Demo days are oftentimes the first chances startup gets
at getting in front of investors.
For most startup accelerators this is your graduation event,
and a lot of work goes into preparing your slides
and your pitches.
In this video we're gonna dig into what investors are really looking for,
how to stand out from the crowd,
and the lessons learned
when preparing a Demo Day Pitch Deck.
A Demo Day Pitch Deck is not too different from,
let's call it a regular pitch deck
It's a 10 to 15 slide introduction to your company
that should paint a good picture of what you do
and why you're gonna get rich doing it.
The core difference is regular pitch decks get sent over email.
This time you're getting on stage
and it's your responsibility
to carry the audience through the deck.
To sell your company vision.
This is in order,
the slides that a Pitch Deck should have.
A cover, a problem, a solution a product demo,
a market size, a business model, competition,
underlying magic, you "go to market" slide,
a team slide, a traction or milestone slide,
and a fundraising information slide.
And this is how you should rearrange
those slides for a Demo Day Pitch
You have your cover,
your traction or milestone slides come second.
Then your problem, solution, product demo.
Business model, market size, competition
Underlying magic.
Go to market and finally your team slide.
Your fundraising information slide
is often missing from Demo Day Pitch Decks
because of certain regulations,
it's not always okay to share your fundraising information
and how much you're raising publicly.
Both of these templates are available on Slidebean,
so feel free to download them on the links below.
First let's talk about the opener.
Demo days are long events.
After the fifth pitch anyone will get bored
and start blurring the memories between one company and the other.
Also investors are very busy people,
they can easily divert to the laptops or Twitter
if they aren't interested in what you're saying.
When you get on stage you have
five seconds to catch an investor's attention.
If you succeed
you've earned an extra thirty seconds
of their attention span.
And finally, if you nail those 30 seconds,
chances are they'll want to pay attention
through the end of your Pitch Deck.
Using those first five seconds to say:
"Good morning my name is what
and I'm the CEO of what"
is a terrible waste of time.
they aren't remembering your name
or your company name,
and it's quite obvious
that you are one of the co-founders.
what you should do is use these five seconds
to catch their attention in some other way.
My favourite approach is starting with a question.
A question that speaks about your problem statement.
How many presentations have you seen
that look something like this?
We all have to endure stuff like this and
30 million PowerPoint presentations
are delivered every single day.
When we pitched in 500 Startups
I started with how much time do you waste
creating slide presentations?
We crafted this question
after weeks of trial and error
but it meets all the requirements.
When you get asked a question
you inevitably answer it in your head.
So this is a way to catch their attention.
We're talking about a struggle that we know for a fact
that every one of them has.
so it's not a condescending question,
it hints about our product,
the problem we're trying to solve,
and the dimensions of the problem.
And finally, it creates empathy.
It relates them to the problem we're solving.
Again my name is on the slide.
The company name and logo is on the slide.
So the point here is:
:et's get right to business.
Chances are by the end of the presentation
they'll remember that pitch, that company,
not Caya from Slidebean, and that's fine,
they know what you do.
Now the traction slide
Notice how it's been moved to the second place.
If you've nailed your opener,
you've now earned an extra 30 seconds of attention.
The absolute best way to stand out
is bragging about what you've accomplished.
A lot of accelerators focus too much
on the pitch itself,
and your focus at all times
should be on growth.
Use this opportunity to show a
hockey stick chart of your revenue.
If you have it,
then this is the killer slide right here.
Investors in the Bay Area for example
want to see 30% month or month growth
for seed stage companies.
20% should still be rather good.
If you're below this
then your sole focus should be getting to 30%,
not watching me talk about demo day pitches.
Still, if you must pitch and you don't have revenue
then brag about your user growth
which should also have a hockey stick chart.
The point here is,
this will give you credibility
the reaction you need here is curiosity
about what the hell this startup is doing
to be growing so fast.
This is the kind of thing that grabs someone's attention
for the three minutes you have left to pitch.
Now speaking of credibility,
we've recently launched a free platform
called FounderHub.
It's a resource that we developed
to help founders solve
all the non sexy startup tasks,
such as incorporating or human resources
or payroll.
We built everything into a
single manageable interface.
It's been built out with recommendations
of all the services that successful startups
need to have to scale quickly.
Now your Pitch Deck
turns into a more traditional deck.
We have a full video
explaining how to solve
each one of these slides,
so check that on the link below.
The difference here
is that you'll want to keep this short
because you need to deliver it
in three minutes or less.
So, some basic tips for your slides.
The slides are a guide for you to keep
the story straight.
There's no need to transcribe
what you're gonna say.
You could very well do with an image
and the large number,
rather than a whole paragraph on the slide.
Remember!
people can either read or listen
but they can rarely do both at the same time.
whatever you write on the slide,
it pulls attention away from what you're saying.
Use big bold fonts and bold colors.
Your branding should be visible
on every single slide,
and people are quite good at remembering color palettes.
Practice a lot.
Practice with a chronometer
and make sure that you nail your time limit
on every single attempt.
Also, don't memorize your script.
I've seen people write a script and
spit it out on stage,
and trust me people can tell.
If you're the CEO,
you need to be able to deliver this stuff effortlessly,
or at least,
pretend like it's effortless for you.
Also if you practice long enough,
you'll eventually memorize this story anyway.
Now there's another important point
that we must discuss regarding Demo Days,
and that's the fact that no company
gets funded on demo day.
And let me say that again,
Companies don't get checks on Demo Day
I interviewed Andrew Ackerman a few months ago.
He's one of the managing
partners of the Dreaming accelerator.
and I do believe that if you're not one of the top 10
or top 5 even even accelerators,
demo date doesn't usually deliver.
I may have talked about this,
is like this virtuous cycle.
The best founders go to the best accelerators,
because that's where the most active investors are.
The most active investors only count the best accelerators as a signal,
because that's where they know the best startups are."
So, are Demo Days useless?
My answer here is,
they're less useful than what you'd expect.
With all the hype and the prep
you'd expect that you'd get a lot more out of it,
but by 2019 Demo Days have become more
of a press stunt, and a graduation deadline
sort of event for accelerators,
rather than a place to get funding.
First, you can bet anything
that a high-end VC will not be sitting in the audience,
they'll send their interns to collect notes
and business cards and brief them
on the exciting company.
Second, many companies coming to them in it with
some progress on their investor relationships.
If a company is truly ready to raise funding,
It has probably been getting intros
and doing meetings for weeks
or even months leading up to Demo Day.
Demo Day itself could be useful
to meet a couple more investors
or to close the last few thousand dollars
of an already committed round.
One valuable point is that startup press
is often present on Demo Days,
so this is an excellent opportunity
to shine to them, meet some reporters,
and get some exposure.
If you do get interested investors
coming to your booth
or asking for your business card,
by all means take those meetings,
but know beforehand,
that they will be the first of many
and then you'll need to reach out
to a lot, a lot more investors
if you want to close that round.
We have another video
on the reality of startup fundraising these days,
so go and check that out, again,
on the links below.
Hit that subscribe button
and we'll see you next week!