

NReduce online demo day: live and public - DanielKehoe
http://www.nreduce.com/d

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adrianhoward
(Disclaimer - I recently became an nReduce mentor, but wasn't involved with
mentoring any of the companies in the batch that were in the demo day.
Watching the demo day has basically been my first interaction with the
organisation since filling in my profile form and replying to a few emails.)

On the format:

* Despite all the niggles below - this was an interesting event and experiment. I'm looking forward to what they do in the future.

* A surprising number of companies didn't have a demo or a live site with anything more than a sign up form. The nReduce folk have since tweeted that they were going to have demo videos but ran out of time, they'll be around next month.

* I didn't like the format very much. You could jump between companies live rather than seeing them in sequence, but didn't get the context for what had happened already so I imagine there were lots of repeat questions... and you missed the context when you came into the conversation late. I'd be interested whether they later release the feeds so folk can see the stuff they missed. A linear presentation would be better IMHO.

* Technical problems with the live feed in a couple of times. Also seemed to be some technical problems with some companies seeing questions from audience.

* Bugs in question voting/promotion system seemed to cause some questions to be skipped (ironically the ones that people had voted up as interesting :-)

* Question ordering based on network-reach of asker/promoters seemed over-complex.

On the presentations:

* Lack of demos kinda sucked.

* Felt like a lot of the people needed more coaching on how to pitch and how to answer questions. Lots of N minute answers that should have been 30s answers. Lots of fuzzy answers that should have been crystal clear.

On the companies (basically copy and pasted from my post-demoday #bluntreview
tweets :-)

* .@ApptivGames Intrigued to see if this attracts folk who don't have intrinsic motivation for exercise - like me [pitch = using exercise tracking to get virtual points for games online - <http://www.apptivgames.com/> ]

* Edocr - Problem and solution not clear to me. You have customers so something there - needs clarity [pitch = something to do with documents and social media <http://www.edocr.com/>]

* Rentini - You have a working product! Result :) Don't find the USP terribly convincing though [pitch = holiday home finding via activities <http://www.rentini.com/>]

* .@getsuavely - You sound _really_ creepy. Possibly coz I'm old and think you meet people in bars goshdarnit :-) [pitch = dating via social peer recommendation <http://www.suave.ly/> \- whole "wingman" and "validated single" language was real turn off for me... but I'm an old geezer who hasn't been single for 17 odd years now]

* Cloudable.me - The product pitch made sense. Sounds like something I might use. Want demo, not sign up form. [pitch = collect what your social media folk tweet/like and organise that shit for you <http://cloudable.me> \- unfortunately while I was there the founders don't appear to have been able to see their questions]

* .@Meldium - Clear pitch, pain point & solution. Last two companies I worked at would pay for your product. Win! [pitch == centralised management/admin of saas users/services for your organisation. I have experienced this pain in spades. I would buy this at any company with more than six people in it.]

* .@dwelleeinc - Like idea, but pitch lacks clarity. Want a demo not a sign up form. [pitch == crowd sourced finding of apartments... but still not sure _how_ exactly it works dwellee.com]

I didn't have time to go ask the last company, Recollect, any annoying
questions :-)

~~~
seatown_life
Colin here for Suave.ly. Thanks for the questions and feedback - we'll take it
into consideration (with a grain of salt since as you say, as a married man
for 17 some years, you're not in the market).

We've found most people find it natural since meeting through friends &
acquaintances is the top way to meet offline. We are targeting people in their
20s, though.

Cheers!

~~~
adrianhoward
(Just to be clear - you guys didn't come across as creepy in person in the
live feed - the "company" did).

I'm not married - but you're right I'm almost certainly not the right market
:-)

However - I chucked a link to your site at a couple of friends who are in
their late teens (F), early twenties (M), and early thirties (F) who I know
don't read my twitter stream. I obvious didn't prime them with my opinion :-)

The responses were "Kinda douchy" (teen F), "Is it a dogging site?" (20s M)
and "Looks like something for blokes who want sex" (30's F).

None of them went past your home page.

It's a small sample I know - but it may mean that you're not sending the
message that you want to send via your copy and images.

~~~
seatown_life
Haha, definitely enjoyed the comments from your friends. We'll run through
some more A/B testing with copy + images after this feedback, so thank you!

Our conversion rate is decent right now, but it can always get better :)

~~~
adrianhoward
Hey - _please_ listen to reality rather than me if you're converting well :-)

You might have two diverse market segments too I guess..

------
michaelbuckbee
NReduce has been really interesting and done a good job of trying for
something different than YCombinator. In many ways it's much more of a
complement to traditional startup incubators than a competitor.

Of the startups that I partnered with since June, about 15% have gone on to
geographically located accelerators, a few have been acquired/hired for their
product, a few have launched and not really gone anywhere and about half never
got as far as launching a product.

Personally, I've gotten a huge amount of constructive feedback and a good
handful of solid beta testers for my project.

~~~
StavrosK
I joined in the hopes of getting feedback, but so far the site has just been
broken. I can't figure out how to interact with startups, what each video is,
uploading is broken, and the founders haven't been very responsive.

I hope things will get fixed, but the experience hasn't been great so far.

~~~
joemellin
Hey, I am one of the founders and yes the peer product right now is pretty
broken. Our bad on that.

Because we have a demo day / investors / mentors we had to build V1 of all the
products first - so that we could get companies to demo day.

As of tomorrow we are starting over on the peer collaboration product /
onboarding to make it awesome.

We basically had the first cohort of users go through our system. Now we can
get past MVP's on the different products.

That being said I would really appreciate your continued feedback!

And thanks for giving it a shot in the first place!

~~~
StavrosK
Hey Joe, no problem. I didn't know you had a demo day, I just joined a few
days ago. I sent you another email a few hours ago, if you could reply after
the demo day so I can figure out why I can't add any startups, I'd appreciate
it.

Thanks for your help!

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makmanalp
Off topic: If any nreduce people are reading this: I've signed up on your site
but my registration got stuck after the phase where you submit a youtube
introduction. I've e-mailed Joe Mellin, who'd emailed us about finishing
registration, to no avail. Any assistance would be appreciated. Cheers! :)

edit: Thanks a ton, guys!

~~~
adthrelfall
They've been building the product as they go, in fact they are a team on
nReduce themselves. Give them a prod tomorrow after the demo day, they're
normally quite responsive.

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DanielKehoe
Interesting. Founders of 8 companies doing online Q&A simultaneously. Viewers
ask questions which get tweeted out with a #nReduceDemoDay hashtag.

You can see all the activity by using your Twitter client to search for
#nReduceDemoDay:

<https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=nReduceDemoDay>

~~~
DanielKehoe
I don't like the simultaneous Q&A. I wanted to watch all the teams. It's an 8
ring circus. Of course, I don't like going to conferences that offer multiple
tracks, either.

~~~
vadimoss
@DanielKehoe I think nReduce just needs to figure out how investors can switch
quickly between startup windows and get into the right moment of conversation.
If there are 8 startups in a bundle, does investor really want to talk/listen
to all of them? An ability to skip startups that are not relevant because of
their market niche or their stage is actually a great advantage and will help
to focus on those that might be more relevant. I think parallel mode is more
productive and active. In linear mode some folks may get bored. nReduce needs
to play with timing and notification features that will make it rock. E.g.
investor submits questions to 3 startups out of 8 and gets notified when
startup reached the question in a queue - this will save time and efforts and
make the process more interactive

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Kilimanjaro
Hey guys, I like what you're doing. Here is some unsolicited advice: create a
startup news magazine like HN.

That's it. Will read it from day one.

HN vs NR.

Endless fights, endless clicks, endless promotion for your startups.

We all win at the end.

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ngrichyj4
The only drawback is, there isn't alot of buzz going for it in the media. When
it picks up, things will significantly pick up, time will tell.

~~~
joemellin
Yeah we have been focusing on providing value for our users. Will be making
more of a public presence in the fall.

I like building sleepers :)

