For a while there, it seemed presentations were stuck in the 90s. Developers have been making headway on an overhaul.

Last week, Pitch raised an $85 million Series B to “unify the fragmented workflow of presenting.” Pitch has quickly grown its offense against PowerPoint for the past two years, launching publically to the world last October and following with its presentation templates in March.

The Berlin-based company hasn’t been shy about the legacy elephants in the room, telling Reuters its software is “a PowerPoint killer.” CEO and co-founder Christian Reber is emboldened by his past experience with Microsoft, who purchased his product Wunderlist back in 2015, only to sunset it for Microsoft’s own competing service, To-Do.

Reber may have a bone to pick but the company’s vision for pitch decks is reaching beyond less lackluster meetings. Reber explains in a blog that the rest of 2021 is jam-packed with major improvements including advanced analytics and a full publishing and content ecosystem. Picture profile pages for creators to publish their storytelling and thoughts. Reber wrote:

“Our vision is to turn Pitch into a thriving destination for the world's best thinkers and makers to share revolutionary ideas.”

Pitch isn’t the only company looking to disrupt this space, which is ripe for change. After all, Powerpoint launched back in 1987. Even with Keynote and Slides (and Google’s latest announcements), Pitch shows there’s more in presentations we didn’t even know we were missing.

Canva launched its expansion into Presentations last month. Looping 9,000 presentation templates in with Canva’s other features — 100 million design assets, real-time collaboration — makes Canva Presentations a powerful tool.

Canva’s original audience is rich with users who either have little design skill or no time to waste. On the other end is Adobe. Adobe has honed in on designers with its new Presentations Adobe XD plugin. Maker Lance Shields explains:

“The inspiration to build this tool came from years of experience as designers ourselves spending countless hours building slide decks to explain design decisions. Finally, there is a presentation tool for designers!”

Each company’s approach shows how much room there is to grow in this space. Also, competition breeds better tech and it’s nice to finally have options.

Who’s getting ready for WWDC21 (Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference)? 🙋

Khoa Pham is too. The maker launched WWDC Together 2.0 — a place to watch and discuss WWDC, upgraded with a better chat experience and map.