
How To Demo Your Startup - jmorin007
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startup/
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shaunxcode
"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."

What a ridiculous statement. I don't want to get into the "power of positive
thought" or something but seriously does anyone actually limit themselves like
that? "I'll just plug away and hope to develop something mediocre that takes
off.."??? If you aren't shooting to make THE coolest thing you can imagine why
bother? And if you are why limit your imagination to be up to but not greater
than some other persons imagination? Other than paying the bills etc. etc. but
you get my point (but at that stage get a corporate job or make porn sites,
seriously).

Also I disagree with the point that demoing google would have been as simple
as "enter text press enter - wow results." Surely they would have had to demo
WHY their results were more correct/ranked etc. to differentiate themselves
from yahoo, lycos and who ever else was floating around in the search engine
wars.

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mhartl
_Also I disagree with the point that demoing google would have been as simple
as "enter text press enter - wow results."_

Exactly. Everyone's a retroactive genius on this one. But what would a cynical
elevator pitch look like for Google in 1998? How about "We've built yet
another search engine, in a market that has never shown even the potential for
profit. Now give us some money."

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skmurphy
Peter Cohan also offers a good overview in this webinar
[http://www.glance.net/custom/Webinars/PeterCohan_20080711/We...](http://www.glance.net/custom/Webinars/PeterCohan_20080711/Webinar.html)
that's appropriate for enterprise / office 2.0 applications. He has a number
of good articles on preparing for and managing the demo/sales process on his
website at <http://www.secondderivative.com/>

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timae
Anyone else here apply for TC50? We did, although our 10 minutes was with
Heather Harde, not Jason.

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billroberts
Yeah, we demo'd to Jason. Haven't heard yet about round 2, though I suspect
the long silence means bad news. Based on his article, at least we got most of
the basics right, though I think we failed on the crucial one, of getting
across why our product is really interesting.

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DanielBMarkham
I'm scoring this at about 55% good material, which gets an upvote.

The problem, in my opinion, is that some of this advice is simply broiler
plate, motherhood, and apple pie goodness.

Yes. Google can demo their product with one screen and a text box. Got the
next Google? Then don't worry so much about your demo. Writing the next Space
Shuttle flight system? I'd like to see more than a screen with flight numbers
on it. (Probably take a lot longer than 5 minutes too). Sure -- write
succinctly. Have a great opening screen from your software that draws the
viewer in.

Don't show trivial bits? Hey, that's great advice. Care to tell me what's a
trivial bit? I've been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into this puppy:
everything is important. Once again, the general point of reduce your depth of
presentation to important points for the listener is all goodness. But you'd
better know the 2 or 3 little things that's going to put a twinkle in the eye
of your viewer. Guess what? It's different every time.

I liked the article overall, though.

One of the best questions was in the comments. Is it okay to use pre=canned
video to show your app? Suppose for pacing purposes you want to record your
demo and then put it inside an annotated powerpoint. Anything wrong with that?
I know I've tried that during training sessions on a couple of occasions and
it actually went very well -- freed me up from doodling with the keyboard and
let me focus more on my audience.

