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Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

pitch.com

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Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#61

Post by rabidonrails »

I use Google Slides _a ton_ and having a web based alternative is definitely interesting. Since I'm not a Mac user I've definitely yearned for Keynote-like animations etc. so this could be really useful.

That said, something here doesn't seem to add up to me. Pitch is launching now, two years after being founded by seven founders, raised 50M(!) in funding and has 89 employees?

I can't figure out why 1. they didn't launch sooner 2. why they need so many people 3. why it's a freemium model 4. How they _already_ raised $50M.

It looks like a cool product and I might sign up to play around but something doesn't add up.

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#62

Post by IshKebab »

joering2 wrote: post #39
gcatalfamo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the differentiating value consists in simply not being made by Google?

Knowing Google history in shutting down anything other than search, mail and maps, yes its a huge advantage. I was approach to use “Authenticator” app in new project and upon finding out its Google, I declined

I'd say a VC-funded presentation startup is a fair bit more likely to shut down than one of Google's core products is.

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#63

Post by socksy »

radihuq wrote: post #55

I'm super excited for Pitch. Since it's a web application I assume there will eventually be a public API, and ways to embed interactive media. I think this will be really powerful for events. Imagine if you had ONE master slide deck that had: - A slide for audience polling - A slide for a zoom call with one of your speakers - A slide that managed an icebreaker activity (like Kahoot) - A slide that tracked merch sales…

Curious, what exactly would you be expecting from a presentation software API? Like a webplayer style player.next() and player.back(), or a way to make embedded media inside?

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#64

Post by capableweb »

echelon wrote: post #57
joering2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Google history in shutting down anything other than search, mail and maps, yes its a huge advantage. I was approach to use “Authenticator” app in new project and upon finding out its Google, I declined

Google is never going to close slides or docs. Gsuite makes them enterprise money.

Don't be so sure. Yeah, G Suite makes them money, free Google Slides or Docs doesn't.

After seeing them close down a couple of services I never thought they would close down, I don't think anything "free" is off-limit right now. Especially depending on how the US/world economy goes.

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#65

Post by capableweb »

IshKebab wrote: post #62
joering2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Google history in shutting down anything other than search, mail and maps, yes its a huge advantage. I was approach to use “Authenticator” app in new project and upon finding out its Google, I declined

I'd say a VC-funded presentation startup is a fair bit more likely to shut down than one of Google's core products is.

One of Google core product? AFAIK, Google itself has _one_ core product, and only one, which is Ads. The rest are services meant to sell more ads, or get more user data so the ads are more effective.

Other products are usually spin out into their own companies and/or under Alphabet rather than Google.

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#66

Post by carlps »

pal_9000 wrote: post #60
liamcardenas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes Pitch better than purchasing templates? For instance, you can find professionally designed templates here [1]. [1] https://graphicriver.net/popular_item/by_category?category=p...

What makes Spotify better than early iTunes? Quite obvious, no?

No, I don't think it is. Early itunes was a media player and music store I could use to catalog my own music as well as license theirs. Spotify is a streaming music service with a free ads based model or paid monthly subscription to get access to most commercially released music. How is that anything like Pitch vs PowerPoint templates?

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#67

Post by jstummbillig »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #34
jstummbillig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you miss anything? I think you are merely skipping over the part you have not missed: It's well designed and not a Google product. In a world with space for a thousand todo and project management apps, I am sure there is space for a slides competitor, even if that was all it has going for it (although I am assuming there is more).

So, the differentiating value consists in simply not being made by Google?

That depends on you. Again: There is a whole slew of very much overlapping productivity apps out there. People are getting hyper specific about minute features and how they want the UX to feel, exactly. (EDIT: To illustrate this point, a friends choice of note taking app recently boiled down to the availability of (A) text background colors in (B) sufficient amounts and color variety with (C) good enough black-on-text-bg-color-contrast.)

As with every moderately sized app, there is bound to be a number of things that Pitch has its own spin on. Different enough for you to matter? Maybe not. Different enough for someone else to matter? Probably yes.

Re: Pitch: Collaborative presentation software for teams

#70

Post by CReber »

dchuk wrote: post #11

So I REALLY don’t mean this to be cynical, but: other than this clearly being a beautiful product, and I guess the simple fact that it’s just not a Google product, what exactly does this bring to the table that Google slides doesn’t already do? I say this as a guy who spends a lot of time in Google slides, both on my own presentations as well as collaborating on group ones, and it works pretty much perfectly. If I we…

Hi there, founder of Pitch here.

That’s a perfectly valid question, and I don’t think you’ll be the last to ask it. Throughout our beta, we learned that people creating presentations for work end up using more than one tool to get the result they want. Slides for collaboration, Keynote for design, PowerPoint for charts, etc. Sure, Google Slides can be good enough — but it’s rare that people tell us it’s great.

We want to be great.

We’re obviously still early in our journey, but there are a few areas where we already provide a lot of value compared to the status quo:

* Pitch promotes speed and consistency. Honestly, you should be able to build a deck 10x faster than before. Part of this is due to our template gallery — we already have 40 beautiful, business-ready templates and are shipping more each month. We also have presentation styles, which effectively serve as CSS for slides. That means you can set up your brand style and reskin our templates to look like yours.

* There’s no learning curve. Anyone can get up to speed quite quickly without having to wrestle with a complicated ribbon or series of menus. We’ve worked to make our editor intuitive enough for non-designers, but powerful enough for pros.

* Pitch connects to other popular services. Today we support Unsplash, Giphy, Loom, Google Analytics, and more. And next year we want to start opening up Pitch to other developers so that you can bring live data directly into Pitch.

It's still early days for Pitch. Our broader vision is much bigger than what you see on our site (more emphasis on video, AI-driven design, and data — I go into it a bit more here: https://www.protocol.com/pitch-app-slide-decks.) PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides have decades on us, so we don’t expect to surpass them overnight.

I hope you’ll still take the time to give Pitch a try and let us know your thoughts — and hopefully in a few months what sets us apart will be even clearer.

It sounds like you might have some idea of what a killer feature for presentation software might be. I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can find my email address in my profile.

Thanks, Christian

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