June 29, 2011

Thoughts from TechStars DemoDay

[delayed post - forgot to publish this on June 15th]

At TechStar’s demoday – the public presentation of the incubator’s companies to packed house of investors, and community members (like myself). These presentations are particularly interesting to me to serve as examples for an IAP accelerator program at MIT that is in the works.

Thoughts:

  • images, not text on slides
  • a background, personal story (usually comical) on the founder who’s presenting
  • introduce the product – don’t necessarily “overtalk” the problem
  • don’t try to solve every problem – focus on a few core competencies
  • I also felt most drawn to companies whose co-founders were truly invested in the problem they were trying to solve (ie Strohl Medical, Spill). I also think that GrabCAD, Ginger.io, and Memrise had impressive products that solved a REAL problem. I’m tired of hearing of games and social networks – maybe after this bubble bursts, all companies in TS, YC, 500 startups, etc. will be based on real, core technologies…

    Leave a Reply