16 Tips for Founders @ Demo Day
Tweet Founders: How to present at demo day. 16 tips from Angel Investor @thomask
YCombinator Demo Day is always an exciting event: Paul Graham gives an update of YC companies, a new crop of startups present interesting products and I get to see plenty of familiar faces.
For you, the founders, on the other hand, it can be a watershed moment. It’s often the first time you present your product to a wide audience. There is press (TC, VB), probably well over $100 million of investment grade capital and more than 70 pairs of eyes on you. If things go well, you can walk away with a big check and a daunting task at hand: “Go make your product a business”.
I have been to a bunch of YC demo-days and thought it might be useful for YC founders to provide a few pointers on how to handle it. Although these pointers are specific to demo-day, they can also apply to any event you present at.
For everyone else reading: YC demo-day is a 3 hour event where founders present their company in a speedy 4 minutes format without any followup questions. Because so many people are interested in attending, the event is repeated three times. Once on Tuesday, and twice on Wednesday. After the presentations, there is an informal mixer where investors get to meet and talk to founders.
If you are a founder presenting, you should consider three distinct phases at demo-day:
- Your presentation and product demo
- The mixer
- The followup
1. Your presentation and product demo:
- Make it intriguing enough that investors want to talk to you afterwards.
- Focus on your product, team, traction – not the market, funding needs and future plans (do that at the mixer).
- Relax, take a deep breath and rehearse your presentation one last time before taking the stage.
- Memorize by heart both your opening and your closing. You never have twice the chance to make a first impression and a smooth start will ease your tension. As to the conclusion, obviously it should be strong enough to make potential investors want to talk to you at the mixer.
- Have someone operate the computer while you demo – few people can talk, type, and think at the same time.
- Look at the audience, not at the big screen behind you – I promise, anything you see on your screen IS on the big screen.
So, you got this far – looks like you enjoy my post. Click here to
2. The mixer:
- Eat before the event, the nibbles are in the way of talking and shaking hands.
- Approach investors, don’t wait for them to find you.
- Talk to as many investors as possible (spend less than 5 minutes with anyone, it is investor speed dating after all).
- Divide a conquer. don’t hang with your cofounders. if an investor is interested in meeting all of you, setup a follow-up meeting.
- Keep track of the exchanges. Take quick notes on back of people’s business card or in a dedicated notebook.
3. The followup:
- Followup by e-mail the same evening, no matter how tired you are.
- Make a specific reference to the conversation you had, it helps remember you.
- Attach your followup deck. it should be an expanded version of your presentation and self explanatory (in case it is forwarded to someone else).
- Pitch your company and your team, but don’t forget to ask about the investor’s background and why he is interested in your company – you are looking for value added investors, not just money.
- Don’t be intimidated. Even the best known investors respect you for starting a company.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 3:35 am and is filed under Entrepreneur Advice, Featured Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Good advice.
I would add one piece of advice to the “presentation and product demo” category: don’t show off too much of your application. Live demos are slow and boring. If you are going to show one a demo, make sure to show the one single best feature your product has to offer.
Some of the best presentations I saw did not show the live site at all – they only showed screenshots.
Just my 2¢
@rich
Agreed! In 4 minutes, it is hard to present AND demo a product. I would stick to screenshots of the product too.
Thomas,
I read several good blogs but yours is very informative as well as you seems to be a very fine person.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for the advise. I’m in Switzerland and will surely use the tips listed above since we are now searching for capital to launch.
Rod
Thomas,
So @rich made a great point. Would you say that screenshots only is a good guideline for any presentation under what 5 minutes or so?
Im not demoing at YC demo day (so maybe a conversation for a different post) but thought they were solid points for any demo.
@Josh Vickers
Yes, screenshots are a good idea, especially if you only have 4 minutes to demo the team, the company and the product.
Real demos are much better (and more forgiving) in a smaller setting.