🎤 So you're planning a virtual Demo Day ...
How do you make it as relevant and impactful as possible during COVID? That's what I've been grappling with. Come read some of my guiding principles to making a virtual Demo Day compelling.
We’re now a year into COVID-19.
That still feels a little surreal to say. Whether it feels much longer or shorter than that for you, we’re now at the point where we’re coming up on those early COVID anniversaries. Can you believe it has been a year since Tiger King swept the nation?
Last Spring, I was running Johns Hopkins University’s student accelerator program (called Fuel) when - like accelerators worldwide - we were forced to pivot to virtual on the fly. This meant planning an entirely virtual Demo Day in less than a month.
Given that short time horizon, and just general life craziness, there seemed to be a lot of leeway for any kind of makeshift program that could be executed online. Even hosting one at all seemed like a case for kudos.
Now that we’ve been living in a virtual-dominated world for a year, there has been time to prepare something thoughtful for this Spring. Our Spring 2021 Fuel Accelerator has been planned, start to finish, with a virtual environment in mind, so Demo Day has higher expectations this time around.
And as we’re just a couple weeks away from our Demo Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share some guiding principles that have helped me throughout the planning process.
But before we dive into it, feel free to subscribe to ensure you never miss a Coach’s Corner newsletter.
Give people a reason to engage.
There’s no way around it - people are inundated with virtual events these days.
We spend most of our working days in front of screens; its going to take something special to get someone to engage with yet another virtual event. After all, why should they spend two hours on a weekday evening at your Demo Day when they could be doing … well, literally anything else?
One way we’re incentivizing people to engage with our Demo Day is by offering a $1,000 Crowd Choice award to whichever venture receives the highest number of votes. This not only gives our teams a reason to promote Demo Day in order to solicit votes from friends, family, and anyone who will send a few clicks their way, but it also gives the attendees a reason to tune in and see if their vote was a difference maker.
In order to keep the live component compelling, we will be showing each recorded pitch during Demo Day before the five minutes of Q&A with our alumni judges’ panel. And while the judges are deliberating after the pitching dust clears, each team will have a breakout room of their own where attendees can connect with them.
Georgetown ran a similar model for their Demo Day in late March and it seemed like the best possible way to recreate the networking component that can make Demo Days so impactful.
Another way to do this is make it easier to engage with the startups on their own time, which brings me to my next guiding principle …
Find the balance between live and asynchronous.
One of the allures of an in-person Demo Day is the spectacle of it all. The teams and organizers are dressed to the nines, the venue is usually decorated for the occasion, and the catered spread provides a reason to stick and network after the pitches wrap up.
Truthfully, much of the spectacle is lost when going virtual. It’s OK to embrace that.
In fact, going virtual provides a ton of perks that are prohibited by an in-person event.
For starters, anyone can attend these days. While before our invite list consisted of alums still located in the greater Baltimore area, now we have RSVPs from all over the world. So what’s lost in intimacy is gained in scope.
Additionally, there’s less of a need for the two hour Demo Day to be the be-all, end-all of your accelerator experience.
For Fuel, we are giving each of our teams the ability to pre-record their pitch ahead of time using Loom (free screen-recording software) and then posting that on our webpage so that interested members can view them both before and after Demo Day. It also takes just a little bit of the pressure off of perfecting the pitch in the moment or running into technical issues in the middle of their pitch.
God forbid a poor WiFi connection costs you a chance at $20K.
Celebrate the wins.
Not to (under)state the obvious, but this year has been tough. Major props are due for any student entrepreneur that not only participated in an accelerator program this academic year, but also made significant progress on their venture.
Throughout the course of our accelerator, we’ve had teams launch on the App Store, make their first (and many subsequent) sales, win external pitch competitions, establish key partnerships, make technological breakthroughs, and just generally preserve through daily hardships to get to where they are now.
Demo Day will have its own set of winners who walk away with well-deserved non-dilutive funding, but each venture has its own set of personal wins since the start of this year.
These wins need to be celebrated.
Highlight the student entrepreneurs and their ventures through your social media channels, university press outlets, and to the other students, staff, and alumni who are involved in the innovation ecosystem. Make sure that they get the recognition that they so readily deserve after working day in, day out on their ventures when the alternative is so much easier.
Which brings me to my final piece of advice …
Check out our Demo Day!
I hope you are able to join the celebration of our Johns Hopkins University student entrepreneurs on Thursday, April 22 from 6-8 pm EST. Feel free to RSVP here.
Once you sign up, you’ll receive notification when the pitches are live and able to be voted on for the Crowd Choice award.
See you there!
🔙 Miss something?
Last week I put out my monthly Coach’s Corner newsletter which highlighted current student funding opportunities, university entrepreneurship news, and jobs/internships (the latter of which I’m re-posting below).
🎓 Internships
I’ll be honest, Justine and Olivia Moore (twin sisters at VC firm CRV) do a fantastic job curating internship opportunities through their Accelerated Substack newsletter. Highly recommend you get that coming your way ASAP. The below list is primarily their list with a few ones I’ve heard about sprinkled in.
23AndMe - Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Intern (Remote)
Equal Ventures - MBA VC Interns (Remote)
Ripple - Product Marketing Intern (SF, Remote)
Harness - Marketing Intern (SF, Remote)
Stripe - MBA Revenue Ops Intern (SF)
TheRealReal - Marketing, Engineering, Operations Interns (SF)
Impossible Foods - DTC + Retail Marketing Intern (Redwood City)
WorkBoard - Finance Intern (Redwood City)
The Flex Company - MBA PM Intern (LA, Remote)
GoodRx - Product Management, Data Analyst Interns (Santa Monica)
Block Renovation - PM Intern (Brooklyn)
Air - Customer Success, MBA Strategy & Ops Interns (Brooklyn)
WeWork - WeWork Labs, Marketplace Interns (NYC)
ℹ️ Final CTAs
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Know someone who’s running a virtual Demo Day and could benefit from this article?
Interested in chatting to see how I can help your university entrepreneurship center or student startup? I’m interested as well! Check out my website below to get an idea of my services.
If you’ve got some suggestions, or want to get in touch to promote your venture or an opportunity, you can let me know below.