On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
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On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
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Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#2The point of those 2 minutes is not to explain the product. It's to get you to want to talk to the company presenting. Deals don't get closed based on the substance of a 2 minute presentation, but meetings can and do get scheduled based on one. The booth idea is not a bad one but it doesn't allow the companies to blast their message to everyone at once.
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#3Investors often asked YC companies themselves, "What company is hot?" instead of judging things on their own.
If you have booths with demos, having more investors gathered near one booth might end up as signaling to other investors that this is the "hot" one of the batch, which results in more gathering. And where the investors cluster could have been a random event, or the location of the booth was better, etc. I can imagine founders spending all their time being big and splashy with swag and posters.
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#4Disservice is a strong word for this, but yes I agree it's a little tough. Everyone can go use the products later though right?
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#5Part of the power of YC is that it's in some way collective bargaining.
There's a similar phenomenon at top law schools (I was a lawyer in a previous life). When law firms come to campus to interview students, the school's goal is to obscure which students are top students and which aren't. Why? To protect the middle and bottom of the class and facilitate everyone getting jobs based on the school's brand.
The YC Demo Day format and the removal of the fundraising slide can in part be explained by the desire to obscure which companies will be hot (unlike say, if there are booths), so that everyone can raise based the YC brand versus just the hottest companies.
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#6The authors main point: "But it really seems like a better format for this would have been to have people demo-ing in booths, keeping the focus on what they’ve been working so hard on: the product."
Sounds like a perfect solution. Why not?
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#7Interesting to see the startup industry running into some of the controversies of academia. :) This 1- or 2-minute pitch, where you essentially advertise your real pitch (poster or demo or longer talk) by using a "graph going up and to the right", along with 1-3 slides and a quick blurb, is a mainstay of academic conferences, and not liked by all. Sometimes called "1-minute madness".
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#8As someone who pitched on stage yesterday I have mixed feelings on this subject. I understand that seeing a graph up and to the right on every single slide, 74 times in a row, might get a little repetitive. That said, you're also getting pitched by 74 companies who actually have graphs that are up and to the right. You're being pitched by companies who have been focusing on nothing but acquiring users, talking to users, learning from users, and building in parallel. Many of us took money from those users. By making sure we realized graphs that go up and to the right would be a standard on which we were judged, we were all essentially "tricked" into doing something that SHOULD be obvious for any entrepreneur, which is doing nothing but talking to users, building a product users like, signing users up, and ultimately charging users (this isn't always something to focus on from day one depending on the product). Everyone else is going to have a graph that goes up and to the right? Shit, I better as well! What I'm trying to say is, being pitched by companies who are already doing this well in such a short amount of time should be a good thing.
While 2:15 is most definitely short, it also gets you thinking about the 2 - 3 things that you want potential investors to remember about you. How can we be most effective in the least amount of time? It's an amazing exercise and it's very helpful for pitching in the future.
After pitching, the investors who really love your vision or idea let you know they are interested, and you have plenty of time to tell them more, show them your product, etc.
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#9I think a big part of why Demo Day is run like this is because good products do not speak for themselves.
Investors are often not the target demographic of a particular product and given the range of products (wedding registry app, logistics/shipping software, developer tool for checking insurance claims, humor website, etc) most YC companies have chosen to show traction as a proxy for both demand for and quality of, their product as well as the execution ability of the team.
As others have pointed out, this is a great way to get an investor interested in learning more about the company.
Re: On YC Demo Day, and those graphs
#10As someone who pitched on stage yesterday I have mixed feelings on this subject. I understand that seeing a graph up and to the right on every single slide, 74 times in a row, might get a little repetitive. That said, you're also getting pitched by 74 companies who actually have graphs that are up and to the right. You're being pitched by companies who have been focusing on nothing but acquiring users, talking to use…
I think the issue is that any startup can produce a metric in which they have a nice graph going up and to the right, no doubt some of the 75 companies are likely far more attractive than others but it probably isn't clear without followup which those are.
At the same time I am not sure you can do it any other way and still have the time for everyone to see all the pitches. You are right that longer presentations with a group this big would probably result in most of the audience forgetting most of what they see.