March 21, 2017

190: How to Crush it on Demo Day

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how you can crush it on demo day. While Hiten thinks that demo day events need improvement, he also shares valuable tips on how you can make yourself stand out and land that next meeting with a potential investor. Steli also talks from the perspective of an investor during demo day and provides key tips that can help make your presentation memorable.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:05 – Today’s episode is about how to crush it on demo day

01:27 – Hiten has been to a half a dozen demo days, but prefers going to pitch prep

02:46 – Steli shares how the best investors they’ve met have spent time with the start-ups in preparation for the demo day

03:14 – The investors become the coaches who help create the pitch and they build those relationships with the start-up

04:15 – Steli has been to 10 or 20 demo days and says it’s tiresome and not a productive way to spend a day

05:10 – Steli has written a few blog posts about doing a demo day and he can share it with you through his email

05:50 – Hiten shares his website that can help you with your pitch decks

06:33 – You should understand the broader context of where your pitch lies

07:07 – It is not just you doing the presentation during the entire event

08:47 – This can have an impact on how successful your pitch is

09:09 – Dave McCourt’s advice to help you stand out

09:35 – This is just a pitch to help get you that next meeting with an investor

10:10 – Hiten thinks the demo day process need improvement

11:22 – “I’ve never seen a founder share too little”

11:51 – Editing is an important part to get the audience’s attention

12:30 – Incubators have tried to improve the process, including YC

13:12 – Steli did a demo day and it allowed him to have an instant market

14:12 – When you have a large audience, it’s not advantageous for you to try to target all of them

14:40 – Divide the group by the people who liked what you said and the people who did not respond as well

15:31 – You want the RIGHT investors

16:11 – The goals for demo day is to get the NEXT meeting

16:17 – The best pitches are those that timed themselves

16:45 – Find out one key thing that will make an impact and that will help people remember you

17:03 – That’s it for today

3 Key Points:

The goal for demo day is to help you get that NEXT meeting with an investor.

Know the schedule and where you stand during the whole event, so you can be prepared for your presentation.

Time yourself while you practice and stick to the allotted time!

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah, and on today's episode we're going to talk about something that I know Stelly deals with probably a little bit more than I so, if not a lot more than I do, just because of his evolvement around Y.C. and even five hundred, which I have evolvement in as well. Which is demo days and tips and art class on demo days. Stella, you want to kick it off, because I know you've been helping a bunch of people recently with that.

Steli Efti: Yeah, I'd love to. So this is all about how do you crush a demo day presentation, or your demo day pitch. I know that a lot of our listeners are not going an incubator, but I think that still a lot of the basic tips that we are going to share are going to apply to whenever they make presentations or pitches. I think this is going to be a good topic. But before I even jump into this, Heaton, how many demo days would you say you participated, not as somebody who presents it because I don't think any? Right, you haven't gone through an incubator yourself as a startup, more as an advisor and mentor and investor. But how many have you participated on demo day as potential investor advisor list...

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By Steli Efti & Hiten Shah: Serial Entrepreneurs, Sales & Marketing Experts, Startup Investors & Advisors, CEOs running multi million dollar SaaS Startups

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