Most, if not all of the entrepreneurs we coach will develop a “pitch”.  Your pitch is the presentation you use to present to the press, a conference, prospective employees, and most importantly potential investors. 

Potential investors are notoriously hard to engage.  One technique that can be quite effective is to include a demo of your product/service as part of the presentation.  While this tactic has the potential to greatly improve the effectiveness of your pitch, nothing is worse than a bad demo.

In this article, NEOinc will present 18 tips for effectively using a demo as part of your pitch.  The tips come directly from Jason Calacanis, a widely respected authority on technology entrepreneurship, and a successful entrepreneur in his own right.  The 18 tips were originally presented in two separate articles distributed through Jason’s E-Mail newsletter and republished on the TechCrunch blog.

Do not discount the power of these tips.  They come from a person who has spent hundreds of hours listening to pitches from the “best of the best” technology entrepreneurs from throughout the country.  This is required reading for all technology entrepreneurs.  While we are presenting the essence of the tips in this post, you are highly encouraged to read (bookmark, and refer to often) the full two articles for many pearls of wisdom on how best to demo (and present) your technology startup to potential investors:

How to demo your startup (first 10 tips)

How to demo your startup part 2 (second 8 tips)

Jason’s writing style is extremely pragmatic and down to earth.  For each tip presented, we’ll include Jason’s best quip. 

Basic Tips

1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds – “The longer it takes for you to show your product, the worse your product is.”
2. The best products take less than five minutes to demo – “If your product demo takes more than five minutes to demo, it probably sucks.”
3. Leave people wanting more -  “If you take my advice in point two, then folks should be either blown away or intrigued by your core product. If they are not somewhere in that spectrum, you need to rebuild your core product.”
4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do. – “Who cares what you’re going to bolt on to your startup? What really matters is the core functionality of your startup.”
5. Understand your competitive landscape, current and historical – “If you don’t know the competitive landscape, and the shoulder’s you’re standing on, folks are not going to be comfortable giving you their money, time or attention.”
6. Short answers are best – “The point is all that inner thinking is chaos when you try to explain it to another person. It’s pure madness after 60 seconds of talking. The best thing to do is answer the question with the most concise answer.”
7. PowerPoint bullet slides are death – “Do not make slide after slide explaining your business in bullet points, because it’s really, really boring. Powerpoint/Keynote slides that are not boring include charts, product shots, feature set tables and the like.”
8.  How to use this new device called the phone – “I know it sounds crazy to have a discussion about how to use the phone, but the majority of these young people actually think it’s acceptable to have two or three drop offs in a call–it’s not. Grow up and get a land line.”
9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to – “The worst thing to do when you don’t have an answer is b.s. the person. No one has an answer for everything, except a b.s. artists.”
10. Always confirm the time of your meeting/call, and always be 15 minutes early – “Also, be early. Come on. If you’re doing a meeting with someone who might invest in your company, do a business deal with you, etc., you can show a lot of respect by being in their lobby or on hold on the conference call five to 15 minutes ahead of time.”

Advanced Tips

1. Show Don’t Tell – “It’s like kissing a cute girl and saying “I’m going to kiss you,” “I’m kissing you” and “I just kissed you.”  Just kiss the girl, and if you did a good job, you’ll know by looking in her eyes.”
2. Use inclusive words, live in the present – “Active words engage your audience. Inclusive words draw them in. Your job is to engage the audience.”
3. One driver, one navigator – “It’s best for the audience to connect with ONE person and to get into a groove with that one person’s voice. Imagine if David Letterman stopped his monologue half way through and had another comedian take over. Get it?”
4. How to handle technical issues – “If the machine crashes, take a deep breath and fix the problem while your driver falls into anecdote mode.”
5. The Setup – “The first 30 seconds of your presentation is critical.”
6. Horrible ways to start your presentation – three horrible ways to avoid starting your presentation with
7. Describe your product five times – “Folks are going to come up with moniker for your service if you don’t, so I suggest challenging yourself to come up with a 10-word description of your product, then a six-word description and finally a three- or four-word description.”
8. Change up your style (i.e. shift your tone) – “There are many tones you can use in your talk, and it’s best to change them up.”

As Jason says wrapping up his second list, if you’ve read all the way through this article “you’re one of the more intelligent people, and probably very good looking as well.”  We would also guess you’re already working with NEOinc and will be highly successful in your venture.

Best of luck in your demos!