Pitch Zoo is focused on helping entrepreneurs pitch their business — i.e. talk succinctly about the important parts of their business.  This is done by providing this web site as a hub for pitch resources. Various resource have been developed by the Pitch Zoo team, however most resources have ben developed by others and curated / compiled by the Pitch Zoo team in order for you to easily access and call upon them.

The goal of Pitch Zoo has always been to help entrepreneurs better explain their business idea to their chosen target audience.   The initial avenue for achieving this goal is to provide entrepreneurs a fun environment to practice their pitch and to get feedback from other individuals in the local startup community ON THEIR PITCH [ see the history below about that era of Pitch Zoo ].  This meant feedback is focused on how the individual talked (loud, soft, clearly, etc.) and did the pitch have the main components to help the targeted audience understand the business idea and possibly get excited about the idea.  Pitch Zoo has moved away from the meetups, and is now about being a hub for pitch resources via this website.

With the Pitch Zoo web site, you can:

• Access the Tips / Templates / Guidelines for pitching
• See Examples of pitches
• Read the Musings related to pitching

—–

How did Pitch Zoo Start: The History

Pitch Zoo was started by John Mueller in 2013, with the first event being held in March 2013 — 53 innings were pitched in Kalamazoo during those first two years.  At the time, Mueller was a professor at Western Michigan University (WMU) where he taught entrepreneurship.  He was actively interested in the Kalamazoo and wanted to be supportive of the local startup community.  After observing the activities in the local startup community he felt that one of the areas that local entrepreneurs needed to work on was how to talk succinctly about the important parts of their business — i.e. pitching their business idea to others.  Thus, Pitch Zoo was born.

Pitch Zoo started as a monthly gathering of the Kalamazoo startup community where individuals fast pitch their new business idea (3 minutes) to the local Kalamazoo crowd in a fun environment, and receive constructive feedback on their pitch.

In practicing their pitch and obtaining feedback from others in the local startup community, entrepreneurs worked on better succinctly talk about their business idea while learning to talk about the main value proposition of their business idea and to better understand the opportunity potential (i.e. to get the important aspects of the business idea across to the targeted audience).

Pitch Zoo events were initially held the first Monday of every month from 6:30-7:30pm in the Maestro’s offices (401 E. Michigan, Suite 202) — a Kalamazoo-based tech company [ Thank you Maestro ].

Mark Omwansa joined the Pitch Zoo team in 2016. While a student at Western Michigan University working on his masters degree in mechanical engineering, he participated in Pitch Zoo. He was among the first to ‘pitch an inning’. Mark’s primary focus was on making Pitch Zoo an organization that could have multiple chapters / meetups.

The meetups are no longer happening. Since 2019, Pitch Zoo is now only a web site where pitch resources are compiled and made available to the general public.