DEMO Submission Tips and Tricks
DEMO Submission Tips and Tricks
By Ed Hansen, Northwest Startup DEMO Chair & Co-founder
Hello everybody!
I've received numerous requests for feedback on why individual companies were not invited to the screening round. With this first round, my feedback is the same for all companies, so I thought I would take a moment to share this with you.
First, some high-level thoughts about Northwest Startup DEMO:
1) This event is an opportunity to showcase a product or service in front of the media, investors, and the general public. The ultimate goal is exposure.
2) This event is not a fundraising opportunity, in the sense that the presenter is not giving a pitch or soliciting funds.
3) We are trying to get 100 interested folks to give $25 in exchange for the right to sit in a room for two hours and see a handful of start-ups wow us with a demo of their products or services.
4) The DEMO team is an all-volunteer group.
Keeping this in mind, here is the voting process:
1) We typically receive between 50 and 100 submissions for 12 spots. Additionally each year, the quality of submitting companies as a whole tends to improve.
2) This is not a rolling admittance approach. We compile all of your submissions into one standardized form and send it to the DEMO team.
3) The team reviews the submissions over one weekend and votes for their top 12.
4) We tally the votes.
5) Whichever companies receive the most votes are invited to the screening round.
I am not in a position to give specifics on why any particular company does, or does not, receive votes. However, some things the judges commented on were:
1) Did the company actually provide the information requested in the advertising blast(s)? This piece is critical. If a judge couldn't tell what your company does, or how you intend to demo its offering, it is hard to get their vote. While executive summaries and such are the easiest to send, they don't explicitly answer the questions we ask.
2) Does the demo sound interesting? While eight minutes seems like a short amount of time to show off your product, it can really drag on if you are an audience member. We want to showcase product or service demos that are going to be engaging and interesting for our audience.
3) What range of industries were represented? This part you really have no control over. If we get three solar panel companies or biodiesel producers, we probably won't invite all three. Rather, we'd pick the one that seems most interesting. We do try to have a range of industries represented, but again, it fundamentally comes down to how interesting the demo appears to be.
I would give start-ups two broad pieces of advice with regard to their DEMO submissions:
1) Please provide exactly the information requested in the online form. Otherwise you risk letting someone else take over the editorial process for your firm.
2) Make your demo sound exciting.
Note that it is true that some products just tend to demo better. However, we've seen very exciting demos around boring products (buying health insurance or using a PDA stylus).
I hope you find this information useful. I have personally been running this DEMO event for four years now, and I like to see this event grow and improve. Hopefully, I will get the chance to meet many of you at our next event.
Edward Hansen
Chair & Co-founder, Northwest Startup DEMO
Follow his DEMO blog at http://www.mitwa.org/blogs/edward-hansen
