
YC W20 Online-Only Demo Day - mrkurt
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w20-online-demo-day/
======
tlb
I find it hard to concentrate on videos of people talking. I have no problem
sitting in long lectures or conferences, but I get fidgety and distracted
trying to watch conference videos on my laptop.

I'm used to thinking of video watching as being a low value activity that
should not be optimized for, but there's an increasing amount of
professionally necessary video watching.

Maybe I should build a dedicated video room, like a home theater but for work,
with minimum visual distractions.

Do people have advice on how to focus on videos?

~~~
vz8
1.5x or faster speedups, turn on CC for the unintelligible speech. I really
appreciate it when there's a transcript available in addition to the
captioning.

Taking notes / creating Anki cards helps with focus.

~~~
gibolt
I do at least 2x. For slow talkers, there are Chrome extensions that let you
easily bump that number as high as you want on YouTube.

~~~
Jugurtha
In case some are wondering, "Video Speed Controller" extension can speed and
slow down videos by pressing "d" or "s", respectively as much as you want with
steps of 0.1x, instead of the non useful Youtube click and select a speed with
a quantum of 0.5 and a max of 2.

If a talk is 40 minutes and there are no slides available and the author goes
through the slides in the video, I'll play the video at 10x or more just to
check out the slides and see if the talk addresses the points I'm interested
in. 40 minutes at 10x or faster is around 4 minutes. It helps me decide and
avoids me wasting 40 minutes on the wrong talk.

~~~
manigandham
Video Speed Controller:
[https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed](https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed)

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arciini
This kinda sucks, but as someone who was in China for Chinese New Year (when
all large gatherings were banned), I understand the reasoning.

That being said, I think we at Wanderlog (W19) would've needed much longer to
raise if not for a chance in person meeting at Demo Day.

We were encouraged to cold-pitch investors in person in the halls during
breaks at Demo Day. For one of those pitches, I found an awesome investor
who'd heard of us through a friend. While he'd thought there was a gap in
travel planning tools before, this chance encounter gave me the chance to sell
the company a lot more than we got from the super-brief Demo Day presentation.
We had a handshake deal 3 days after that.

We wrote more about the lead-up to experience in our blog at
[https://wanderlog.com](https://wanderlog.com) and my conclusion is: it's
harder to forge that quick trust and connection anywhere other than in person.

That being said, I do realize we were very lucky. This change could be good
for some companies and worse for others, as it rewards solid businesses more
than charismatic pitchers. I'm looking forward to seeing the Demo Day pitches
for this batch!

~~~
phsource
I am curious if there are other YC founders in the crowd -- did you find the
in-person part of Demo Day very helpful, or did more happen online
before/after?

~~~
Brushfire
We found it very useful.

------
DamnYuppie
I understand the precaution but do feel bad for the W20 founders. The energy
and buzz of demo day is really great. I am curious to see if this lack of
dynamic face to face time after their demos will impact the fund raising of
this batch.

~~~
cactus2093
That seems impossible to measure, it'll be confounded by the current slowdown
in the markets which seems likely to make fundraising harder regardless of
whether meetings are in-person or not.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If funding is similar or up compared to previous Demo Days, could one not
assume some measure of success? And only if funding was lower, the conclusion
would be murky (whether "remoteness" or COVID-19 was the cause)?

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lisper
This is a welcome development, not so much because of the loss of the face
time, but because of this:

> We will also provide additional written background information on each
> company and access to their decks.

I can do triage on decks a lot faster than I can on pitches. When there are
100 companies to go through, being able to quickly eliminate companies that I
know I'm not interested in is a huge win.

~~~
cududa
Pitches and in person conversations give me an inordinate amount of better
insight and context that come with a deck.

~~~
lisper
See my response in the sibling thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22506913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22506913)

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kenneth
I've attended every demo day in the past 5 years. It's of course a much better
experience in person — but this was the right call. Large events should not
happen especially during the high-exponential-growth phase of this pandemic.

A great example from history: compare Philly to other cities (e.g. St. Louis)
during the Spanish flu outbreak — they held a major event in that phase and
that single-handedly turned it into the worst hit city of the epidemic with
almost 1% of the entire city population perishing as a result.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/health/17flu.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/health/17flu.html)

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adrianscott
I highly recommend YC use 60 frames per second (fps) for these videos for a
better 'real' feel

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catchmeifyoucan
Can the general public tune in too?? That would be really cool!

If founders had an ability to tick a box that said make public. Not sure if
it’s a thing with regular Demo Days. Would love to tune in.

~~~
hariananth
No founder would be willing to pitch to the general public. Companies are
providing very private information (economics, stats, etc) that should not be
made public.

~~~
yeldarb
I and several other founders are doing this on the Pioneer livestream next
week. It's earlier stage than most YC companies but not afraid of a little
transparency [https://pioneer.app/livestream](https://pioneer.app/livestream)

In fact, there are whole communities built around publicly sharing your
companies' financial metrics. Eg
[https://www.indiehackers.com/products](https://www.indiehackers.com/products)

------
Keverw
Sounds interesting. I think live audience and energy could be feedback but I
could see how this could be a pro for shy people. I think starting out I’d be
more comfortable to talk to a camera. But I’d be worried about the video and
audio quality. Bad audio is a huge killer!

Maybe you could talk in front of the camera in front of a green sheet with
your team and then screen record to sync up with it since not in a big room
with a projector or maybe simpler if don’t have the equipment or space is just
do like game streamers do and screen share with your face overlaid your
desktop or switch back and forth. Sounds like doing a startup got to wear
multiple hats including some video production.

For example there’s some YouTube vloggers who can talk to the camera like it’s
natural but if they have to do any public speaking it feels different. I
remember some channel I follow travel related was asked to speak at a meet up
and then another YouTuber won a award and flew to New York to accept it. So
you can talk to millions though the camera, but talking to a room with a few
hundred or thousands is a bigger deal for some reason. Maybe because online
more control and editing though... if you get sick or pronounce something
wrong you could just edit it out and jump cut between

~~~
snowmaker
We're going to do professional recordings ourselves; founders won't have to
worry about video production.

~~~
Keverw
Nice! I kinda figured each startup would have to produce their own, kinda like
how some talent shows have you produce your own video to audition. So sounds
like they won't have to worry about that all.

I've always had an interest in video production but never had the chance to
really express that. I think one thing I'd recommend is when demoing maybe
create a fresh separate user account, so less distracting when demoing with
other programs or a clutter desktop. Also probably makes it look more
professional too. I've figured if I ever made something with video tutorials,
that'd be a little improvement maybe.

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carlosdp
Interesting... I wonder how the synchronous -> asynchronous switch could
impact the amount of attention given to presentations for non-flashy
companies. In the in-person model, investors sit through the whole
presentation. In this one, they could turn them off and switch to another
half-way through, whereas maybe if they had watched it all they would have
seen some otherwise compelling information. (in theory)

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bpodgursky
The ability to record (and edit?) the pitch before sending it to investors
seems like a great way of leveling the field between natural public speakers
and terrible ones.

Obviously public speaking is a great skill to have, but having so much money
and time hinge on a 10 minute speech you can simply flub (through nervousness,
poor sleep, etc) can't possibly be the most efficient way of allocating
startup capital.

~~~
DantesKite
I think you’re onto something. It takes time to get used to public speaking
and even when you’re moderately good at it, there’s always some initial
anxiety and nervousness.

If the point of demo day is to explain your idea in an efficient and
understandable way, it seems like video would be the way to go.

I think there’s a lot of benefits to meeting in-person, some of which are
hidden and you can’t anticipate. A lot of deals have probably been done due to
serendipity and chance in the hallways so I wouldn’t want to discount them
entirely.

But I like this. It feels like at the very least, there’s an opportunity to
experiment with something new.

------
the_arun
Why Demo Day presentation & videos are not available for public? Why it should
be shared only with investors? Is it because of IP protection?

~~~
hariananth
Companies are sharing very private information - disclosing economics, stats,
etc - to which only prospective investors would/should have access.

------
k__
I like the boost that remote events got from this disaster.

~~~
TACIXAT
Yea, I make computer security videos and I've been thinking about getting
other streamers and YouTubers to make a virtual conference.

~~~
ryanmercer
You could do it. I'm a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) and there is a group called
"Leading Saints" [https://leadingsaints.org/](https://leadingsaints.org/) that
does 'Virtual Summits' since there are many (more) members of the Church
outside of the 'Mormon corridor' (Utah, Idaho, Arizona ish areas) than there
are in it.

You could reach out to Kurt Francom and ask him what mistakes they've made
with their virtual summits to try and avoid and then apply a more tech-
knowledgeable approach for a security virtual conference.

------
muth0
Is the demo day website going to be available for investors/ media alone? I
wish YC made the presentations of all the startups available online for
everyone. I’m sure it would be super-useful for connecting jobseekers with
interesting startups, decision makers at enterprises interested in connecting
with founders, developers to discover interesting tools, etc. I understand
that certain startups upload their pitches online. I just wish there was a
better way for interested parties (other than investors and the media) to look
at all the pitches in one place.

~~~
ryanmercer
Even if they sat on the for 6-12 months before releasing them, it would still
be a wonderful resource for other startups and just of general interest to
people like myself.

------
AndrewKemendo
I'd be really interested to see the deal statistics compared to other years if
YC would be so kind to share them.

Could be a game changer if a remote pitch event can be as productive (or close
to) as one in person.

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throwaway13000
Can the general public view these videos some point in the future?

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tosh
When you consider the amount of pitches this might actually be an improvement
rather than a regression if done well.

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Liron
The companies' exponential growth curves just won't feel as impressive this
year

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yumraj
If so, why not stream the demos live to public, i.e. everyone, like Alchemist
does?

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mkchoi212
Wow. Good for YC for making this decision. I'm sure this was a very tough
decision. Also, would have been cool if they stream the presentations but oh
well :p

~~~
hariananth
What are you talking about? They're going to be streamed...

~~~
mkchoi212
I meant streamed live :p Seems like they will be pre-recorded and released.

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Meekro
I haven't seen any discussion here of the actual virus risks in these large
gatherings, so I thought I'd bring up the question. I admit I haven't read too
much about this particular virus, but my belief is that the average demo day
attendee is much more likely to die in a car accident on their way to the
event, than from a virus caught at the event itself.

I'm personally doing plenty of traveling this month, taking advantage of
discounted flights and hotels while lots of people rebook.

Am I mistaken? What do you guys think?

~~~
avip
A single person can do whatever and no one gives a F.

As to the health authorities - they are acting responsibly.

It is in the best of interest to delay, manage and contain the virus spread,
even though it's probably impossible to stop, because no country is in such
surplus of medical resources to be able to admit hundreds of thousands of
patients with severe respiratory issues. And the collapse of some local
medical systems will incur mass hysteria which will make managing the crisis
really difficult. So distributing the infections is really, really important,
and will save many lives.

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z3t4
If this goes well I think it will get easier for YC to scale.

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andrewstuart
It refers to "our demo day website" \- what address is that?

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jasan_s
Will the online demo day be accessible to public.

