Techcrunch50 Demo Pit - Experience sharing with POCC

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About Techcrunch50
Launch-pads for startups
Criteria & Process of application
Types of companies
Mostly Web related?
Idea startup, Funded startup, and even revenue generating startups
About Demo-Pit
Cost Involved
Techcrunch50 winners
Copyright Onion Technologies Pvt. Ltd. 2009

Our Launch Plans
Company started late 2008 and immensely involved into product development
In March: Not ready with full product but got thinking of LAUNCH - we just need to launch what we have and keep iterating
Goals for launch
Complete minimal features that we can show off
Get towards target market – content companies in education, events, news vertical
Focus on US market
Started looking options…

Launch options?
Online world, just kick off the website!
Not much expert advice and quality feedback?
Industry specific tradeshows: Really expensive!!!
Y Combinator / Seedcamp
This is not a launch pad but good if your goals are mentorship and investment.
Proto.in / Head-Start / Nasscom
Few great options, good if your focus is raising investment soon from India
Also, you can launch something else in these conference at later stage

Two closest options were…
DemoFall & Techcrunch50
Both have good options. Techcrunch50 seems to be more oriented towards early stage startup and also focuses more on web stuff!
But yes apply to as many startup launch options you see
You get to learn about competition in startups
You get to hear opinions on your product
You get started preparing stuff that matters to investors
You get connected to many people who matter in startup community.
You validate your ideas and business model to some extent.
Oh yeah, and if you are selected do “ASK FOR DISCOUNT”

The Techcrunch50 Process
Each step crossed was pushing us more…
Shortlisted based on written application
Excited for interviews
Interview with CEO of Techcrunch
Focused on product newness and basic viability of business
Long time no second interview!
Many people were tweeting whether no interview means NO?
Soon we got confirmation for another interview with Jason! Hooray!
Interview with Jason, CEO of Mahalo.com
Very crisp focused on business model and marketing strategies

The Decision…
Their decision was “DEMOPIT”
What could be the reason for that?
Team? Revenue? Beta-Customers?
We had just lost hope to do any launch
Just forgot this launch thing for full-two weeks!!!
Kind of back to square-one, Just launch online?
Oh wait, it might be a good idea to get started in US?
Had to kick off talking with potential partners, potential business development person, and customers too! All in US…
It’s already August and soon things will slow in US for year end…
Let’s just start this thing. DemoPit could complement this actually!!!

The preparation
As we decided for Techcrunch50
Development speed increased and things were looking good
Focused more on what’s good for demo or showing “more”
Didn’t achieved all that we wanted but yes minimum functionality!
Website work outsourced in 2 weeks
Demo Video made in-house in couple of days
Got business card printed in last week
And yeah bought some gift items for demo table the day we had to fly
Oh we were good, already had business visa!!!
Why we “both” went?

First Day as attendee
Oh yeah whole night coding and even a warning from landlord! We were just lost and had no idea about time!
Focus of the day was
Attend some top 50 on-stage pitches in first-half
Get to know how to get audience award
Make many friends and invite them to demopit next day
Most of the second half was spent in demopit to learn what’s going.
AT LAST MOMENT arranged a MONITOR for the demo!

DEMOPIT
Frequently asked questions
What do you do?
What differentiates you from ____?
How do you make money?
It is good to have experience in SALES
Need to have passion each time you repeat the story!
Didn’t had fancy stuff on booth nor a great cash offers
But our gifts were cute and most people appreciated
And some came just for that and not the pitch ;)
Weren’t upto mark for winning audience award
But a great deal of feedback and contacts in startup community are made.

The important message…
Rich user experience is critical and make it more social
Brand perception is not easy to change
Some even suggested us to change our company name
There are something you need to do on time
Trademark work was done just before launch
Not filed in US yet, due to issues and might take 3 more months.
PR is all about connections and spamming too??
We failed to focus on PR during the conference day
And, never felt to spam the PR list we had prepared.
Additionally, felt not to buzz our self as we still had to complete trademark filing in US.

Other companies launching?
Could be similar or even a competitor!
Udemy.com is similar but focused only on online courses.
Could be a service provider to you later
We are talking with trademarkia.com to help us for legal services.
Others we could use?
ObjectiveMarketer.com, Chargify.com, AskYourTargetMarket.com
It’s a good thing to be early adopter of some other startup too!

After all what about leads??
Techcrunch50 is not an industry specific conference, so it depends.
For us events are part of target market & we do have some contacts which will be converted into leads down the line.
Note people coming to such conferences are “early adopters” and if people don’t understand your product, forget the world!
SaaS, Online marketing is good to start
But, yes business development / sales people in US matters.
If founder, can stay in US. HE SHOULD as far as possible
You don’t need customers who say YES / NO, you need visionary thinkers.

Status
Rolling out couple of beta customers this year
SaaS launch happening early next year.
Identified couple of senior business development people and advisors in US
Actively looking for
Hand-on passionate coders fresh (1) and experienced (1)
UI and / or UXD (1)

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Techcrunch50 Demo Pit - Experience sharing with POCC

by onion.tv on Jan 12, 2010

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Techcrunch50 Demo Pit - Experience sharing with POCC — Presentation Transcript