How to show your startup
Translation: Roman Yuriev, toodoo is a social network of website users, especially for Habrahabr.
Co-founder and CEO of Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis recently listened to 200 companies' demo as requests to participate in the upcoming TechCrunch50 conference. I agree with all the positions below based on my own experience of communicating with thousands of startup representatives over the past three years. If you are pushing a company in the press, at a conference, in front of a potential investor or employer, mark these items for yourself. Otherwise, regret not having done so.
')
The greatest chances of success are those who offer an interesting product. This is very important because the consumer can easily understand what the service is and how clearly you can imagine the possible difficulties in the work.
And here is Jason's letter to the petitioners.
“Over the past 10 days I have listened to 200 demo videos with requests to participate in the TechCriunch50 conference. These videos are mostly recorded within 10 minutes using a phone or software for online conferences like WebEx or the new Connect service from Adobe.
After listening to 2500 demo (for 40 hours) only this year, I realized what is important to do in order for the demo video to be successful (or terrible). Since recording my entrepreneurial ideas in this way is the key to the success of the company, I decided to share my work with future businessmen.
These tips can be used when you need to attract an investor, partner, as well as when creating a demo presentation. Of course, each situation is individual, but in principle these directives can be very useful.
Background: The TechCrunch50 conference takes place from September 8 to September 10 in San Francisco. Me and Mike Arrington organized this event last year. In its course, 50 startups get a chance to launch their products without having to pay a fee. (Unlike the DEMO conference, where each startup pays $ 18,500 for the launch.) Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Sequoia Capital take part in organizing the event.
1. Show your product in the first 60 seconds of the presentation. Most people start talking about the market segment that they want to conquer, provides bloated descriptions of their companies, shares a philosophical approach to work, and makes boring PowerPoint presentations about workflows.
The longer they spend on entry, the worse, as a rule, the product itself turns out to be. Those whose product is a “bomb” do not waste time preparing the soil, they cannot wait to show their product. Their presentation begins with a demonstration of the main page of the site and interaction with users. If the picture can tell a thousand stories, then the product demo will tell a million. Show the product immediately, and if you do not have it, do not take our time.
2. A good product does not require more than 5 minutes not a presentation. Over the past 10 years, the best products have never been presented for more than 5 minutes. Larry and Sergey did not take long to present Google: here is the text entry field, you type in it and get the result. Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs) with the iPod player also did not talk about it for a long time: connect to the network, insert the discs, it synchronizes the music, you turn on the player and select tracks using the wheel. Chris DeWolfe could talk about MySpace like this: sign up, fill out a page about yourself, add friends and some widgets as a bonus.
I think you get the idea. The more interesting the product, the shorter its demo presentation. If it lasts longer than 5 minutes, the product is likely to be unusable. You can skip all the small details that are important to you when presenting your startup. Larry and Sergey would not talk about the advanced search and list of operators that you could use in Google.
Steve Jobs really likes to detail the presentation, but you and I are not Steve Jobs. There is only one Steve Jobs and only one Apple. You are not going to create something like Steve's brainchild, therefore, there is no need to talk about your product for 5-10 minutes.
3. Let the audience want to know more. If you listened to my advice number 2, the audience will either be intrigued by the product, or simply admired by it. If this reaction is not observed, you need to change the product.
When I introduced investors to the Mahalo startup, I had five pages of information with search results. I put them all on the table and asked which of the pages is better. Of course, I knew that my search results were the best, but my simple demonstration led to a serious discussion: how the page was created, how much time it took to create it, how much it can cost, how often it needs to be updated, how to expand the business, how much Do I need to create pages to cover costs?
It is better if students learn about the details of the product on their own. And it is in your hands - to create such an irresistible product that they want to learn more about.
4. Talk about what you have already done, not what you are going to do. The creators of weak startups are in a hurry to tell what they will do next, instead of focusing on the main product. Everyone can say that they are going to add a mobile version, filtering for each of the users, an advertising network, visualization, an idea exchange center, a browser plugin, a browser and a social network. In fact, there is a variety of open source and off-the-shelf software combined with a huge number of professional programmers. Thanks to them, all these ideas can be integrated into the service a couple of weeks after creation.
No one is interested in how you want to expand your product. What really matters is its core functionality.
Steve Jobs became the greatest businessman in the world, because he always talked about the achievements of Apple. He does not spend time on narrating about the plans of the company, he says what he has here and now. Microsoft’s early strategy was that its team talked about its plans. But they had to back down if their plans changed.
5. Know your competitors - present and past. This year, three startups showed me the idea of ​​group SMS messaging. But almost none of them knew that UPOC.com already had a company (Gordon Gould, a group messaging service that has been around for five years). Over the past couple of years, at TechCrunch50 conferences, I met three or four companies that reminded me of Third Voice, the controversial comment service on the Internet from Web 1.0. [Note: I myself liked the concept of Third Voice so much that I even thought about creating such a company and acquired the domain name annotated.com.]
When I advertised the idea of ​​Weblogs, Inc. Mark Cuban (Mark Cuban), Yossi Vardi (Yossi Vardi) and Jeff Bezos, I understood the work of all niche email marketing and advertising companies of the early and late 90s. I studied how they acted and why they failed, I knew which ones and by whom they were bought. When I advertised Mahalo to Sequoia Capital, I already knew the history of socially-oriented search engine and directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and LookSmart.
If you do not know your competitors and those you rely on, investors will not want to spend their attention and money on you.
6. Answer shortly. Questions about your product should be answered briefly. This is very difficult for many people (and for me, by the way, also). If you are like me, you most likely thought through all possible answers to questions, and not in one copy. When I play poker, I ponder every possible scenario not only for my cards, but also for my opponents cards. (This is normal behavior among skilled poker players, but attempts to predict all the possible options can drive you crazy.)
The trick is that our thoughts may seem like chaotic inferences during the presentation, try to explain them to the interlocutor. That is, you need to respond briefly and to the point. For example, when you are asked: “what will happen if Google gets into your market?”, Answer this:
- Google has already penetrated many markets, but it is the number one company in search only. Although she tried to compete with MySpace and Facebook in social networking, classified ads from Craiglist, news from Yahoo and AOL, email and instant messaging from Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo.
- Not sure that Google will penetrate our market. But we hope that by that time we will expand our product to a serious business.
“Perhaps Google will penetrate our market at some point.” And if this happens, either the corporation itself or its competitors will think about buying us back by offering a lot of money.
- At the moment, Google is really a large company and has a large capital. She needs to defend this position now. She will never cope with our business at this level of focus. We surpass her team in his field on all fronts.
These are just great answers (I made them up myself). Each of them can be formulated in less than a minute. But if you try to use everything, it will take about five minutes.
7. PowerPoint Presentation - doom. No need to show a lot of slides, describing all the delights of your product - it is very, very boring. Fascinating Powerpoint / Keynote slides consist of tablets, product images, descriptions of its properties, and the like. What can describe the idea easily and without burdening the listeners should be your choice. But the bulleted lists of so obvious facts show that you cannot create an attractive product description and do not think about those who are listening to you. I'm not a big fan of fun slides or lots of graphics for the sake of graphics. You are not representing your company in order to make investors laugh. Your goal is to get funding, make a partnership deal.
8. How to use this unfamiliar device - the phone. When conducting a presentation by phone, you only need to use a landline and a fixed telephone. The sound when conducting a presentation using a mobile, just terrible in 95% of cases, and the connection is often interrupted. If you are presenting your company, take it seriously. Your time is limited, you can not lose a minute.
Phones with loudspeakers are also no good. And this is just disrespect forcing a person to listen to such a presentation. He heard all the rustling, conversations in the background and a strong echo. When conducting a demo, bother to pick up the phone and talk, and leave the loudspeaker for the question and answer session.
Headphones only use if they are of very high quality, and the microphone is at your very mouth. Also, you can not chew, drink or breathe heavily into a microphone; you can make sounds like an animal. For example, I have a great Plantronics headset, and I also love green tea. But when I drink, I definitely turn off the sound in the microphone.
I know, discussing how to use the phone seems crazy. But most young people believe that it is acceptable to disconnect a couple of times during a conversation. In fact, it is not.
9. How to answer a question you do not know the answer to. After you give a presentation, you may be asked questions. Here are some clues to those who have been driven into a dead end by investors.
Think over the answer. You can even say something like “Mmm ... Good question. Let me see". Listeners appreciate what you think before you answer.
If there is no answer, say so. There are many ways to do this. For example: “I do not know. Let me think and return to you with the answer. " Or: “Honestly, I do not know. What do you think? "
Feel free to think out loud and discuss options with the audience. You can say: “I never thought about it. Maybe you clarify the question, and we will think about it together? ”
If you do not know the answer, you can always say something like: “I still do not know how we will cope with the sudden rise in the frequency band. We need to collect more information and solve the problem afterwards. I’m sure this is a risk that can be managed. ”
The worst thing you can do if you do not know the answer is to call the question nonsense. No one knows the answers to all the questions, so it’s best to just admit that you don’t know something. Listeners will perceive you as an honest and modest person.
10. Always confirm your appointment, and arrive 15 minutes before the scheduled time. People are very busy, and there can be real confusion with meetings. I confirm each meeting twice - by e-mail and on the day of the meeting itself. It will not cost you anything, but it will recommend you as a responsible person. You can send a simple email like: “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at such and such a time in such and such a place. If something changes, please contact me at such a number. ”
Also, it is worth coming early. Especially if you meet a person who can finance your business, make a deal with you. You will show your respect if you appear in the lobby of his company or are in touch during a conversation on the selector 15 minutes before the scheduled time. You shouldn't come too early - you may seem intrusive.
Co-founder and CEO of Weblogs Inc., Jason Calacanis recently listened to 200 companies' demo as requests to participate in the upcoming TechCrunch50 conference. I agree with all the positions below based on my own experience of communicating with thousands of startup representatives over the past three years. If you are pushing a company in the press, at a conference, in front of a potential investor or employer, mark these items for yourself. Otherwise, regret not having done so.
')
The greatest chances of success are those who offer an interesting product. This is very important because the consumer can easily understand what the service is and how clearly you can imagine the possible difficulties in the work.
And here is Jason's letter to the petitioners.
“Over the past 10 days I have listened to 200 demo videos with requests to participate in the TechCriunch50 conference. These videos are mostly recorded within 10 minutes using a phone or software for online conferences like WebEx or the new Connect service from Adobe.
After listening to 2500 demo (for 40 hours) only this year, I realized what is important to do in order for the demo video to be successful (or terrible). Since recording my entrepreneurial ideas in this way is the key to the success of the company, I decided to share my work with future businessmen.
These tips can be used when you need to attract an investor, partner, as well as when creating a demo presentation. Of course, each situation is individual, but in principle these directives can be very useful.
Background: The TechCrunch50 conference takes place from September 8 to September 10 in San Francisco. Me and Mike Arrington organized this event last year. In its course, 50 startups get a chance to launch their products without having to pay a fee. (Unlike the DEMO conference, where each startup pays $ 18,500 for the launch.) Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Sequoia Capital take part in organizing the event.
1. Show your product in the first 60 seconds of the presentation. Most people start talking about the market segment that they want to conquer, provides bloated descriptions of their companies, shares a philosophical approach to work, and makes boring PowerPoint presentations about workflows.
The longer they spend on entry, the worse, as a rule, the product itself turns out to be. Those whose product is a “bomb” do not waste time preparing the soil, they cannot wait to show their product. Their presentation begins with a demonstration of the main page of the site and interaction with users. If the picture can tell a thousand stories, then the product demo will tell a million. Show the product immediately, and if you do not have it, do not take our time.
2. A good product does not require more than 5 minutes not a presentation. Over the past 10 years, the best products have never been presented for more than 5 minutes. Larry and Sergey did not take long to present Google: here is the text entry field, you type in it and get the result. Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs) with the iPod player also did not talk about it for a long time: connect to the network, insert the discs, it synchronizes the music, you turn on the player and select tracks using the wheel. Chris DeWolfe could talk about MySpace like this: sign up, fill out a page about yourself, add friends and some widgets as a bonus.
I think you get the idea. The more interesting the product, the shorter its demo presentation. If it lasts longer than 5 minutes, the product is likely to be unusable. You can skip all the small details that are important to you when presenting your startup. Larry and Sergey would not talk about the advanced search and list of operators that you could use in Google.
Steve Jobs really likes to detail the presentation, but you and I are not Steve Jobs. There is only one Steve Jobs and only one Apple. You are not going to create something like Steve's brainchild, therefore, there is no need to talk about your product for 5-10 minutes.
3. Let the audience want to know more. If you listened to my advice number 2, the audience will either be intrigued by the product, or simply admired by it. If this reaction is not observed, you need to change the product.
When I introduced investors to the Mahalo startup, I had five pages of information with search results. I put them all on the table and asked which of the pages is better. Of course, I knew that my search results were the best, but my simple demonstration led to a serious discussion: how the page was created, how much time it took to create it, how much it can cost, how often it needs to be updated, how to expand the business, how much Do I need to create pages to cover costs?
It is better if students learn about the details of the product on their own. And it is in your hands - to create such an irresistible product that they want to learn more about.
4. Talk about what you have already done, not what you are going to do. The creators of weak startups are in a hurry to tell what they will do next, instead of focusing on the main product. Everyone can say that they are going to add a mobile version, filtering for each of the users, an advertising network, visualization, an idea exchange center, a browser plugin, a browser and a social network. In fact, there is a variety of open source and off-the-shelf software combined with a huge number of professional programmers. Thanks to them, all these ideas can be integrated into the service a couple of weeks after creation.
No one is interested in how you want to expand your product. What really matters is its core functionality.
Steve Jobs became the greatest businessman in the world, because he always talked about the achievements of Apple. He does not spend time on narrating about the plans of the company, he says what he has here and now. Microsoft’s early strategy was that its team talked about its plans. But they had to back down if their plans changed.
5. Know your competitors - present and past. This year, three startups showed me the idea of ​​group SMS messaging. But almost none of them knew that UPOC.com already had a company (Gordon Gould, a group messaging service that has been around for five years). Over the past couple of years, at TechCrunch50 conferences, I met three or four companies that reminded me of Third Voice, the controversial comment service on the Internet from Web 1.0. [Note: I myself liked the concept of Third Voice so much that I even thought about creating such a company and acquired the domain name annotated.com.]
When I advertised the idea of ​​Weblogs, Inc. Mark Cuban (Mark Cuban), Yossi Vardi (Yossi Vardi) and Jeff Bezos, I understood the work of all niche email marketing and advertising companies of the early and late 90s. I studied how they acted and why they failed, I knew which ones and by whom they were bought. When I advertised Mahalo to Sequoia Capital, I already knew the history of socially-oriented search engine and directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and LookSmart.
If you do not know your competitors and those you rely on, investors will not want to spend their attention and money on you.
6. Answer shortly. Questions about your product should be answered briefly. This is very difficult for many people (and for me, by the way, also). If you are like me, you most likely thought through all possible answers to questions, and not in one copy. When I play poker, I ponder every possible scenario not only for my cards, but also for my opponents cards. (This is normal behavior among skilled poker players, but attempts to predict all the possible options can drive you crazy.)
The trick is that our thoughts may seem like chaotic inferences during the presentation, try to explain them to the interlocutor. That is, you need to respond briefly and to the point. For example, when you are asked: “what will happen if Google gets into your market?”, Answer this:
- Google has already penetrated many markets, but it is the number one company in search only. Although she tried to compete with MySpace and Facebook in social networking, classified ads from Craiglist, news from Yahoo and AOL, email and instant messaging from Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo.
- Not sure that Google will penetrate our market. But we hope that by that time we will expand our product to a serious business.
“Perhaps Google will penetrate our market at some point.” And if this happens, either the corporation itself or its competitors will think about buying us back by offering a lot of money.
- At the moment, Google is really a large company and has a large capital. She needs to defend this position now. She will never cope with our business at this level of focus. We surpass her team in his field on all fronts.
These are just great answers (I made them up myself). Each of them can be formulated in less than a minute. But if you try to use everything, it will take about five minutes.
7. PowerPoint Presentation - doom. No need to show a lot of slides, describing all the delights of your product - it is very, very boring. Fascinating Powerpoint / Keynote slides consist of tablets, product images, descriptions of its properties, and the like. What can describe the idea easily and without burdening the listeners should be your choice. But the bulleted lists of so obvious facts show that you cannot create an attractive product description and do not think about those who are listening to you. I'm not a big fan of fun slides or lots of graphics for the sake of graphics. You are not representing your company in order to make investors laugh. Your goal is to get funding, make a partnership deal.
8. How to use this unfamiliar device - the phone. When conducting a presentation by phone, you only need to use a landline and a fixed telephone. The sound when conducting a presentation using a mobile, just terrible in 95% of cases, and the connection is often interrupted. If you are presenting your company, take it seriously. Your time is limited, you can not lose a minute.
Phones with loudspeakers are also no good. And this is just disrespect forcing a person to listen to such a presentation. He heard all the rustling, conversations in the background and a strong echo. When conducting a demo, bother to pick up the phone and talk, and leave the loudspeaker for the question and answer session.
Headphones only use if they are of very high quality, and the microphone is at your very mouth. Also, you can not chew, drink or breathe heavily into a microphone; you can make sounds like an animal. For example, I have a great Plantronics headset, and I also love green tea. But when I drink, I definitely turn off the sound in the microphone.
I know, discussing how to use the phone seems crazy. But most young people believe that it is acceptable to disconnect a couple of times during a conversation. In fact, it is not.
9. How to answer a question you do not know the answer to. After you give a presentation, you may be asked questions. Here are some clues to those who have been driven into a dead end by investors.
Think over the answer. You can even say something like “Mmm ... Good question. Let me see". Listeners appreciate what you think before you answer.
If there is no answer, say so. There are many ways to do this. For example: “I do not know. Let me think and return to you with the answer. " Or: “Honestly, I do not know. What do you think? "
Feel free to think out loud and discuss options with the audience. You can say: “I never thought about it. Maybe you clarify the question, and we will think about it together? ”
If you do not know the answer, you can always say something like: “I still do not know how we will cope with the sudden rise in the frequency band. We need to collect more information and solve the problem afterwards. I’m sure this is a risk that can be managed. ”
The worst thing you can do if you do not know the answer is to call the question nonsense. No one knows the answers to all the questions, so it’s best to just admit that you don’t know something. Listeners will perceive you as an honest and modest person.
10. Always confirm your appointment, and arrive 15 minutes before the scheduled time. People are very busy, and there can be real confusion with meetings. I confirm each meeting twice - by e-mail and on the day of the meeting itself. It will not cost you anything, but it will recommend you as a responsible person. You can send a simple email like: “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at such and such a time in such and such a place. If something changes, please contact me at such a number. ”
Also, it is worth coming early. Especially if you meet a person who can finance your business, make a deal with you. You will show your respect if you appear in the lobby of his company or are in touch during a conversation on the selector 15 minutes before the scheduled time. You shouldn't come too early - you may seem intrusive.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/36959/
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