TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

It’s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global’s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors — and customers. Both outfits look to back early-stage founders with money and advice in exchange for equity.

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 30, 2012

Given the proliferation of accelerators and incubators that pre-vet entrepreneurs, roll up their sleeves to help companies, and dress them up for demo days, the best and brightest are being showcased to look better than ever. It's happening on their side, too. Need an even more Seamless-like experience?

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 29, 2013

In my post I noted the bias in his accent comments and also called b t on his statements that Demo Days are great because “the bad companies look good” and that VCs should compete to “pay the highest price & offer the best terms.” Startup Advice' They know how much opportunity we afford them. Thank you, Om.

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Dream It

AUGUST 10, 2020

Luckily, he’s a pro when it comes to pitching investors and distills the advice so it’s easy to avoid. Instead of using superlatives, a strong competitor slide or use case demo is much more effective. Adam Dakin , Managing Director of Dreamit Healthtech, sees founders make the same common pitch mistakes over and over.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Demos – One of the things that most people are bad at and that are hard to standardize is the demo. I have written about how to do a demo before (even though this was in the context of a VC pitch much of it applies). A good demo tells a story. 80% of demos I see are features, functions & benefits.

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500

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Under no circumstances should any of the below content be construed as legal, tax or investment advice from 500 Startups or any of its affiliates. The outcome was that it was both – and when you’re at Demo Day, you’re going to be grateful to the part that’s ‘too challenging’. What Alluva is.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 7, 2023

Y Combinator’s Demo Day took place this week , and although the event itself was virtual-only, 86% of the founders in YC’s winter 2023 batch lived in SF while participating. Please note that these are for entertainment purposes only, as “we’re not offering investing advice or recommending anyone join or back a startup.”

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TechCrunch

APRIL 6, 2023

And now we’re getting our first look at them through Demo Day. The first day’s demos included a healthy dose of artificial intelligence and open source, which is different from years past that were dominated by new fintech companies. Check out our favorites from the second day of demos below and see for yourself. Is crypto back?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

Even though my wife thinks my true mental age is still around 13, sadly I am not in this youth demo. Startup Advice' And of course we also think about the fact that as many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial concepts gear towards a younger generation we also needed investment professionals who are in that demographic.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

The presenter comes out of the meeting proud at having gotten through all 30 slides (and maybe even a demo) with a bunch of smiling faces and nodding heads and no discussion. The advice I gave to my sales execs is the same advice I would give to you: smiling, nodding heads are normally not a great sign.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

Don’t even get me started on Demo Days. You could spent 20 days / year at Demo Days now. And why my advice to newer VCs would be not to feel bad if you’re missing out on what is perceived as a few hot deals. I guess if you’re in high-volume, low-differentiation mode perhaps this is efficient for you.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 26, 2012

One event organizer had even asked me if I wanted to give my talk before the company demos, enabling me to duck out before the crowds could rush me. It's tough to figure out what advice to give. Isn't that what I get paid to do? Take pitches? It's tough to show up to every event and still have a life.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

Give everybody pages of the deck they’re to cover or parts of the demo for which they are to talk. Can’t you just demo & talk? Demo could go here]. Equally likely you show your inability to listen to your team and your over dominance of conversations. This isn’t weakness – it’s leadership.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

They’re great at orchestrating your company to deliver product demos. Tags: Entrepreneur Advice Sales & Marketing Advice. They set up “ tickler &# lists to remind them of calls and they always make the calls they say they are going to make. They’re always on time. LOVING Balsamiq!

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2012

I refuse to go to demo days. Not just TechStars but any demo day, really. So I promised the guys that I would come and hang out with companies well before their demo days. I can’t really change it because we had a super long lease. But that expires soon and I hope to get back to the right side of the Haimish line.

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The Zapier Blog

JUNE 19, 2025

They typically highlight key features, benefits, or use cases, often with a quick demo or close-up visuals. In-product demo : Quick cuts through the user interface (UI) show exactly how the feature works, helping users visualize themselves using it. The goal is clarity: show the product, show the value, and make it easy to say yes.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

But if you identify investors with whom you’d like to work here’s my advice: 1. Imagine the “typical&# deal – somebody comes into a VC’s office, they’ve never met, they’re highly referred by a friend and they’re pitching a product demo and a PPT. That’s OK, too.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

I attended the Facebook Fund Demo day about a month ago in Palo Alto and it blew me away the pace of innovation and the focus on monetization that came out of this group. million even before the demo day to help you integrate your social network with dating ambitions. Seems an obvious fit.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 14, 2019

He demoed the product to me and I wound up being dollars #476 and #477 to be swiped on the very first Square prototype. For example, let’s say I had a more national fund. Because I had previously met Jack Dorsey through the Union Square Ventures network, in 2009 I was able to grab coffee with him before he launched Square. I was blown away.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2025

After analyzing hundreds of sales organizations across startups, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind. Create a consistent demo : Develop a compelling product demonstration that clearly shows value and addresses pain points.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Can we do a really quick run through your deck so that we save tons of time for a product demo & questions at the end?&#. A perfect meeting gets through the deck quickly, demos a product and still has tons of time for discussion. Then I verbalize this out loud with a filter, “This is great stuff.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

The idea is simple enough: several female VC partners at top funds will hold 1-hour meetings with 40 promising female entrepreneurs looking to get advice on their business and pitch in a friendly, non-judgmental, safe environment. I think these deals are less exciting than the ones you proactive seek out.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

When you do get a follow up meeting tell them about your new revenue model, ask to show your new demo, talk about the progress you’ve made and what has turned out differently then expected. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capital. Update them on your fund raising progress. Neither is the norm.

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NZ Entrepreneur

MARCH 16, 2025

We help co-lead the execution of Startup Aotearoa, a one-to-one program for first-time entrepreneurs to get coaching and advice from a startup advisor or mentor as they navigate the first time they’ve gone through the journey. So we’ve also eliminated these high-end production demo days, the big events.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

On any given day I could have been really pressed for time and asked to get straight to the presentation – you can never predict how the meeting will go so you must be prepared to show a deck, do a demo or just have a conversation. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice. This meeting was a 10/10 for me. is important.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

if you need advice on how to find / work with startup lawyers cheaply click that link). Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis Term Sheets. Raising variable sized rounds – This is a hard one. Most investors don’t want to hear teams say, “we might raise $250k.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 3, 2012

meet with tons of companies every week, work hard for their portfolio companies, and are on planes flying around to the important confereneces and demo days". I think Fred was trying to offer some friendly advice to young investors that you're going to "take lumps" and that it's worth learning from those who are more experienced.

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Y Combinator

JULY 20, 2021

In the last six months alone, we’ve rewritten our entire Demo Day experience (to connect founders with potential investors), re-created the batch experience with both in-house tools and 3rd party integrations, and written software to help founders connect with one another for advice, intros, deals, networking and so much more.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

No metrics = high level, more generalized advice. I got him talking about this on This Week in VC including a quick demo of his dashboard - I think I'll shoot a separate sequence with just a walk-through of their analytics. Already stated above but know what you’re shooting for in terms of load times, crashes, known bugs, etc.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

It wasn’t because I’m the target demo for that app – I am certainly not. So my advice for anybody building apps that are anonymous is to try and nail the balance of pseudonymity and authority or reputation management. And I accept that anonymity is inevitable on the Internet. I’m not crying in my beer.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

A small refuge from a busy day of shaking hands and demo’ing products. Tags: Startup Advice. They were fine traveling RyanAir and then having to bus an extra hour to get to the event but they wanted their own room to crash in late at night. These are always judgment calls but erring in either direction is a mistake.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

There are moments like being on stage when your demo crashes, reading about your competitors raising a ton of cash or having one of your top team members resign that test your will. Losing a deal that you had worked on for months after being told you won and then have snatched away from you will ruin some nights of sleep.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 8, 2022

Even to outsiders, the inner workings of startup accelerators has become familiar: pumped up on camaraderie and energy drinks, scrappy founders do product demos onstage before a room full of buzzy journalists and investors. In this instance, we failed to follow our own advice.”. Let’s start with a juicy topic: pro rata.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

The latter tend to be more technical and can do a better job at dealing with all of the technical objections that will come up in the sales process not to mention: Talking about integration, building customer-specific versions of your demo and addresses implementation requests.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

This is part of a series of advice for founders who need to raise money from venture capitalists. The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. I think there’s some truth in this.

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Y Combinator

JUNE 8, 2021

Work on everything from our Demo Day experience, internal financial systems and tools to help founders connect with one another for advice, intros, deals, networking and more. Product Engineer – Y Combinator : Join a small-but-mighty software team that builds the OS that runs all of YC.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2011

If you want to see how this works come check out our Nov 10th event in LA and you can see TextPlus demo their iOS5 integration and how they think about the importance of working hand-in-hand with Twitter for their free text messaging apps. Object Communications.

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