What Makes A Great Demo

Presentation by AlecSaunders and HowardThaw of iotum

iotum's Experiences at DEMO

• Won the first ever Canadian DEMOGOD award
• First demo was MooBella, a linux-based PC that makes custom ice cream

The iotum DEMO demo

• Sometimes it feels like the whole world is vying for your attention
• How do you know what's important? How do you know what's not?
• iotum is helping to solve that problem
• Web2.0 Call Management Application
• Helps you select which calls are important and which ones aren't
• First Demo :Howard is a young business executive
• Takes a call from his wife
• Sets his status in IM to Busy
• Gets another call from his wife but it goes to voicemail
• Gets a call from Walt Mosberg to move the interview up so they reschedule it
• Howard sets himself to being out of the office
• All calls go to voicemail automatically
• A call comes in from some investor guy Warren Buffet, which goes straight to his cell because they have dinner at work that night and iotum detected that.
• Second Demo: iotum web ui

1. Set up your numbers
2. Set up your contacts (pulled in from Outlook)
3. Set up your actions

• Third Demo: Conference Call
• Create a new conference call request in Outlook
• Participants simply call Howard when the call starts and they are automatically routed to the call instead of needing a separate bridge number

Architecture of a great demo

Hook

• 0:00 to 0:20
• State the problem (sometimes it feels like the whole world wants your attention)
• Engage the audience (we can't help you with the co-worker who wants to sit in your office and chat)

Position

• 0:20 to 0:30
• My product is...

Prove

• 0:30 to 5:15
• Awesome!
• Awesome!
• Doesn't suck
• This has to be the main focus of the presentation - show the entire product in detail

Close

• 5:15 to 5:45
• Synchronized blast to phones throughout the audience
• Smart closing lines

Pitfalls

• Trying to be too funny
• Some company did a terrorist sketch that wasn't funny and no one remembers who they were - just the dreadful sketch
• It's not about you and it's not about your company - it's about the DEMO
• One DEMO that could have been great was about an in-car entertainment centre but they spent the first three minutes on market position and on showing connectors on the back of the box
• Timing is everything
• 5:45 is only a :15 second
• Listen to your advisors
• Speed to cool is key - how quick can you get to the cool stuff?
• Practice, Practice, Practice
• iotum practiced about four times a day for two weeks before to get it totally slick
• Don't sell it as a 'google killer'. Focus on solving existing pain and how you'll add value.

Thoughts about DEMO

• You give DEMO a full script in advance so they have all the cues
• An hour and a half to do a technical walk through
• Wear shirts with big logos on them so everyone can see them
• You start your "audition" for the DEMOGOD award the minute you arrive
• Judges are throughout the event, including technical crew, so be very careful the whole time you're there with everything you say
• It cost them $50k to do DEMO
• Well worth it to get the critical buzz between VCs, journalists, bloggers, and potential strategic partners
• Competing on an even playing field with all the other demos
• Not allowed to announce that you've been accepted at DEMO and not allowed to have shown the tech before
• CES has Show Stoppers
• Process:
• Application process starts in October
• Auditions until November
• Audition what the product will do and what the final thing people will see at DEMO
• Notice that they were accepted in December and pay cheque
• Things that would work outside of DEMO:

1. Don't do demos that have a bunch of slides in front - speed to cool
2. Focus on making sure the demo is really kick ass - Awesome! Awesome! Doesn't suck.

• No plans to offer the same relevance for email
• It's a different problem - about sorting email into the order that it needs to be responded to, rather than to what should interrupt you right now.

(Notes originally taken by JayGoldman: apologies for anything I missed and please add in your thoughts and additional notes!)

Other notes

RyanLowe: Iotum DEMO'06

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