Shryk has developed an online banking platform for teenagers and young adults called iThryv that teaches them financial literacy. Here’s their presentation at TechCrunch50.
Ashton Kutcher introducing the world to his new startup Blah Girls at TechCrunch 50 event. I apologize that the quality is not so great.
Jason Calacanis’ most recent post to his email mailing list was a response to a recent 10-day stretch in which he sat through 200 company demos for the upcoming TechCrunch50 conference, which will take place September 8th–10th in San Francisco.
The TechCrunch conference was started last year by Jason and Michael Arrington as a launchpad for the most promising 50 startup companies to show off their products in front of VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press for absolutely no charge. Considering that DEMO (which takes places during the same dates) charges $18,500 for startups to launch their companies, it is no surprise that startups have been anxious to demonstrate their products for a chance to be a part of the TechCrunch50.
Jason recently sat through 2,500 minutes of demos in 10 days, in which 200 startup companies had approximately 10 minutes each to present their products, mostly over phone and web conferencing. After sitting through so many demos, Jason has decided to compile a list of tips to help entrepreneurs demo their startups.
The following 10 tips are guides to help you demo your product successfully. They are incredibly useful and I felt it was important to post them on my blog for anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. I also added some of my own feedback.
1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds
According to Jason, “Folks with killer products CAN’T WAIT to show you their product.” On the other hand, people who begin their presentation talking about the market, corporate bios, figures, and showing boring tables and charts generally give off the impression that their product isn’t very good. The truth of the matter is that if you’ve got a killer product then the figures aren’t the most important thing at this stage in the game.
When you begin your demo, jump right into presenting your product within the first minute. This will show that you are confident and that you believe in your product. If your product isn’t finished or ready to show then don’t do the demo. As Jason says, “If a picture tells a thousand stories, then a product demo tells a million.”
I would add to this that while this is all true, sometimes it is necessary to show market figures in order to clarify the need for your product in the market. However, you should save this information for a later time after you’ve made your pitch and proven that you’ve got a product that’s worth spending the extra time listening to statistics.
2. The best products take less than 5 minutes to demo
If you are presenting a product that is truly a killer product then you should be able to demo it in under 5 minutes. To back up this statement, Jason gives some examples:
a) Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google could surely demo their product in less than 5 minutes—Type a search term in the box and receive great results.
b) Steve Jobs could, without a doubt, demo the iPod in less than 5 minutes—Connect it to your computer, sync your music, use it on the go to listen to music by using the wheel to select songs.
c) Chris DeWolfe of MySpace could easily demonstrate the site in less than 5 minutes—Sign up, complete a profile and add friends, widgets and applications.
As Jason says, the better the product the Less time it takes to present.
It is also important to keep in mind that you don’t have to explain every little detail and feature of your product in your demo, as proud of it as you may be. For instance, Larry and Sergey wouldn’t show every single feature of Google in a demo—that could take days! Stick to the most important and simplistic features that will help you demo your product in the shortest amount of time. After that, if people would like to hear more, you could go into further detail.
3. Leave people wanting more
If you follow Jason’s advice and present your product in less than 5 minutes then the people you are presenting to should at least be intrigued, if not blown away, by your product. If they are not, then something is wrong with your product and you need to start rethinking and rebuilding.
Your goal should be to give just enough information so that the people you are presenting to know what your product is and leave room for questions. Jason related to his own experience when he pitched Mahalo to investors. He showed investors 5 pieces of paper with search results from different engines and asked which was the best. He writes: “Obviously I knew my result was the best, and that simple demonstration lead to MASSIVE discussion.”
Let your panel discover your products merits on their own. Simply provide a short but compelling demo to intrigue them enough to do it.
4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do
Strong startups usually talk about what they have already accomplished, something worthwhile—they have a killer product to show that is functional and unique. On the other hand, weak startups usually spend a lot of time talking about the future of their product because they don’t have anything impressive to show right now.
Any company can talk about what they will do next—add a mobile version, advertise, build a widget or application. However, your presentation should focus on what you have already done. Not what you will do. This is much more impressive.
Take Steve Jobs, for example. he doesn’t waste time talking about the future of Apple. He announces Apple’s current achievements. This is part of what has made Apple the success that it is.
5. Understand your competitive landscape—current and historical
When you are pitching your product it is incredibly important to know your competition, past and present. Do research about companies that have successfully or unsuccessfully pitched products that are similar to yours. Research their successes and failures, who they received funding from, whether they were sold and who bought them.
Jason writes that three companies presented group SMS messaging products this year and none of them knew about UPOC.com, an important group messaging service established in 1999, way ahead of its time. In Jason’s words, “If you don’t know the competitive landscape and the shoulders you’re standing on, folks are not going to be comfortable giving you their money, time or attention.”
I would also add that it is important to research previous and current competitors as this will help you evaluate your revenue model, business activities, and not repeat past mistakes that have been made. If you’re spending all this time and effort on your startup, you might as well take advantage of learning from other similar cases.
6. Short answers are best
When asked questions during your demo, answer them as shortly and concisely as possible. Because you have been with your company from day one you have thought a lot about every minute detail. When asked a question, many details may spin around in your head and if you try talking about all of them you could speak for ages. Keep focused and give a short and to the point answer.
Jason gives the following question as an example: “What happens if Google enters your market?” Here are a few examples of how to answer this question concisely and confidently:
a) “Google has entered many markets, but they are only #1 in search and search advertising. They trail in social networking to MySpace and Facebook, in classifieds to Craigslist, in news to Yahoo and AOL, in email to Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo, and in instant messaging to Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo.”
b) “We’re not sure if Google will enter our market, but hopefully we’ll have developed our product enough that it will be a real sustainable business by that time.”
c) “We think Google might enter our market at some point, and if they do they and their competitors will certainly consider buying us—creating a bidding war for our entrenched position.”
d) “Google is a very big company right now with a very big cash machine that they have to focus on and protect—they will never do our business with our level of focus. We will out execute them on all fronts.”
You may have all of these ideas in your head, and each is an excellent response on its own. However, giving all of these responses will simply take too much time.
7. PowerPoint bullet slides are death
Anyone who has ever sat through a PowerPoint explaining anything in bullet points knows that bullet points are incredibly boring. Do your self a favor and don’t use bullets, unless you want to bore your panel to death.
According to Jason, bulleted PowerPoints show that “you don’t have the ability to create a compelling story with data” and that “you don’t think much of the person being presented the information.” Instead, include product shots, charts and tables to present your product.
Again, keep your presentation as short and to the point as possible. Don’t add extra slides to get laughs or unnecessary graphics that are just taking up space. Keep your presentation direct and to the point.
8. How to use this new device called the phone
When you are presenting your product over the phone use a landline with a handset—nothing else!
Mobile phones often cut out and have a horrible connection much of the time; speakerphones are terrible as well. Conducting your company demo on your mobile phone or speakerphone is simply disrespectful to the person you are pitching to, yet for some reason people continue to do it.
Take your presentation seriously. Use a landline and speak on a handset. This will ensure that you will be heard as accurately as possible. You have a limited amount of time to present and don’t want to deal with mobile or speakerphone or issues. Use speaker phones only for Q&A sessions.
If you are using a headset, make sure that it is high-fidelity and put the microphone as close to your mouth as possible. Don’t drink, eat, chew gum or breath loudly into the microphone. This can be distracting and just plain gross.
You’ve worked hard to prepare for your presentation. Don’t let mobile or speakphone issues detract from the end result.
9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to
If your presentation goes well then you will probably be receiving a log of questions and chances are they you won’t know the answer to every single one of these questions. The following tips will help you when you aren’t exactly sure how to answer a question:
a) Allow yourself a moment to think before answering the question. If you feel awkward with your pause, you may say: “That is a great question… Let me think about it for a second.”
b) Be honest. If you don’t know the answer to the question then don’t force it. You can say something like “I’m not exactly sure, I’ll think about it and get back to you.” Or you can pose the question back to the asker—“I’m not exactly sure, what do you think?”
c) Think out loud if you need to and ask for help in answering the question. For instance, “I hadn’t thought about that. Let’s explore the answer together.”
d) If you don’t know how to answer a question you can say that you don’t have enough information right now but that your company will deal with the answer when the issue arises, later down the road.
People can tell when you are answering a question with B.S. so it is always better to be just be honest. People appreciate that.
10. Always confirm the time of your meeting/call and always be 15 minutes early
Business people are busy and it’s common for meetings to get mixed up. Therefore, it is important to confirm all of your meetings. Jason writes that he confirms each of his meetings or phone calls twice—once in advance by email and once on the day before the meeting. Jason says that “reconfirming meetings makes you look like a true player and it costs you nothing.” Send a simple email that confirms the date, time and address of your meetings. Be sure to include your mobile number in case anything changes.
It is also important to arrive early. You are, after all, meeting with someone who may invest in your company or want to do a business deal. It’s respectful to sit in their lobby so that you will be ready to go as soon as they are. Even if you are doing a conference call you can call early and wait on hold.
However, don’t show up too early. Jason advises “don’t show up more than 15 minutes ahead of time or you’ll look like a stalker. If you get to your meeting 45 minutes ahead of time go to the Starbucks and buy yourself a treat for being so on top of things.”
These are all excellent tips and even though some may seem obvious, it is surprising how often people neglect to follow them. In addition, being a blogger located in Israel, I think it is important to add yet another tip to this list. If you are a foreign company, make sure that you pick the right person to present your startup. There’s nothing more aggravating than listening to a pitch by someone that you can’t understand. Make sure that your presenter speaks English fluently and coherently. It is even preferable that you pick a person who has had previous living experience in the US. Each country obviously has its own business culture and mannerisms and it is extremely important that you pick a person who knows how to ”sell” to the panel at hand. You can have the most amazing product in the world, but if your presenter does not know how to communicate your message properly, your demo will fail miserably.
Thanks to Joi for the pic.
Technorati tags: jason calacanis, startup, demo, techcrunch50, michael arrington, tips, pitch, mahalo, startups, steve jobs, competitive landscape, google, apple, myspace
Post written by guest author Megan O’Neill
Commily is a new Israeli startup with a drive to make life easier for all of the busy parents out there. The site is a social network for families that provides parents with the tools they need to easily deal with day-to-day issues with their kids such as scheduling play dates and carpools; find recommended services and products, from team uniforms and sports equipment to school supplies; and stay in touch with their children’s friends, classmates, teachers, coaches and administrators. Unlike other social networks, which are designed to connect people on a large scale, Commily is designed to bring together small communities to help simplify family and community life.
Commily was founded by three parents who are also experienced in the world of business and high tech—Gil Levonai, Micki Segal and Laura Waas. Gil, Micki and Laura saw the need for a simpler method of dealing with the day-to-day lives of their children and so they created Commily.
Ayelet and I met with Micki who vividly expressed the difficulties that working parents face in trying to organize the lives of their children. She hopes that Commily will simplify the lives of working parents by “Incorporating all of a child’s community into a single location.” Through the site, parents can coordinate carpool dates, as well as plan parties and events with other families from their children’s schools, day care, sports teams, religious communities or neighborhood. Commily users keep calendars and build profiles with pertinent information about each child, including likes, dislikes and hobbies, to keep the other parents in the community informed.
Aside from simplifying family life, I think that one of the most interesting things about Commily is its program called “Giving Back with Commily.” The site shares a percentage of its revenues with the communities that use the service. This money is donated to local charities, which are chosen by Commily users themselves. It is nice to see how committed Commily is to its goal of enhancing local community life.
Commily is currently looking for seed funding. The site has launched its pilot for Chicago-area residents and is looking for leaders to help launch Commily in other cities.
I think that the biggest challenge for this site will be recruiting community leaders and drawing users in local communities into it. However, if they can achieve this, Commily stands to be a great tool for simplifying the lives of working parents everywhere.
Megan O’Neill has worked with a number of Internet and media related companies both in the United States and in Israel in design, content and marketing positions. She currently works at Blonde 2.0 as a Social Media Marketing Assistant.
Company Name: PredictAd
Founded in: 2007
Location: Raanana
PredictAd is an Israeli startup backed by Yossi Vardi that was launched in 2007. Based in Raanana, the company has created an autocomplete search box plug-in that refines the search query and helps site owners generate new search revenue by providing inline text and banner ads. PredictAd is not a search engine, but rather improves the search query.
The Company is led by Noam Fine, CEO, Yossi Marouani, CTO, and Tomer Molovinsky, VP of Business Development. The three met each other in the Israeli army and have remained close since, which has translated into a strong, cohesive leadership.
The concept of PredictAd was developed by Fine and Marouani as a way to monetize Joe’s Giveaway or Mehalek (“giving away” in Hebrew), a site they created that featured a counter where users were supposed to click until they reached a certain number of points that awarded them prizes. PredictAd decided to develop the concept further and offer the search plug-in as a service to Web publishers and site owners. See the one they created for me below:
PredictAd operated in closed beta until January 2008. During this phase the company partnered with major Israeli portals such as Walla, Ynet, Nana, and MSN Israel. Partnering with these portals gave PredictAd the opportunity to optimize and enhance the service’s capabilities before entering into its current open beta phase, which is available internationally.
Since PredictAd’s product went international, they have hit over 30 million searches monthly, largely because of recent partnerships with Bravenet, Perfspot, and most recently Lyrics.com. These companies are now using the PredictAd system in all of their site search fields. It is PredictAd’s goal to make its autocomplete menu as common as the search box itself, and to be recognized as an integral part of the search process.
This post was originally posted July 22nd on Mashable.com
Company: Outbrain
Founded: 2006
Located: Netanya
I had the opportunity to meet with John LoGioco, VP of Business Development at Outbrain, the free service that offers bloggers and publishers a ratings widget that can be used by visitors of their sites to rate their content. The service, which serves as a recommendation engine for readers allowing them to discover new content they might like based on the ratings they give, recently announced an analytics dashboard for bloggers and site publishers. Outbrain is signaling a trend towards offering higher quality, more personalized Web content based on reader response and giving readers more power over the content they are viewing.
In our interview below, I speak with John about Outbrain’s philosophy and goals.
This post was originally posted July 21st on Mashable.com
Company Name: Copenda
Founded in: 2007
Location: Tel Aviv
I had the chance to interview Gadi Reichman and Tal Cohen from Copenda, the Israeli startup that offers an online social people search that allows users to find new friends and dating partners across social networks and dating sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Match, Plentyoffish, and more. Gadi and Tal founded the company with David Kariv nearly a year ago when the trio noticed a trend that young people were searching social networks for dating partners rather than searching dating sites.
In our video interview below, I speak with Gadi and Tal about the birth of Copenda, the service’s features, and the various projects they have lined up for the future.
Company name: Sightix
Founded in: 2005
R & D Location: Netanya
Sightix, a B2B search service targeting social networks, has headquartered its research and development in Netanya. The company offers a unique search engine solution for social networking sites
. While Google’s algorithm is based on page rank, Sightix gives users more personalized search results based on their own social graph.
Sightix’s VP of Business Development, Ari Gottesmann, explained that Israel was a natural choice for the company’s R&D effort. “The entrepreneurial spirit inbred into the culture means that in Israel EVERYONE has AT LEAST TWO opinions about how to do things better, said Gottesman. “This is both a huge asset as well as a management challenge. For startups the fact that people are given the creative freedom and flexibility in the process means they aren’t just working for the job, they are working to prove their inputs and opinions as being right…”
Gottesmann explained that when a person is searching for information within a social network, Google’s search algorithm is flawed. Sightix has developed an algorithm that takes a user’s friends and connections into account when providing him with search results. Sightix is suited for searching for things that you need help from friends to find. For instance, if you wanted to find a lawyer and did a Google search, your top results could include those lawyers who paid the most for advertising. However, when you search in Sightix you receive prioritized results based on lawyers in your network and your friends’ networks. In this manner, you can receive personal recommendations from your friends.
Sightix is currently targeting small social networks with under 5 million members. They have recently partnered up with Shin1, Israel’s most popular social network for kids, and are in the process of closing deals with seven smaller social networks in the United States, as well as South America. The company is focusing on smaller networks because the development process for smaller networks takes less time. Sightix hopes to show its value through these smaller social networking sites and expand to other areas of the world.
This post was originally posted July 10th on Mashable.com
Company Name: Qoof
Founded in: 2006
Location: Bet Shemesh
Qoof is a video commerce startup that offers a widget eTailors and publishers can use to publish product videos on their sites. Founded by Richard Kligman in 2006, Qoof’s operations and team of over 10 employees are based out of Bet Shemesh.
Kligman first came up with the idea after watching the home shopping channel. With TV, you never know who’s watching and what to offer them. However, with Internet, you can target your products to exactly the right audience. In essence, Qoof is a fusion of direct response TV and e-commerce.
The Qoof Widget offers eTailors a fully customizable video interface that focuses consumers’ attention on making a purchase. The widget turns videos into selling tools, incorporating product information, customer communications, and purchases. Customers can search products by category, make SKYPE, VOIP, 
and landline calls, chat, search top sellers and hot deals, and read product reviews.
Additionally, Qoof offers a Smart Widget that helps eTailors and publishers target niche audiences. The Smart Widget automatically downloads videos to a website based on the response that other videos on the site are getting. If a certain product is popular, videos of similar products are automatically downloaded. Qoof’s vision is to give eTailors the ability to target customers and to present the right product to the right customer on many channels.
It is important to note that Qoof is not a destination site. The Qoof Widget can be installed directly to eTailors’ product pages and publishers’ sites. eTailors can use the widget to distribute to affiliates as well, allowing affiliates to embed the video content and sales tools directly to their affiliate sites. The widget also enables publishers to create home shopping channels easily on their own sites. The Qoof widget is fully customizable with features that allow eTailors to post customer reviews, banners and more.
Qoof’s revenue model is based on monthly hosting and per video view fees. For the hosting fee, eTailors and publishers receive detailed analytics of the views and sales data of each of their videos on each site that the video appears. Qoof’s analytics allow eTailors and publishers to see what customers are responding to and make changes to their product offerings based on this customer response.
Qoof is currently working on a new widget with more functionality that will be released in December. Additionally, the company plans to begin connecting eTailors with publishers in the future.
This post was originally posted July 1st on Mashable.com
The TWS2008 Internet conference took place yesterday in Tel Aviv. The conference is organized by the Israeli popular blog the.co.ils, each year, and aims to find and present the 10 most promising Internet startups in Israel. Blonde 2.0 was happy to be a media sponsor of the event.
10 startups were chosen out of 100 that applied. The startups were selected by an impressive list of judges. Amongst them: Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, Om Malik, Deborah Schultz, Brian Solis, Allen Stern, Chris Brogan, Yair Goldfinger and Emily Chang.
Here’s a list of the 10 startups that were able to convince the judges that they have a unique offering to the world:
Wix is an authoring platform that allows users to create striking and easy-to-build web content in flash (web sites, widgets, blogs etc), and publish it anywhere they want online. Users can create content without coding in flash/html or being constrained by templates. At the heart of the product is the drag & drop editor that allows users to pull in any content from the web or from their own media files (video, audio, animation, text etc) and create web content.
WorkLight develops and markets a line of server products that allow organizations to do more business securely using popular consumer Web 2.0 tools and technologies, like iGoogle, Windows Live, Netvibes, Facebook, and others. Through WorkLight, employees, channels, partners, and consumers connect to protected enterprise data (and to each other) using Web 2.0 services.
HiveSight helps marketers discover new facts about consumers. The technology sifts through and analyzes millions of social media profiles and blogs to construct consumer profiles. HiveSight’s customers use the online application to write simple queries that define consumer panels, and get instant reports on demographics, consumer interests, trends and more. It’s the fastest, easiest and most affordable way to explore consumer markets and discover new insights.
Qoof is the video commerce platform that bridges the world of Online Shopping, Internet Video, and Direct Response TV to create a distributed, targeted, and personalized video commerce network. Think QVC for the internet. The most powerful way to sell a product online is with video and as more merchants are looking for video solutions, the Qoof Platform is their answer.
WikiAnswers gives you useful answers about anything by harnessing people’s collective knowledge, but with a wiki-twist. The mission is to grow a collaborative answers resource; anyone can ask, answer or edit questions, building a global Q&A database covering all topics.
Dapper’s vision is to allow people to consume the web where, when and in whatever format they choose. Dapper users point and click on the content they want from a website, and Dapper turns this content into a live semantic feed that can be used in a variety of formats (RSS, widget, XML). Dapper is leveraging its core technology to create live content-based ads (MashupAds) that combine publisher and advertiser content within an interactive ad — creating the world’s first content ad network.
Mo’Minis is a revolutionary platform for the development and publishing of mobile games. The platform allows advanced as well as non-skilled developers to rapidly create original games from scratch and have them seamlessly supported on a wide range of handsets. Furthermore, developers can collaborate and share game assets on Mo’Minis developers’ community and enjoy distribution and monetization services through various on\off-deck channels.
Kaltura provides the first open-source video management platform, empowering any site with online video. With Kaltura, web publishers can seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate interactive and collaborative rich-media functionalities, including uploading, importing, editing, remixing, and sharing. Kaltura also offers its global network of publishers content hosting, transcoding, advertising, merchandising, and syndication.
MocoSpace is a mobile social network that allows anybody with a web-enabled phone to have a full social networking experience on their most trusted device, the mobile phone, whenever and wherever they want. Members Users enjoy expressing themselves and staying connected to friends by setting up a profile page, sharing photos and video, chatting, inboxing, instant messaging, blogging, debating in forums, sending mobile cards and playing games.
Nuconomy’s Studio is the world’s first “performance insight platform,” built from the ground up to provide completely new ways to measure today’s interactive Web. Go beyond the old page view model and start to measure the new metrics of the web – your users and site engagement and contribution metrics.
Overall I think the TWS event this year was a great success and I was proud to be a part of it. In 2009, the organizers plan to open the event to all European startups and make it the official European launch pad for Internet startups in the region.
