Chris Shipley's blog

It’s fitting to wrap up this series on pitching your company by talking about the product. After all, this is DEMO.

Each year, I hear hundreds of company presentations, and a surprising majority of them gloss over the product that they are planning to bring or have brought to market.   Indeed, in most investor pitch deck templates (including the one we use at Guidewire Group), the product gets one slide of seven or ten.  On that slide, the product is reduced to a handful of bullet points, and maybe – but not often enough – a screen shot or photo of the product.

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As the December 1 deadline for DEMO 09 demonstrator applications approaches, you can bet that we're getting all sorts of questions about the event, the audience it pulls, its track record, and - most notably - its price.

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I’m excited to see so many new faces at DEMOfall 08 this week.  Iin fact, this is the biggest DEMOfall event we’ve ever had.  Most importantly, it’s just the size we like it:  Lots of great people to meet without overwhelming crowds and noise.  Seventy-two amazing companies and products from across a very broad spectrum of the information technology market, with plenty of time to hear from each one of them and get up close in the pavilion.

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Last week, I wrote from Sydney about a number of companies I met in the first couple days of the ANZA Technology Network’s FocUS workshop series. Since then, I’ve taken a whirlwind tour of Australia, visiting Adelaide, Brisbane, and Melbourne before returning to the U.S.

Like Auckland and Sydney, technology innovation is thriving in the cities around Australia. Here are a few of the promising companies I met along the way.

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In recent weeks, I’ve offered advice on preparing for a product launch, and perhaps today’s installment should have come first. Then again, you’d be surprised how many young companies plan a launch event without fully setting objectives for the outcome.

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This week, the 72 companies selected to launch products at DEMOfall 08 are conferencing with our expert audio/visual team. This is the first review of their six-minute demonstration scripts, designed to suss out any outrageous and ineffective presentation ideas, identify unusual staging requirements, and generally help the presenters get comfortable with the DEMO stage routine.

The single most frequently-asked question, during these one-on-one calls, is this: How do I get a DEMOgod award?

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It is so easy to focus on the six minutes on stage that companies launching products at DEMO overlook the importance of the demonstrator pavilion.

In truth, those noisy, busy hours between the stage presentations are the most important time a company has at the DEMO conference. It’s the one, best opportunity for attendees to easily find you, and it’s your opportunity to do a deep dive on your product, strategy, and company.

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During the next few days, we'll put the cap on the demonstrator class for DEMOfall 2008. The 70 companies (we may slip in one or two more; there are just that many good ideas coming to market) that will take the stage in September represent a diverse and complex picture of the unfolding technology market. A cycle of hyper-inflated expectations for Web 2.0 have given way to the realities of strong business models, customer-centric development, and well-considered go-to-market plans. This fall, we'll see how this shifting cycle is creating new opportunities, making old ideas new again, and driving real change deep into business and consumer markets.

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