Very Interesting Demo – What Did You Like; What Could Have Been Done Better?

Posted by Peter Cohan on August 10, 2010

0 comments | 1116 reads

A colleague forwarded me this link to a recent video-recorded demo – it is about 10 minutes in length – and has some wonderful examples of good practices and classic demo challenges:

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/how-to-pitch-a-product.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29

[You might watch it first before reading my observations…]

Observations – What I Liked:

- Very engaging style and personable.
- Cool to see him writing code in front of the audience.
- Very cool to engage the audience (on both the “call the number” and “it is calling you…” segments).
- Clever set-up (“Turn your ringers on…”).
- Great interaction with audience.
- He is clearly enthusiastic and in love with his technology.

Observations – What Could Have Been Better:

- VERY interesting to hear audience question, “Why do you need it?”…! This is a fine demo for Early Adopters (most likely much of the audience in the video), but would be a failure for everyone else. In the demo portion, the presenter never explained what applications his app could be used for!
- Should have increased his session time-out time so that he didn’t have to log in again…
- Should have used a 518 number at first (rather than finding that there were no 212 or 646 numbers available…).
- Should have tested his AT&T connection and/or used another phone that did work.
- He noted that a pile of apps are available (~85) but didn’t cite what any of them do…

The moderator, at the end, asked for an example of a use-scenario for the application – and the presenter finally offered one brief example (voting by phone).

In summary, a wonderful demo for technical early adopters but, potentially, a failure for most others. Comments?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Peter Cohan.

Peter Cohan

Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of The Second Derivative, focused on helping software organizations improve the success rates of their demos. In 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange on software demonstrations. He is the author of the book Great Demo! - how to prepare and deliver surprisingly compelling software demonstrations.

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