🧐 Pitch - The community-driven product that is taking on Powerpoint
A deep-dive case study on how Pitch is crowdsourcing value through the 1100+ member Slack community to be a community-driven product.
The future of work is remote.
Pitch.com is a collaborative presentation tool and an emerging unicorn in the making. The man behind this storm is a serial entrepreneur and investor - Christian Reber.
Christian founded Wunderlist, a cloud-based task management app in 2011. Microsoft saw Wunderlist as competition to its native app To-Do which offered similar competitive features. So, it went ahead and acquired Wunderlist in 2015 with plans to eventually shut it down. Microsoft continued operating Wunderlist longer than expected, and finally, shut it down in May 2020. Christian wanted to buy back Wunderlist from Microsoft and improvise the product to make it still available to the users, but it never went through.
Meanwhile, Christian was working on ramping up Pitch.com with his seven other co-founders. Back in 2018, Pitch was born out of a shared passion for creating well-crafted and delightful products. Christian and the team wanted to create something in line with what Figma, Canva, InVision had built, but for non-designers. That's where the idea of creating a collaborative presentation software was born.
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"If you think presentations cannot enchant people, then you have never seen a really good one." - Guy Kawasaki
Pitch was up against three main giants - PowerPoint, Keynote & Google Slides. But even with these giants in the markets, four main problems were unaddressed, which Pitch was going to solve:
Most presentations had to be created from scratch using standard templates, even though most of the information in the presentations would be repetitive. This would drastically slow down the teams. Pitch would make recycling presentations simpler and quicker.
Collaborating on slides was difficult. Pitch was going to adopt seamless collaboration and powerful workflow features to make presentations easier.
Data integration was pretty manual - take screenshots, draw tables, etc. Pitch would let you integrate data in real-time from any tools you would be using.
Presentations were tedious - formatting, changing fonts, working on multiple devices, etc. They always gave you a nightmare. Pitch was here to revolutionize this thought.
"When we founded our company in January, Pitch really wasn’t much more than an idea. With Slack and Front transforming business communication, Airtable and Coda disrupting Excel, and Sketch and Framer on a mission to break Photoshop’s monopoly, we saw innovation and thoughtful design resetting expectations and reimagining the user experience of complex business software." - Christian Reber
After two years of immense effort and a year-long beta that included more than 25,000 teams, including those at Intercom, Grammarly, and Notion, Pitch finally opened up to everyone in October 2020. During their beta, they shipped 72 new features, 210 improvements, and 260 bug fixes.
Today Berlin-based Pitch has raised a total of $137.7M funding, with the latest one being an $85M in Series B round led by Lakestar and Tiger Global, joined by their existing investors Thrive Capital and Index Ventures.
Let's take a look at what Pitch can do for you 👇
Pitch keeps your team’s work on-brand, on message, and on time.
Choose and pick, get started super quick with any template from their gallery.
Easy to stay on-brand. Add your assets to Pitch and keep every presentation beautifully consistent.
Collaborate with live video - you can discuss edits, host a meeting, have an epic GIF battle.
Create, edit, and review presentations with your entire team in real-time or on your own time.
Set a status, delegate work to teammates.
The simple yet powerful editor will give you the designer feels.
Add depth to your decks with data, rich media, and interactive embeds.
To learn more about Christian's journey from Wunderlist to Pitch, check out this interview 👇 40:42 - Christian talks about the growth marketing plan for Pitch to acquire customers in the future, after 2 years of building in beta.
🤝 Crowdsourcing value through the 1100+ member community to be a community-driven product
Pitch hosts 1100+ people in their community on Slack. The community acts as an enabler for makers and creators to meet people from across the globe, share tips on creating better presentations, and forge meaningful connections.
Here are a few examples of how the community drives growth for Pitch 👇
🔍 Beta-testing multiple features with the community
The community members are real-time users of the product. Beta-testing the features with the members enables Pitch to gather real-time feedback, fix bugs, improvise and notch up the product and prepare for the final release.
🖼️ Showcase what you build with Pitch for others to replicate the same
Pitch has created a pool of templates for various use-cases which makes it easy to pick-and-create presentations super quick. User-generated templates add on to the directory thus giving users more choices to pick from.
📝 Frequent feedbacks and surveys from the community to polish the product
Creating simple easy-touchpoint surveys and feedback channels helps Pitch polish their product regularly, enabling them to stay updated and deliver a top-notch product.
🚚 Deliver constant value to the users through product improvements and workshops
Pitch team hosts 'Pitch Live' sessions with great minds around, considering their users are mostly makers or creators. Here's a recording from their latest live event with Azeem Azhar who shares how founders and can stay ahead of tomorrow's disruptive curve.
Pitch truly believes that remote is the future of work - the product helps strengthen the remote team by collaborating visually over easy-to-create presentations.
Of course, we wouldn't forget to mention the incredible list of leaders who've shaped Pitch to be what it is today! Here's a little something we created with Pitch 👇 😊
Btw, we love Pitch - we use it for our decks too at Threado! ❤️ And it's not just us showering all the love 👇
Judith @judithlola_
I really love when fellow founders share underrated tools helping them on their journey. Saw @Nataliiee_N tweet about https://t.co/WETO762Cpz a couple weeks ago and @_Bleggy_ & I are obsessed. It's so good!
Pitch @Pitch
Pitch 🤝 @ChartMogul We're excited to bring you our newest data integration where you can import, visualize, and report on SaaS revenues in your presentations. 📊 Read more about how it works ➡️ https://t.co/VZg56UjFAD https://t.co/B9z0Dno3frTo Summarize:
Christian Reber founded Wunderlist in 2011, sold it to Microsoft in 2015; started working on building Pitch
Christian founded Wunderlist, a cloud-based task management app in 2011.
Microsoft acquired Wunderlist in 2015, as it felt its native app To-Do was able to offer a competitive experience that included Wunderlist’s best features.
Microsoft finally shut down Wunderlist in May 2020. Christian wanted to buy back Wunderlist from Microsoft, but it never went through.
Along with 7 other Co-founders, Christian founded Pitch in 2018 and built it in beta for 2 years
Pitch - a collaborative tool for creating seamless on-brand presentations, super quick with community-driven templates
Pitch keeps your team’s work on-brand, on message, and on time.
Choose and pick, get started super quick with any template from their gallery.
Collaborate with live video - you can discuss edits, host a meeting, have an epic GIF battle.
Set a status, delegate work to teammates.
Add depth to your decks with data, rich media, and interactive embeds.
Crowdsourcing value through the 1100+ member community to be a community-first product
Pitch beta-tests multiple features with the community allowing them to gather real-time feedback and improvise.
Users can showcase what they built with Pitch for others to replicate the same.
The team gathers frequent feedbacks and surveys from the community to polish the product.
They deliver constant value to the users through product improvements and workshops
About Threado:
At Threado, we are building the future of community experience for businesses. Community-led growth is the most sustainable way to build businesses and we want to help drive this shift in the years to come. We are a seed-stage product-led startup building the best-in-class community management platform for community professionals across the globe.
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