GuestThis guest post comes to us from Patrick Woods. Woods is a director at a>m ventures, the venture capital arm of archer>malmo a regional leader in advertising, pr and marketing. Disclosure: nibletz.com is one of a>m ventures portfolio companies.
I’ve been to five six demo days already this year in my travels for a>m ventures, and many more over the past 18 months. The following points are my observations on the good, bad, and nasty of startup accelerator demo days.
No one of these points will sink your demo day ship, but taken together, when done right, these elements will help to give your teams better odds of getting to that next step on and following the big day.
The idea is to reduce the variables involved in your event in order for you to craft a meaningful experience.
Caveats
- These are my observations, not gospel.
- If you’re YC or TechStars, these points apply less to you; these are for everyone else.
- Yes, there are a lot of seemingly minute details here, but that’s the point.
- We can all agree there’s no substitute for great companies, and none of these observations are meant as such a substitute.
- Connect investors to companies
- Connect investors to investors
- Strengthen your ecosystem’s network of founders, angels, VCs, services providers, and those on the periphery
- Generate buzz at various levels by raising the visibility of early-stage activity in your region
- There are plenty more; the point is that you should be aware of what the goals are, then align every facet of demo day to achieve each goal.
Your accelerator is a marathon, demo day is not
- 3 hours is pushing the upper limit of peoples’ attention span.
- Limit team intros to something really short, like, 60 seconds or less.
- Sorry sponsors, no one cares about you. At least not anyone in the audience.
Relatedly, more pitches, less bravado, fewer speeches
- Yes, we all get it: your city is a great place for starting up. Being a mentor is an amazing experience, and you always need more. Okay. Now let’s get on with it.
- Remember that running an accelerator isn’t an end to celebrate, but that it’s a means to an end that will produce celebration-worthy events.
- Everyone’s got an accelerator these days, so let’s reduce the back-patting and celebrate the big wins.
- That said, brief updates from alumni can be a great point of pride.
- Also, no student “idea” pitches, please. Or anything else irrelevant to investors.
Pitch quality matters
- Stage presence, pitch structure, and pitch content are all really important.
- The companies shouldn’t be delivering bullet-point fact transfers, but rather telling a relatable, investable story.
- Slides should be used as visual aids, not as core components of the presentation.
- Long before demo day, require your teams to write a script for their pitch. They don’t necessarily have to recount it verbatim onstage, but the process of formalizing their thoughts will prove invaluable.
- Coach your teams and enlist mentors who know how to pitch, like successful founders, folks who have been onstage before, and advertising people, many of whom pitch for a living.
- Strongly consider bringing in a speaking coach a couple of times: first at an early point and later, closer to demo day to track improvements.
Continue reading at Patrick’s Tumbler here
Linkage:
Here’s some of our own demo day coverage
