What Makes A Great Demo

by by AlecSaunders and HowardThaw

• Their experiences at DEMO
  • Won the first ever Canadian DEMOGOD award
• First demo was MooBella, a linux-based PC that makes custom ice cream
• Presents their 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
• 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

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