

How To Pitch A Product - cwan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/how-to-pitch-a-product.html

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johndbritton
It's really funny because when I started working on the demo I had a full
slide deck. Each time I practiced I eliminated a slide or two until there was
nothing left. At that point I decided to just show the site and start coding.

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patio11
You'd be astonished how magical "I can make your phone ring" feels to people.
Family, friends, and people who don't even know me _giggle_ when I do my demo
on them.

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Alex3917
It's even better if it's a business pitch rather than a technology demo. The
world's best sales pitch is always being able to say, "If I push this button
then your phone is going to ring 150 times in the next 3 minutes with people
who want to buy your product, want to see?"

That's how you get to charge 150K per client per year, and that's why
DailyCandy and the like are worth so much.

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johndbritton
Dear Hacker News,

I'm sorry you missed the Twilio demo at NYTM. I decided to create a number for
you to call in to so you don't feel left out.

+1 516 619 8182

Go ahead, give it a try. It'll be fun, and I promise not to share your data.

Cheers, John Britton - @johndbritton Developer Evangelist Twilio -
<http://www.twilio.com>

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RiderOfGiraffes
After all the editor religious wars, it's really nice to see the editor he
used.

nano.

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mahmud
He used nano and PHP, and I think that was a strong tactical choice. It shows
how you don't need anything sophisticated to use Twilio. If he pulled out
NetBeans with J2EE, or Visual Studio or Emacs with Rails, people will be
suspicious there might be some "magic" happening behind the scenes.

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johndbritton
I'm glad you're not making fun of me, I actually do use nano on a daily
basis... but I usually run it using `pico`. ;)

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mahmud
_Q: Why do I need this?_

 _A: You can't live without it._

Most gangsta Q&A answer, ever.

~~~
johndbritton
I'm dead serious, you're going to get left in the dust if you don't use it.

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danielharan
well, it really depends on what kind of product you're building. answering
with customer stories would have been stronger.

kick-ass presentation nonetheless.

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johndbritton
You're right, but I was on stage and that's what came to mind. Next time I'll
be ready. ;)

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jasonkester
Nice that he was able to overload an entire cell tower during the demo.

This is actually pretty similar to our demo at NYC Tech a few years back:
Showed the product, let everybody jump in live, brought down the venue's wifi.
Fun times:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbITx2d8Otc>

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generalk
_It sure helps to write code live if you are pitching to developers. John got
a big nod from the audience for doing that._

In my experience, writing the code live is asking for trouble. It seemed to
work for this particular audience though.

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meldymel
HOLY COW. That was the fastest programming I've ever seen. Haha - loved it
when the room full of nerds corrected John on the one typo he made with the
semicolon. Hilarious! Good demo, yo!

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1l2p
What an amazing demo. Love the way the audience got involved in the coding
("semi colon!!!") and the interaction between you and everyone in the room.
Steve Jobs is in trouble.

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niico
Even though I'm not a coder I was astonished by how he made his presentation.

I wonder now if a regular non-hacker VC would appreciate as much as we all
geeks do :P #keepthatinmind

Awesome!

~~~
brlewis
The product was an API, Application Programming Interface. To demo it
properly, you have to do some application programming. Your question applies
to any product that the VC wouldn't use her/himself..

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bice
One of the best (and quickest!) "business" demos I've ever seen.

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jeffiel
He sure did them a solid :) Nice work John!

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keyle
Totally unrelated, but I'm wondering how much Fred paid for AVC.com...

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perplexes
I did a Sean Connery voice on the conference line. +1 516 619 8182

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known
Meet, phone, email and snail mail potential buyer in that order.

