DEMO Archive

TC50 Ups The Previously Upped Ante: Doubles Down Demo

by Allen Stern - July 3rd, 2009

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demo and techcrunch50 This morning we noted that DEMO was now offering some amount of money in advertising to the two winners at their startup-infomercial. As I noted in an update on that article, I am no longer sure if the total amount is $1 or $2 million.

TC50 founder Michael Arrington has doubled the amount of advertising. He says whatever DEMO offers, he will double it.

Arrington notes, “Our ads will be on our various TechCrunch networks sites and via our terrific sponsors, who are going to be adding their own inventory as well. We’ll give half to the top two winners, and half to everyone else who launches.”

It seems the silly wars appear to be on yet again this year.

I think it’s great that both DEMO and Techcrunch50 are offering bigger prizes – anything to help the startups that present past the initial buzz is a good thing. Let’s just hope Jason, Heather, Mike and Matt remember the end goal and don’t get back to last years “TC50: 1 – Demo: 1 – Startup: 0“.

DEMO Ups The Ante Against TC50 – Offers $1 Million To Winners

by Allen Stern - July 3rd, 2009

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demo and techcrunch50 Last month I discussed presenting at the DEMO and TC50 conferences later this year. In the comments, Techcrunch50 founder Jason Calacanis noted that one of the big differences between the two startup-infomercial conferences is that his Techcrunch50 offers $50,000 to the winner.

Now it appears DEMO has stepped up the prize pool bigtime by offering two $1 million dollar prizes. The prizes will be awarded to the best enterprise startup and the best consumer startup. The prizes are basically ad buys over the six month period following the conference.

Update 5:30PM: It appears that the total prize is $1 million, not two million as I previously noted. I am not sure if I got it wrong or if they changed it. I thought it read that two winners (one consumer, one enterprise) would each receive $1m.

Conference organizer Matt Marshall notes regarding the prize, “The campaign will include print advertisements, web banner placements, text link promotions, email newsletter promotions, and video ads. The package includes the development of creative content that is to be featured on IDG media properties – another huge value proposition to the winning companies.”

I assume the ads will be priced at the rack rate so the $1m is probably worth less had you bought the ads yourself and negotiated a better rate (probably 30% at best). No matter what, it’s good to see the winners get some publicity past the few posts they will get from the conference buzz.

How many of the companies that presented at either conference last year can you name? Can you name 10 of the 50 that presented at TC50? This huge ad buy should help two companies stay top of mind for at least six months and could give them a lift to build from.

Should I Present at DEMO or TC50?

by Allen Stern - June 22nd, 2009

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The title of this column is a question I am asked a couple of times a week…”should I present/apply to the DEMO or TC50 conference?” Both conferences require applications to be turned in by June 30th so I thought this was a great time to share my thoughts and feedback I’ve received about the conferences.

Let’s get the logistics out of the way – DEMO will be held on September 21-23, 2009 and Techcrunch50 will be held on September 14-15, 2009. Depending on the date of registration, attendees pay $2,000-3,000 for DEMO and $1,500-3,000 for Techcrunch50. (as a side note, I’ve seen tc50 producer Jason Calacanis giving away bunches of free tickets on his podcast, so you might try that road to avoid the high costs).

Last year I was one of the few people who attended both pitch events. You can read all of my coverage and an in-person comparison between both events. Overall DEMO was a better run show logistics-wise.

My thoughts are based on web/Internet businesses. If you have a physical product or other IT-related service, DEMO is basically the only choice.
Read the rest of this entry »

Was Your Presentation Memorable? Or Was It Forgettable?

by Allen Stern - March 3rd, 2009

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If you are an American Idol viewer, you know that when the singer finishes their performance Simon Cowell provides his analysis. Many times he says things like "that was forgettable" or "you didn’t do anything to stand out from the rest". As I watch hundreds of startups present their products and services, I am often thinking the same thing. And you should be too.

This week I watched about a dozen startup pitches at the DEMO conference via the live stream (which was fabulous btw). Most of the demos were, unfortunately, forgettable. The products might be awesome but nearly none of the presenters got me excited about their product or service. This issue isn’t just about the companies I watched at DEMO – it happens all the time at nearly every pitch event I attend. I will use DEMO as the example for the rest of this discussion but know that you can insert any pitch conference in its place.

What makes a pitch memorable? That’s simple (yes, it really is simple). It’s about showing your passion for your product.

When you are on stage, you want every single person watching your presentation to feel your passion about your product. Only one of the DEMO companies I watched brought some passion to their presentation. That company was Skout. The founder showed their dating jukebox and looked like he was humping it (in a good way). It was hot because you could feel the energy level in the room go up. The other presentations I viewed were all monotonous and almost seemed like it was the same presenter on all of them. No pitch or tone change, no excitement, just a boring, "here’s what it does". If you aren’t excited about your product, why should I be?

Compounding the problem was that nearly every presenter was wearing the same outfit. While I am not suggesting you dress up like you just came in from a fishing trip or color your hair orange, it also doesn’t mean you need to wear a blue shirt. We’ve seen the pale blue shirt crowd many times before. Even another shade of blue is fine — the pale blue screams forgettable.

UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said, "Make everyday your masterpiece". I would modify the line a little, "Make every pitch your masterpiece". I know it can be very hard, scary and nerve-wracking to be able to stand in front of 10, 100 or 1,000 people and talk. It’s certainly not easy for anyone, no matter how many times a person has done it. One of the things that always helps me is to remember that the people watching me speak are there to support me. In the case of DEMO, all of the people in the audience and watching from home want to cheer you on and want to see you succeed (I know I do). So instead of thinking that you are going out to pitch to a group of people you don’t know, think of the people in the audience as family. Change the way you look at the people you are pitching to and you will see how much stronger your presentations become instantly (even if they aren’t pitches).

I am going to share more tips on how to make your startup pitches memorable each and every time over the coming week. And I’d be happy to critique your pitch at SXSW.

As a sidenote, when I mentioned in the DEMO chat that I thought the presentations were forgettable, organizer Chris Shipley told me that it was easy to critique from the 3rd row. I’d be more than happy to bring my startup to DEMOfall but as I told Chris I can’t afford $20k.

The bottom line is simple – when you are pitching your product or service, bring passion, bring excitement and get the crowd enthused. Make your pitch memorable each and every time!

Wait a Moment… Who is the Desperate One?

by Allen Stern - February 19th, 2009

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demo techcrunch50 Last night I read a hit-job post like I haven’t seen since my days on the G in Brooklyn during the 70s. The hit-job I am referring to is Erick Schonfeld’s piece about Matt Marshall joining the DEMO conference team. Apparently because one person (Chris Shipley) decides to change her focus after running the conference for 13 years, they must be "desperate". Erick also makes the following observations, "He is going to have to reinvigorate a dying brand." and "It is fine by us if DEMO sticks to its model of extorting startups". I can’t believe we are still talking about this tc50 vs. demo crap.

Erick uses the post to explain that his conference, Techcrunch50, is the much better model and that now he will have to "crush" VentureBeat. He notes that techcrunch50 companies get in on merit (oh is that how they do it!). Erick also displays a chart displaying the very little traffic that demo.com receives but leaves the techcrunch50.com site out of the chart – the comparison chart is available below for reference.

I wrote an in-person review of both Demo and TC50 from last year as I was one of three people to attend both events. It was great to meet so many CN readers at both events. After the unprofessional treatment I received at TC50, I won’t be attending this year. I am not going to go into the behavior here but suffice to say that even the event staffers thought the behavior was unprofessional.

The truth is that the numerous stories I heard from the entrepreneurs of the demo pit startups, the ones that pay $3k/day, were not good. But, as one might guess, no one wants to speak on-the-record because they are afraid.

It’s totally understandable that the Techcrunch team is probably a little upset because Time magazine ranked their top competitor Mashable as a top blog for 2009 while Techcrunch was listed as "overrated". Might these be some additional reasons why Techcrunch might be the desperate one in this conversation?

They’ve added a "javascript page refresh" – this means that if you leave the site open in a tab, it will refresh every once in a while – extra pageviews for the site
They continue to increase the page views required to read the comments – first it was 100 on a page and a link to "view all comments" – now that link is gone and less comments are viewable on each page
They have decided to break embargoes when it suits them to make sure they appear first
Even with their reportedly strong-arm tactics, startups are starting to provide news to everyone but Techcrunch and as I’ve said since the early days the best route is to provide the news to all of the sites you trust to honor the posting time and get the most coverage and feedback you can.

Patricio Robles from eConsultancy has a good post reviewing the same post. He talks about why positivity sells; I guess he doesn’t read the aformentioned blog often. Let’s hope that Erick thinks about all the negative feedback on his post and offers up an apology to Matt and Chris, even if it’s handled privately.

RealDVD Temporarily Down While Awaiting Judge’s Review

by Allen Stern - October 4th, 2008

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It looks like the legal battle between RealNetworks and the movie studios over the RealDVD product continues. Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee is reporting that the RealDVD site has been temporarily taken down until at least Tuesday when a judge will review the matter. The idea behind RealDVD is to allow consumers to make backup copies of their DVD movies and watch them in a jukebox fashion. RealDVD keeps all of the copy protection and other systems when the DVD movies are copied so I am not sure what the huge gripe is. Computers must be "authorized" to view the videos that are listed in the RealDVD software.

RealDVD was one of the products that launched at DEMO last month. There was a lot of chatter that the movie studios wouldn’t be happy with the product.

Albrecht notes, "Yesterday, Real scored a small legal victory by having the case moved from a Central District Court of California in Los Angeles (the studios’ home turf) to a Northern District court, where the company hopes to find a more favorable setting."

realdvd

DEMO/Techcrunch50 – Wrap Up

by Allen Stern - September 13th, 2008

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demofall08 techcrunch50 The DEMOfall08 and Techcrunch50 conferences have concluded. Thanks to everyone who said hello, grabbed a sticker, discussed their startup and just made the week special. Over the coming weeks we will take a detailed look at several of the startups from both events.

A special thanks to Francois Bochatay from Sobees, Adolfo Foronda from Nerdstalker, Stephanie Quilao from Noshtopia and Clay Fisher/Daniel Lee from Briteclick for attending the CN brunch. Briteclick is one of the NY-based companies I met this week and will be conducting interviews with all of the NY-based companies over the next month.

Here’s all of the CN coverage from both DEMO and Techcrunch50:

Video Interviews and Demos