The Berlin startup Pitch brings with its new presentation software a PowerPoint competitor. The most innovative feature of Pitch is the possibility to work on presentations together with several team members in real time via video conference in the software, the company explained. “Pitch is rethinking a software category that has not changed since 1990,” said company founder Christian Reber – he had 2015 the company he co-founded 6Wunderkinder can sell to Microsoft with the Wunderlist app for a three-digit million amount.

Pitch was founded 2018 and has since been funded by more than 50 million dollars. Donors include Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Zoom boss and founder Eric Yuan, and venture capitalists Index Ventures, Blue Yard, Thrive Capital and the Slack Fund. The basic functions are available free of charge – for a Pro version, Pitch requires 8 euros per month.

What is Pitch? The software can be used online in a web browser or installed as a desktop app. To get access, you log in with a Gmail address or register again. Then you set up a workspace and can add members. In order to work on the slides with several people, you have to go live in the presentation and activate public access. You can do this with the live button and the slider under the “Share” menu item. Then anyone with the link to the presentation can see, edit and video participate. The videos of the other participants are only visible as long as you are on the same slide. Otherwise, a colored circle in the slide overview marks where the other participants are currently.

Videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Loom can be integrated into the presentations – your own videos are only available in the Pro version. You can create diagrams yourself or import them from Google Analytics or Google Sheets. Background images, gips and icons are available from Unsplash, Giphy and Icon8. Own pictures are allowed up to 5MB. The standard font can be edited via “edit style”. As with Photoshop, you can add your own fonts and change the color, size and font.

Pitch’s privacy policy makes it clear that data is passed on to service providers outside the EU. This includes, for example, Google Analytics, which can use profiling methods if you log in with a Google Mail address. Profiling is an automatic processing of personal data to collect information about a person.

Conclusion The positive thing is that you don’t have to install Pitch – the program can be downloaded online