

How to build a great demo - drusenko
http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/04/how-to-build-a-great-demo.html

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mchang16
Another suggestion - make sure that the person giving the demo knows the
product inside and out. There's nothing that sabotages a demo like a question
about the demo that can't be answered because the demonstrator doesn't know
the intricacies of the product. This typically happens when the president/CEO
is doing the demo, but wasn't on the team that built the product. At the very
least, make sure that a product expert is in the room during the demo to
answer any questions that might come up.

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Monti
"It has to be short. It should take 5 minutes or less in person. An online
video should be no more than one and a half minutes long."

That is so true, i have attended some demos that went over 20 minutes, at the
end I felt like punching the demo-er in the face.. some people literally
walked out of the place.

Remember, if you are not Steve jobs do not talk more than 5 minutes.

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edawerd
thanks for the tips! I think it will really help this weekend, I especially
like the "It has to look really really cool" tip. I really think that having
really fancy looking demo is key to getting people excited about your product,
even though that's not how it will be when you finally launch.

Question to those who have interviewed for YC before: Is it structured so that
we can present from beginning to end, or should we expect to be fired with
questions and possibly get a little sidetracked before finishing?

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garbowza
You will definitely get interrupted and sidetracked, so don't expect to get
through your entire demo.

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drusenko
hopefully this arrives in time to help some people out this weekend :)

my #1 piece of advice to anybody that asked me about interviews: have a demo!
even if it's something that you whipped up in 2 days, let them know that, but
have a demo!

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mlinsey
Generally this is true, but keep in mind that a non-technical audience will
often have strong negative reaction to a demo based on what seem to hackers as
the silliest, most trivial things: a rough-around-the-edges design, links that
don't work yet, minor UI glitches, etc. Bear in mind that this audience can't
distinguish between your application and your application's UI, so the most
important part of the linked article is probably "It has to look really,
really cool."

Of course, it sounds like you're giving advice on one event specifically, so
the above may not apply. What's happening this weekend, anyway?

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jrockway
> ... links that don't work yet ...

Personally, I've found that clients react fine to broken links when there's
something at the other end like a message that says "this doesn't work yet."
But this is in the case where they're trying out their software halfway
through on their own... not a demo up on stage or them trying out the complete
project.

The basic idea to take away is that non-technical types don't like to be
surprised. If they know something isn't going to work, and they click on it
and it says "this isn't quite ready yet", everyone will be OK with that :)

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rantfoil
Thanks for this list. Very cool of you to get it out in time for interviews.

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edw519
This is great advice.

I especially like "Adapt your demo for the audience" and "Use real data".

Your audience doesn't have time to think - Just inject something into their
reptialian brains immediately. Anything they already know works faster.

