We've witnessed thousands of pitch presentations. Some of them awesome, some of them horrible, most of them mediocre. We've spend countless hours thinking about how to help entrepreneurs to improve their pitch decks, become better presenters, and eventually be more successful in raising money for their startups or projects. And we've found one important factor setting apart success and failure: the starting point.
The development of a great pitch presentation hardly ever starts with a slide template or entrepreneurs firing up their preferred presentation software. Instead, it's all about figuring out the key messages for your specific audience. It's about prioritization and reduction. Long before you think about slides and visuals. So we've created a tool for that: The Pitch Matrix Canvas.
The Pitch Matrix Canvas features the nine most important subjects of interest to investors: pain, gain, magic, business model, market, competition, roadmap, team, and ask. It adds a one sentence pitch and key takeaways to help you focus even more.
Using sticky notes you can easily discuss with your team, share key ideas early, and effortless iterate to improve your communication goals. We recommend using The Pitch Matrix Canvas as a poster (A0 or 48x36” are ideal) but it will also work as template in online tools like Mural or Miro.
Once you've completed The Pitch Matrix Canvas, you have everything you need to prepare for an awesome pitch presentation: The most important messages to deliver as well as a clear understanding of how visualization (i.e. slides) can help your objective.
We're about to record a small series of videos to show you how to get the best results from using The Pitch Matrix Canvas.
Until then, please read the article about the methodology of The Pitch Matrix to get an overview about the ideas behind the matrix and the meaning of its individual elements.
We're happy if you download The Pitch Matrix Canvas and print it (or have it printed) or use it digitally to
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End of 2018 we presented the Pitch Matrix Approach as a concept for awesome pitch presentations.
It's the philosophy behind The Pitch Matrix Canvas.
Preparing entrepreneurs to pitch their business in front of investors is one of our dearest tasks at Heidelberg Technology Parks’ startup support office. It's also an important part of our accelerator programs for life science and deep-tech startups.
First-time startup teams, as well as seasoned entrepreneurs, ask themselves which information to include in their pitch presentation. Many of them are looking for a checklist of must-have contents. Unfortunately, there is no one-list-fits-all approach. So a checklist of the ten most relevant elements for pitch presentations would most likely lead to sub-par results.
Having had the privilege to witness hundreds of pitch presentations, coach dozens of teams and discuss the matter with a diverse set of investors and several colleague presentation coaches or "pitch doctors," I have created a matrix which our team regularly uses in supporting entrepreneurs today. I'm happy to share this experience with you!
Heidelberg Startup Partners e.V.
Technologiepark Heidelberg GmbH