflow. Madrona led a $5.5 million seed. The first product pulled live data into shared surfaces; customers kept returning to the pain of the blank deck, so the team pivoted into AI presentations that live where people already work.
Competing Inside Google Slides and PowerPoint
Plus now markets an AI assistant for creating and editing decks inside Google Slides and PowerPoint rather than forcing a new editor. Winning distribution inside those marketplaces, where competing add-ons appear quickly, is the standing hard turn for a small team against larger creative-AI brands.
Personal Life
Li lives in Seattle with his wife Sarah and son Zac. He writes a Pacific Northwest tech newsletter on the side and has served on the Associate Board of Seattle's Pacific Science Center.
