A Note For Demo Day

I sent this email to a group of founders who were preparing for a Demo Day and in re-reading it realized it was largely applicable to all founders struggling to get their demo day pitch right. I hope it's useful!

Hi everyone!

I’m so thrilled to have been included earlier today and wanted to thank each of you for your incredible work. As I mentioned on the call, this work is undoubtedly extremely personal to each of you and it shows. A lot of us get involved in the entrepreneurial world because being an entrepreneur is the closest most of us will ever find to discovering a form of market-accepted self actualization. And, what I’ve found is that the work in Disability Tech can feel even more higher stakes because of our direct experience living the reality of the problems we’re addressing. In more simple terms, our personal connections compound how raw it all feels. That gravity is not lost on any of us.

As I was reflecting on our session this morning, I wanted to share a few generalized points of feedback that I thought might be helpful to the cohort. Take them or leave them as you see fit!?

• Demo Days are notoriously hard to get right because the tendency is to try and bring someone up to speed as quickly as possible. <— This is a massive trap. Your job is NOT to do this. Your only job is to tell a story. A story has a narrative arc. It starts with a hook, it tells you exactly where it wants you to land as a listener and then it sets up the listener accordingly. If you go back through your pitches, you’ll find that each of you could do more to nail down the story. Start with the really basic framework of “what we’ve done —> what we’re doing —> where we’re going” if you’re having trouble thinking through a narrative design.?

• Your demo day deck is also not a pitch deck. This may be controversial advice, but a pitch deck is primarily used either to get investor meetings (which means that it happens without a talk track and often sent as a pdf/email attachment) or occasionally in investor meetings to provide a visual to enhance a point you’re making. Thus, your demo day deck needs to enhance the visual side of your story. Here’s a simple way to think about it: people cannot listen to what you are saying and also read your deck at the same time and understand both. This means that your deck should really be quite basic on the words and instead flow clearly in tandem with your story and its narrative beats. I know that most accelerators will have you “check the boxes” around things like market size, team, problem, etc….but there are clever ways to weave these into your story without coming off like you’re checking them.?

• If someone says they don’t understand something, it’s probably because it isn’t coming off as clear. It might be super duper clear to you, but if your point isn’t landing then you need to think of a different way of saying it. In 3 minutes someone is not going to learn your language to understand your pitch. Keep it really, really basic.?

• On the point of basic, to make it easier on themselves a lot of investors are trying to take your story and put it through their framework for understanding. There’s a really important model called “the investor memo” which is how a potential investor communicates what oyu are building to people who underwrite them. Here’s the high level version of mine if it’s helpful:

- Inputs x Manipulation = Outputs

- Inputs: What are the data inputs someone is using? How do they get them? Do others have access to them? Why those inputs?

- Manipulation: How does someone manipulate the data? What’s proprietary about that manipulation? What is the core assumption that the manipulation utilizes?

- Outputs: What are the outputs? Who is using them? How can we charge for them? What is unique about them and how do people seek out similar outputs?

- I’ll give a very basic example of how this works using Tinder:

- Inputs: 1) Users enter profile information and 2) Users “swipe” to express interest on other matches

- Manipulation: 1) A proprietary algorithm that uses data to create better opportunities for a match

- Outputs: 1) Mutual matches between users

- I think it’s really, really important that when you think about how to simplify your explanation of what you’ve built, you try to run it through this framework. It’ll help you suss out what’s extra and what isn’t.

• Lastly, you get a TON of feedback as a founder. It’s either the best part or worst part of being a founder….or at least it depends on the day what you think :) Your only job is to find the parts of that feedback that are relevant to you and more often than not it’s to find the mean of the totality of the feedback. No one single person knows your business like you and therefore no one single person will ever be entirely right. But feedback is data and you can be a great founder by synthesizing the data you get and turning that into work for yourself.

It was a joy to be a part of today and I look forward to seeing all to come for each of you! It would be a treat for me if you kept me apprised, and, at the very least, know that you’ve got at least one person out there who is ready for you to win.?

Take care,

Sam