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Most founders don't have a pitch problem. They have a structure problem. The Pitch Canvas gives you a proven 11-section framework to organize your thinking before you ever open a slide deck. Fill in each section, save your progress, and export when you're ready. No signup required.
The Pitch Canvas is not a slide deck. It is a thinking tool. Each block represents one core idea in your pitch. The process has four steps:
Write one idea per sticky note (physical or digital). Generate as many ideas as you can for each block. Do not filter yet. Volume matters more than quality at this stage.
Choose the strongest idea for each block. Filter based on three variables:
Arrange the blocks into a sequence that tells a story. The canvas suggests a default order, but the sequence is flexible. Adapt it to your audience and context. The only rule: pain comes before product.
Say it out loud. Refine the language. Cut anything that does not earn its place. A pitch is a performance, not a document. Practice until it sounds natural, not memorized.
Your opening line. One sentence that tells the audience exactly what your company does in plain language. If someone heard only this sentence, they should understand your business.
"Futureproof gives startup founders a clear picture of their finances so they can make better decisions and raise money with confidence."
The problem your customers face, stated in terms they would use themselves. This is the emotional and practical reality of life without your product. Optionally, pair it with the gain: what life looks like after the problem is solved.
This is the most important block in the canvas. David Beckett's core principle: pain before product. Always. If the audience does not feel the problem, they will not care about the solution.
Pain: "Most startup founders have no idea how much cash they actually have, how fast they are burning it, or when they will run out. They are making million-dollar decisions based on spreadsheets that were outdated last Tuesday."
Gain: "Imagine opening one dashboard and seeing exactly where your money is going, how long your runway is, and what happens if you hire two more engineers next month."
A clear description of what you have built and how it solves the pain you just described. This is where you connect the problem to your solution. Keep it concrete and tangible.
"Futureproof is a financial command center for startups. It connects your bank accounts and accounting tools, automatically categorizes transactions, and gives you real-time dashboards for burn rate, runway, and cash flow. It also manages your cap table and models fundraising scenarios so you can walk into investor meetings with numbers you trust."
A visual or experiential moment that shows the product in action. In a live pitch, this is a demo or a short video. On a canvas, this is where you describe the key moment that makes the product click for the audience.
"Let me show you what happens when a founder connects their bank account for the first time. Within 60 seconds, Futureproof categorizes every transaction, calculates burn rate, and shows a runway forecast. The founder goes from 'I think we have about 8 months' to 'We have 7.2 months at current spend, or 5.1 months if we hire that engineer.'"
Your competitive advantage. The thing you do that others cannot easily replicate. This is not a feature comparison; it is the reason you win even when competitors try to copy you.
"Most accounting tools require founders to manually categorize every transaction. Futureproof uses AI that learns your specific business patterns and gets more accurate over time. And because we combine bookkeeping with forecasting and cap table management, founders get a unified financial picture that would normally require three separate tools and a fractional CFO."
Evidence that real people or companies are using, paying for, or demanding your product. Traction is the strongest proof that your business works. Numbers talk; everything else is a promise.
"We launched four months ago and have 38 paying companies on the platform. MRR is $12,400, growing 22% month-over-month. Our net revenue retention is 115%, meaning existing customers are expanding into additional modules. Three of our customers came from referrals, which tells us the product is generating word-of-mouth."
How you make money. This block explains the economic engine of your business: who pays, how much, how often, and why the model scales.
"Futureproof uses modular SaaS pricing. Every company starts with bookkeeping at $49 per month. They add forecasting, fundraising, or AI insights as they grow. Average revenue per account is $340 per month and expanding. Our gross margin is 82% because the product is software-delivered with AI automation reducing support costs."
What you are asking for, what you will do with it, and what milestones it will unlock. This is the commercial block of your pitch. Be specific and be strategic.
"We are raising $2M at a $10M post-money valuation. The capital will fund three things: engineering (60%) to build our ecommerce module and board reporting, go-to-market (25%) to scale from 38 to 200 paying customers, and operations (15%) for compliance and infrastructure. This gets us to $80K MRR and Series A readiness within 14 months."
The people behind the business and why they are the right ones to build it. Investors bet on teams as much as products. This block builds credibility and confidence.
"Our CEO spent 25 years in ecommerce and SaaS, including six startups. He has coached hundreds of founders on fundraising and saw firsthand how broken their financial tools were. Our CTO built payment infrastructure at scale in fintech. Our advisory board includes a former CFO of a $500M SaaS company and an early-stage investor with 40 exits. We are hiring a VP of Growth to lead our go-to-market."
The specific next step you want the audience to take. Every pitch needs a clear ask. Do not leave the audience wondering what you want.
"I would love 30 minutes to walk you through the product live and share our financial model. I will send you a calendar link today. If you know other founders who are struggling with this, I would appreciate an introduction."
The personal or emotional reason you are the one building this. This is the block that makes the pitch human. It is not about credentials (that is the Team block). It is about motivation, conviction, and the story behind the startup.
David Beckett calls this "starting with why." It can appear at the beginning or end of your pitch. Use it wherever it has the most impact.
"I have spent 25 years helping founders build companies. I have sat in hundreds of pitch meetings. And the pattern is always the same: smart founders with great products who cannot tell their financial story because their tools are garbage. The last founder I helped spent three weeks building a pro forma in a spreadsheet that was wrong by the time she finished it. That is when I decided to build Futureproof. Not because the world needs another fintech company, but because founders deserve to see their own numbers clearly. That is what I am here to do."
The Pitch Canvas is a thinking tool, not a script. Not every block needs to appear in every pitch. The order is flexible. The content should change based on your audience, your objective, and how much time you have.
The process matters as much as the output. Brainstorm widely. Select ruthlessly. Order intentionally. Practice relentlessly.
Your pitch is not your deck. Your pitch is the story you tell when someone asks what you are building and why it matters. The canvas helps you find that story. The rest is practice.
Need help turning your canvas into a pitch that lands? Futureproof helps founders see their financial future clearly so they can raise with precision and scale with confidence.
A pitch canvas is a one-page framework based on the Best3Minutes methodology by David Beckett. It organizes your startup pitch into 11 essential building blocks: Simple Statement, Pain (+Gain), Product, Product Demo, What's Unique, Customer Traction, Business Model, Investment, Team, Call to Action, and Why You. Each block represents one core idea in your pitch. The canvas helps you brainstorm, select, order, and practice your pitch before building a deck or walking into a room.
This tool is designed for startup founders preparing to pitch investors, apply to accelerators, or simply organize their business narrative. It works for SaaS, ecommerce, and other startup models at any stage from pre-seed through Series B.
Yes. Use the "Export as Text" button to download a plain text version of your canvas. Use the "Print / PDF" button to generate a clean, print-ready layout that you can save as a PDF from your browser's print dialog.
A pitch deck is a presentation. A pitch canvas is the thinking that comes before it. The canvas helps you clarify and organize your key messages so your deck tells a tighter, more compelling story. Most founders find that filling out the canvas first makes their deck significantly stronger.
That is completely normal, especially at the early stages. Fill in what you can and leave the rest for later. The canvas is designed to highlight gaps in your thinking so you can address them before you are in front of an investor.
Yes. The Pitch Canvas is completely free to use with no sign-up required. It is built by Futureproof to help founders pitch with clarity.
Futureproof is an AI-powered financial operating system that gives founders the numbers to back up their pitch. From real-time burn rate and runway tracking to revenue forecasting, cap table management, and investor-ready data rooms, Futureproof helps you answer the financial questions investors will ask after they hear your story.
Export your canvas and use it as the outline for your pitch deck. Each section maps to one or two slides. Then make sure your financial story is just as strong as your narrative. Futureproof can help you model revenue, track key metrics, and build a data room that gives investors confidence.
