How to demo your start-up or product
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We talked in the last post about raising money and how it's like dating. Well just like when you go on a date you want to make sure you shower, brush your teeth, and wear clean clothing, so too there are things you should know about preparing yourself before you present to a potential investor. Actually you should do the things above as well, but also you should make sure you have a proper presentation or demo ready to show. Now there are a lot of "rules" about what works and what investors want to see and a lot really depends on who you are presenting to and what level you are in your start-up.
In this excellent TechCrunch post which is largely about an email Jason Calacanis sent out, is a must read. As with most TechCrunch posts you can learn even more by reading the comments.
Below are the first 3 of 10 of the suggestions Jason makes, but make sure you click this link to read the whole post!
1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds
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Most folks start their presentations with information like the size of
the market they are tackling (tens of billions, we only need 1%!),
their inflated corporate bios, the philosophical approach they’re
taking, and boring Powerpoint graphics explaining some convoluted workflow of their product.
The longer it takes for you to show your product, the worse your
product is. Folks who have a kick-ass product don’t spend five or ten
minutes “setting the stage” or “giving the background.” Folks with
killer products CAN’T WAIT to show you their product. Their demos start
with their homepage and quickly jump into the users experience. If a
picture tells a thousand stories, then a product demo tells a million.
Show your product immediately, and if you don’t have a product to show don’t take the meeting.
2. The best products take less than five minutes to demo
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The greatest tech products over the past 10 years would take no more than five minutes each to demo. For example:
a) Larry and Sergey could demo Google search in less than five
minutes. Here’s a box, type something in and you get a huge reward.
b) Steve Jobs could demo the iPod in less than five minutes. Plug it
in, put in your CDs and it syncs your music. Turn it on and use the
wheel to select what songs you want to listen to.
c) Chris DeWolfe could demo MySpace in less than five minutes. Sign
up, fill out your profile, and add your friends. For bonus points add
some widgets to your page.
I think you get the idea: the better the product the LESS time it
takes to demo. If your product demo takes more than five minutes to
demo, it probably sucks. All the tiny little features that matter to
you are of course important–God is in the details–however, when
presenting your company, you don’t have to show them. Larry and Sergey
wouldn’t open up the advanced search tab and the list of operators you
can use in Google during a demo.
Steve Jobs does take the demo details to a fairly detailed level,
but you and I are not Steve Jobs. There is only one Steve Jobs and
there is only one Apple. You’re never going to build something as cool
as Steve, and as such there is no need for you to talk about your
product for five or ten minutes.
3. Leave people wanting more.
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If you take my advice in point two, then folks should be either blown
away or intrigued by your core product. If they are not somewhere in
that spectrum, you need to rebuild your core product.
When I pitched Mahalo to investors, I had five sheets of paper with
different search results on each. I put them on a table and said which
one is the best. Obviously I knew my result was the best, and that
simple demonstration lead to MASSIVE discussion: how was the page
built? how long did it take to build? what would it cost to make that
page? how often do you need to update it? how can you scale that
business? how many pages can you create before it breaks even?
It’s best for folks to discover the merits of your product for
themselves, and it’s up to you to make such a compelling core product
that they are intrigued enough to explore it.
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