Pitch Deck Intervention
Pitch Deck Intervention: Master Slide Creation for Founders
This is NOT a typical presentation clinic—it's a full-on pitch deck interventional workshop designed for entrepreneurs and founders ready to dramatically improve their presentation visuals.
Go beyond basic design and dive into a potent fusion of technical skills, visual design principles, and strategic business communication. You'll gain insights and skills to improve your mastery of slide creation and editing aspect of pitch decks, ensuring your message lands with maximum impact (note: this session focuses purely on the slides, not the verbal delivery).
Content is King, but Visuals are the Crown. Learn basic to advanced techniques and tricks to visually convey key information and insights quickly and effectively. Stop confusing investors and start commanding attention.
What You'll Achieve (The 3-Slide Transformation)
Participants will actively work on and refine three mission-critical slides from their own deck, receiving crucial feedback before and after applying the workshop techniques:
1. The Title Slide: Make your first impression count and set the right tone immediately.
2. The Vision/Solution Slide: Clearly and concisely present your company's core solution, vision, and key goals—the core message investors need.
3. Your Critical Slide of Choice: Focus on a slide you know is vital but needs a breakthrough, or one you feel is most challenging to message effectively.
Time permitting, you may work on more, but you will present these three slides to the group for targeted feedback and assessment of your new skills. (Please ensure you do NOT share any confidential information).
We aren't just giving advice—we're transforming your slides. You will walk away with immediately improved versions of your:
Title Slide (The Critical Opener)
Vision/Solution Slide (The Core Value Proposition)
A Content Slide of Your Choice (Targeting a specific challenge)
Join us to learn advanced tricks to convey information quickly and effectively, ensuring your audience grasps your start-up's potential at a glance.
💻 Participant Requirements
Bring an editing-capable device: All participants must bring a laptop or tablet that can be used to actively edit the selected slides during the workshop.
Pre-submission of Slides: To ensure preparation, please send the slides you plan to work on to Bob 2 days prior to the session date.
🤝 Workshop Expectations
Embrace Feedback: Participants are expected to be open to receiving feedback on their slide designs and willing to respectfully offer constructive feedback to their peers.
Share Your Process: Be prepared to discuss and articulate why you made specific changes to your slides. We also encourage you to share your insights on how these visual and structural adjustments might impact the effectiveness of your future pitches.
🎤 About the Instructor: Dr. Garces, Robert (Bob), PhD, MBA, is an innovation leader. He finds immense reward in developing strategies and problem-solving with founders and entrepreneurs who are creating novel solutions with highly promising, transformational impact. His commitment to advancing innovation and enabling entrepreneurship to improve our world is also evident in his enjoyment of mentoring individuals and teams through accelerator programs, which keeps him at the forefront of the latest research and technological developments. Currently, he is a Principal at æspire, a Strategic Advisor for AmacaThera (since March 2025), guiding their strategy, IP, market opportunities, and partnerships, with a focus on pandemic preparedness, and he's an active Member of Boston Harbor Angels, Inc. (since November 2021), contributing to their investment screening. His recent experience includes being Incubation Lead, Innovation at MITRE (September 2022 – January 2025), where he advanced strategic VC partnerships, particularly in global health security, and spearheaded digital health initiatives. Before that, as Head, Strategic Innovation U.S. at EMD Serono, Inc. (November 2020 – September 2022), he established and oversaw numerous strategic partnerships with academics and biotechs, accelerating critical health projects. His earlier career at Van Andel Institute (2013-2020) saw him manage their Office of Technology Development, overseeing IP and licensing, including negotiating multi-million-dollar agreements. His background also includes impactful roles in technology transfer at Harvard University and foundational experience as a Structural and Molecular Biologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Throughout his career, he's consistently delivered tangible results, such as directing a program that screened small molecules for broad antiviral activity, championing a licensing agreement for novel respiratory disease compounds with potential milestone payments of $10M-$100M, and designing over 12 consumer products that generated more than $12M in sales.