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

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?