TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Demo days at startup accelerators are a pretty big deal around here. Here’s just one example from Y Combinator’s Summer 2013 Demo Day: Positioning itself as the “FedEx of today,” it hopes to provide a logistics framework that goes beyond food and can be used for any type of on-demand order. Omnitron Sensors. Apothecary.

SaaS 113

SaaS startup pitching education 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

This obviously doesn’t scale once the founder can’t be in every sales meeting. You want to be able to demonstrate your product and the best way I call, “A day in the life of …” where you show the demo as though you’re a user with a problem that needs to be solved. If you need demo tips I’ve covered that before.

advice 336

advice opportunity development investing 336

Paul G. Silva

NOVEMBER 26, 2024

Built on the award-winning Forged in the Dark framework, this experiential learning tool places participants in the roles of startup founders racing to bring their vision to life before time and resources run out. Forge the Future allows you to experience these challenges firsthand. Let’s forge the future together!

entrepreneurs 208

entrepreneurs entrepreneurship education incubation 208

500

APRIL 6, 2020

On our end, we hosted our first-ever Digital Demo Day to ensure the safety and protection of our team and founders. Using YouTube Live and recorded presentations, as well as an investor-founder Slack channel, we found success in this new format. If you missed the event, watch it here. If you missed the event, watch it here.

investing 256

investing investment startup founder 256

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 14, 2012

Sun's space was for it's customer assistance unit and Cornell just had a demo space patched into a supercomputer back on campus. It needs to go house to house--founders and employees getting matched through individual e-mail intros, deals happening over handshakes, and startups getting recruited into your ecosystem one at a time.

coworking spaces 364

coworking spaces communities coworking accelerator 364

TechCrunch

APRIL 7, 2023

Y Combinator’s Demo Day took place this week , and although the event itself was virtual-only, 86% of the founders in YC’s winter 2023 batch lived in SF while participating. As a result, “the average Black founder raises less than around $1,000 from family and friends,” reports Dominic-Madori Davis.

pitching 98

pitching frameworks VC ventures 98

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. So I stand by my well-read Quora post of why I don’t attend demo days. What stage?

advice 361

advice VC pitching entrepreneurs 361

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

You can see Zach James & Rich Raddon who are standing next to a demo table pitching a small, yet-to-be-funded company called MovieClips – now the powerhouse ZEFR. She joined Launchpad as a very non-traditional founder and defied every conventional expectation to build one of LA’s fastest growing companies.

accelerator 290

accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

500

MAY 15, 2020

When news broke of COVID-19 entering in the US, we were one of the first major accelerators to turn the Demo Day experience completely virtual, and since then, we have focused on collecting data from investors and founders to help the community at-large through reports like our COVID-19 Investor Survey and Female Founders Survey.

accelerator 264

accelerator communities founder startup 264

500

JUNE 9, 2020

Supply chains have been disrupted, businesses have had to close or operate at limited capacity for months, and even founders have had to expand their fundraising timeframes as we saw in our 2020 Female Founders Data Report. As a VC firm, we’ve had to adapt many aspects of our business as well.

frameworks 202

frameworks investing investment disruption 202

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a founder that I backed and he was telling me how excited he was about his company. And trust me, a demo never makes a difference. He said the path was so clear that he could literally see it--and that''s the way he''s always been since I met him.

venture capital 420

venture capital networking technology capital 420

Y Combinator

JULY 26, 2022

On the morning of September 7th and September 8th, 2022, YC will host our 35th Demo Day live on Zoom. This two day event will feature founders from 30 countries and startups in every sector — open source, ML/AI, dev tools, fintech, B2B SaaS, consumer, healthcare, hard tech, and more.

SaaS 98

SaaS investing investment founder 98

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. So I stand by my well-read Quora post of why I don’t attend demo days. What stage?

VC 347

VC advice pitching entrepreneurs 347

Dream It

AUGUST 10, 2020

Adam Dakin , Managing Director of Dreamit Healthtech, sees founders make the same common pitch mistakes over and over. The self-proclaimed superlatives founders use to describe their startup often fail to elicit the intended response from investors. Way too many founders do this and it’s a surefire way to be labeled as a rookie.

pitching 341

pitching disruption startup advice 341

TechCrunch

JULY 6, 2021

Influential entrepreneurs like Paul Graham and Naval Ravikant always preach the need for startups to have founders-turned-investors on their cap table. As Ravikant puts it, “founders want to know that the people they are taking money from have first-hand experience.” . MAGIC Fund has 12 founders who act as general partners.

founder 130

founder angel investing pitching strategy 130

500

DECEMBER 17, 2019

Our final group of startups batch consists of founders from all over Latin America, including five companies from Mexico, one company from Chile, two companies from Colombia, and one company from Peru. Throughout the four-month program, founders will put in hard work to prepare for Demo Day in March of 2020.

mentorship 266

mentorship startup accelerator founder 266

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There are too many deals to look at, too many seed funds or angels asking you to look at deals and weekly “demo days” with manicured and monocultural presentations crafted by experienced story tellers to help even the mundane idea sound like it will. For investors life is no different.

advice 398

advice VC entrepreneurs transportation 398

Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

This was the first time we've done a virtual Kickoff Week, and our team at Dreamit is even more excited to get to know these amazing founders in person when things return to normal. ?? This pandemic is accelerating a trend in more and more startups utilizing remote workforces and closing sales with virtual demos,” states Barsh. “As

ventures 369

ventures accelerator enablement communities 369

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

Don’t even get me started on Demo Days. You could spent 20 days / year at Demo Days now. Co-founder discontent. Reference checking is to confirm or disprove a strong, positive intuition you already have about founders that could lead to an investment or a pass. You have to deal with CEOs who resign. Motives matter.

VC 374

VC investing investment entrepreneurs 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

Your product demo crushed. I left the meeting and had to attend a 3-hour board meeting where two founders have been fighting and each want the other one fired. But your co-founder had been senior at one of the big enterprise software companies and if I remember correctly American Express had run a big pilot with you. I remember.

pitching 381

pitching board funders entrepreneurs 381

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

A few weeks ago, I found a Twitter thread by Sam DeBrule, co-founder and head of marketing of Heyday, who explained how he and his co-founder reduced customer churn by improving their onboarding process. Twitter Space: What can today’s founders learn from the 2000 dotcom bubble burst? I love it when a plan comes together.

VC 86

VC pitching founder startup 86

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

startup accelerator with global outreach that conducts demo days twice a year. For participating founders, it’s a critical day; for investors, it’s a buffet; for us in the media, it’s a chance to look at lots of companies, each hoping to be the next hit from the well-known startup backer.

startup 98

startup startup accelerator pitching accelerator 98

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

I’m supposed to believe that my best innovation can only come from scores of startup founders who just made millions and have now become CVOs at my company? If the money comes from professional investors it usually has a “liquidation preference” meaning that their money comes out before the founders or common stock. (If

strategy 357

strategy venture capital advice entrepreneurs 357

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

It can be risky to ask creators to rely on a possibly precarious, pre-seed company to power an important aspect of their business — if you fail, as most startups do, you might inadvertently end up hurting other independent entrepreneurs, which is (hopefully) the last thing a founder wants. ” Image Credits: Jamble.

real estate 123

real estate creativity sustainability founder 123

500

MAY 22, 2019

Our latest batch consists of founders from all over Latin America including 6 companies from Mexico, 2 from Chile, 2 from Colombia, and 1 from Argentina. 500 Startups is excited to announce the latest batch from our Seed Accelerator based in Mexico City. Batch 10’s startups will continue to put in. appeared first on 500 Startups.

mentorship 251

mentorship startup culture accelerator 251

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 16, 2014

It''s also not the best way to create a helpful syndicate of investors that share the founder''s vision for the company. If all my deals came as intros from trusted connections that I know for years versus at founder pitch events that''s interesting data. Fear not, founders. The first thing I did was trace my sources.

VC 418

VC pitching networking venture capital 418

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 29, 2013

It also demystifies any assumptions that our founders were “puritanical” – they were anything but. And from an entrepreneurial point of view – it starts by acknowledging that foreign-born founders that don’t match our normal recognition pattern can be some of our best innovators.

innovation 391

innovation culture advice education 391

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

It’s YC Demo Day week, which has us nostalgic for the conversations Found hosts have had with founders who have been through the famed accelerator program. Unsurprisingly, when a YC founder comes on, the conversation often touches on how their time in the accelerator was a formative experience for their company and them as leaders.

founder 102

founder accelerator entrepreneurship enablement 102

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 3, 2014

So I went--the only investor at the time to actually hangout during the pizza and hacking part of the hackathon, not just the demos. It was a great trip, but it also reconnected me with some New Yorkers that I hadn''t seen in a while--namely Chris Muscarella , the co-founder of Kitchensurfing.

disruption 290

disruption communities innovation enablement 290

StartupNation

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Sometimes when you’re in the zone as a founder, a case of the twisties can utterly derail progress. As a consultant to many of the world’s most innovative global brands as well as motivated founders looking for a jump-start, it’s important to be able to know what steps along the way are absolutely necessary and which ones are nice to have.

startup founder 120

startup founder founder startup consulting 120

Entrepreneur's Handbook

MAY 2, 2023

Partnering with the right co-founder is the biggest determinant of your future success. Having founded multiple startups across various industries, I firmly believe having the right co-founder(s) is the most significant determinant of startup success. A co-founder is someone you’ll practically be married to (time commitment-wise).

founder 110

founder mix-use communities networking 110

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 20, 2012

Sure, they had a demo or a prototype or something, but investors know the product will change. And in fact, it is ok--particularly when you're not a technical founder, it's not always clear what your next step is in the early going. Most entrepreneurs aren't qualified for their jobs--including about 100% of the first timers.

peer-to-peer 407

peer-to-peer pitching consulting creativity 407

500

JULY 22, 2019

Over the past three months, companies from 12 countries participated in our flagship program, building their companies and preparing for Demo Day on August 22nd. Competition was fierce, and these companies represent the top 2% of applicants for our accelerator.

startup 217

startup accelerator health entrepreneurs 217

Y Combinator

DECEMBER 22, 2020

We were forced to rethink the end of our Winter 2020 batch and transformed its demo day to an online-only event. Huge congratulations are due to the founders and employees and, indeed, all the stakeholders of those companies. Other YC founders and their startups have adapted extraordinarily well. The S20 batch is remarkable.

communities 145

communities pitching founder strategy 145

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2014

I avoid Demo Days like the plague and have publicly said so. By the time it’s hit demo day I’m too late. The founder wants to change the world and has a Phd in a science where I believe he just might. I seek out great entrepreneurs. End of story. I try to know people that others don’t yet know.

VC 337

VC consulting strategy entrepreneurs 337

500

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

The outcome was that it was both – and when you’re at Demo Day, you’re going to be grateful to the part that’s ‘too challenging’. As part of the founding team at Alluva, my thoughts ranged from excitement at the incredible learning opportunity to worry about how challenging 500’s batches were rumored to be. What Alluva is.

startup 183

startup advice opportunity investing 183

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

They demoed the electricity transfer with a physical device that looked like something that would never be allowed on an airplane. She had raised seed funds from a who’s who list of investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Marissa Mayer, Mark Cuban, Troy Carter and so on. But it seemed to work.

VC 418

VC ventures leadership board 418