NReduce online demo day: live and public | Hacker News Reader

NReduce online demo day: live and public

nreduce.com

51 pointsDanielKehoe27 comments

(Disclaimer - I recently became an nReduce mentor, but wasn't involved with mentoring any of the companies in the batch that were in the demo day. Watching the demo day has basically been my first interaction with the organisation since filling in my profile form and replying to a few emails.)

On the format:

* Despite all the niggles below - this was an interesting event and experiment. I'm looking forward to what they do in the future.

* A surprising number of companies didn't have a demo or a live site with anything more than a sign up form. The nReduce folk have since tweeted that they were going to have demo videos but ran out of time, they'll be around next month.

* I didn't like the format very much. You could jump between companies live rather than seeing them in sequence, but didn't get the context for what had happened already so I imagine there were lots of repeat questions... and you missed the context when you came into the conversation late. I'd be interested whether they later release the feeds so folk can see the stuff they missed. A linear presentation would be better IMHO.

* Technical problems with the live feed in a couple of times. Also seemed to be some technical problems with some companies seeing questions from audience.

* Bugs in question voting/promotion system seemed to cause some questions to be skipped (ironically the ones that people had voted up as interesting :-)

* Question ordering based on network-reach of asker/promoters seemed over-complex.

On the presentations:

* Lack of demos kinda sucked.

* Felt like a lot of the people needed more coaching on how to pitch and how to answer questions. Lots of N minute answers that should have been 30s answers. Lots of fuzzy answers that should have been crystal clear.

On the companies (basically copy and pasted from my post-demoday #bluntreview tweets :-)

* .@ApptivGames Intrigued to see if this attracts folk who don't have intrinsic motivation for exercise - like me [pitch = using exercise tracking to get virtual points for games online - http://www.apptivgames.com/ ]

* Edocr - Problem and solution not clear to me. You have customers so something there - needs clarity [pitch = something to do with documents and social media http://www.edocr.com/]

* Rentini - You have a working product! Result :) Don't find the USP terribly convincing though [pitch = holiday home finding via activities http://www.rentini.com/]

* .@getsuavely - You sound really creepy. Possibly coz I'm old and think you meet people in bars goshdarnit :-) [pitch = dating via social peer recommendation http://www.suave.ly/ - whole "wingman" and "validated single" language was real turn off for me... but I'm an old geezer who hasn't been single for 17 odd years now]

* Cloudable.me - The product pitch made sense. Sounds like something I might use. Want demo, not sign up form. [pitch = collect what your social media folk tweet/like and organise that shit for you http://cloudable.me - unfortunately while I was there the founders don't appear to have been able to see their questions]

* .@Meldium - Clear pitch, pain point & solution. Last two companies I worked at would pay for your product. Win! [pitch == centralised management/admin of saas users/services for your organisation. I have experienced this pain in spades. I would buy this at any company with more than six people in it.]

* .@dwelleeinc - Like idea, but pitch lacks clarity. Want a demo not a sign up form. [pitch == crowd sourced finding of apartments... but still not sure how exactly it works dwellee.com]

I didn't have time to go ask the last company, Recollect, any annoying questions :-)

This is Brad for Meldium. Thanks for the kind words Adrian. We enjoyed participating in Demo Day: it's quite an experience to have to handle a wide variety of product, business, and team questions in real time - Boris and I were kept on our toes.

We wish we would have had an opportunity to demo the product, as there was some confusion about the types of applications that Meldium manages. We were one of the few B2B companies in demo day, and I think many eyeballs were drawn to the consumer apps.

Our application is available to try for free at https://www.meldium.com - though it does require a Google Apps account for sign up. We'll have a demo video and a "sandbox" mode up soon for anyone to try the app immediately.

Thanks to the nReduce team for organizing and to all the mentors and other participants; this was a unique experience and we're happy for the exposure.

Colin here for Suave.ly. Thanks for the questions and feedback - we'll take it into consideration (with a grain of salt since as you say, as a married man for 17 some years, you're not in the market).

We've found most people find it natural since meeting through friends & acquaintances is the top way to meet offline. We are targeting people in their 20s, though.

Cheers!

(Just to be clear - you guys didn't come across as creepy in person in the live feed - the "company" did).

I'm not married - but you're right I'm almost certainly not the right market :-)

However - I chucked a link to your site at a couple of friends who are in their late teens (F), early twenties (M), and early thirties (F) who I know don't read my twitter stream. I obvious didn't prime them with my opinion :-)

The responses were "Kinda douchy" (teen F), "Is it a dogging site?" (20s M) and "Looks like something for blokes who want sex" (30's F).

None of them went past your home page.

It's a small sample I know - but it may mean that you're not sending the message that you want to send via your copy and images.

Haha, definitely enjoyed the comments from your friends. We'll run through some more A/B testing with copy + images after this feedback, so thank you!

Our conversion rate is decent right now, but it can always get better :)

Hey - please listen to reality rather than me if you're converting well :-)

You might have two diverse market segments too I guess..

Stephen here from Apptiv Games. Thanks for tuning in and for your support! I certainly agree with you... We could use coaching and mentoring. We're learning as we go and a lot of this is new for us!

It was a marathon of an experience, let me tell ya! Sometimes you felt like you had to talk for a long time to fill the dead space.

@adrianhoward - you made a great point about one liner pitch for http://rentini.com. We like your recommendation and I already changed the pitch to what you suggested. That's why we need more mentors at nReduce:)! Thanks a bunch for participation!

Great Questions + Feedback!

Our goal it to improve surprisingly each demo day! So really appreciate you sharing how to make it better.

Great feedback for the founders! I will email them and suggest they read this post.

NReduce has been really interesting and done a good job of trying for something different than YCombinator. In many ways it's much more of a complement to traditional startup incubators than a competitor.

Of the startups that I partnered with since June, about 15% have gone on to geographically located accelerators, a few have been acquired/hired for their product, a few have launched and not really gone anywhere and about half never got as far as launching a product.

Personally, I've gotten a huge amount of constructive feedback and a good handful of solid beta testers for my project.

Completely agree, it should be emphasized that nReduce isn't trying to compete with existing accelerators. I think it's actually a great first step for companies to get to the point where they can join one (since the good ones tend to require serious traction just to get in).

Personally the best thing our team got out of being an nReduce participant is the weekly checkins. Having 12 video checkins that document our progress has been really useful for showing investors the amount of progress our team can make week by week. We intend to continue this habit throughout the life of the company.

I joined in the hopes of getting feedback, but so far the site has just been broken. I can't figure out how to interact with startups, what each video is, uploading is broken, and the founders haven't been very responsive.

I hope things will get fixed, but the experience hasn't been great so far.

Hey, I am one of the founders and yes the peer product right now is pretty broken. Our bad on that.

Because we have a demo day / investors / mentors we had to build V1 of all the products first - so that we could get companies to demo day.

As of tomorrow we are starting over on the peer collaboration product / onboarding to make it awesome.

We basically had the first cohort of users go through our system. Now we can get past MVP's on the different products.

That being said I would really appreciate your continued feedback!

And thanks for giving it a shot in the first place!

Hey Joe, no problem. I didn't know you had a demo day, I just joined a few days ago. I sent you another email a few hours ago, if you could reply after the demo day so I can figure out why I can't add any startups, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for your help!

I'm sorry to hear it has been so rough, it is very much a situation where the founders have been working on the train as it is running down the tracks.

There have definitely been issues, but in general, the team has done a good job of addressing them.

I'm quite sure that right now they are overwhelmed with demo day and that once the dust settles for that things will get straightened out shortly.

I hope so too, at least for the startup feedback. As it stands, the product is entirely broken...

Off topic: If any nreduce people are reading this: I've signed up on your site but my registration got stuck after the phase where you submit a youtube introduction. I've e-mailed Joe Mellin, who'd emailed us about finishing registration, to no avail. Any assistance would be appreciated. Cheers! :)

edit: Thanks a ton, guys!

They've been building the product as they go, in fact they are a team on nReduce themselves. Give them a prod tomorrow after the demo day, they're normally quite responsive.

I will make sure he sees it.

raemond@nreduce.com

hey sorry about that! can you email me again?

Interesting. Founders of 8 companies doing online Q&A simultaneously. Viewers ask questions which get tweeted out with a #nReduceDemoDay hashtag.

You can see all the activity by using your Twitter client to search for #nReduceDemoDay:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=nReduceDemoDay

I don't like the simultaneous Q&A. I wanted to watch all the teams. It's an 8 ring circus. Of course, I don't like going to conferences that offer multiple tracks, either.

@DanielKehoe I think nReduce just needs to figure out how investors can switch quickly between startup windows and get into the right moment of conversation. If there are 8 startups in a bundle, does investor really want to talk/listen to all of them? An ability to skip startups that are not relevant because of their market niche or their stage is actually a great advantage and will help to focus on those that might be more relevant. I think parallel mode is more productive and active. In linear mode some folks may get bored. nReduce needs to play with timing and notification features that will make it rock. E.g. investor submits questions to 3 startups out of 8 and gets notified when startup reached the question in a queue - this will save time and efforts and make the process more interactive

Just saw this on Twitter:

@jolieodell: "Best demo day EVER. I wish all incubators were this respectful of startups/investors press folks' time"

Clearly the simultaneous Q&A had appeal. See Jolie O'Dell's VentureBeat article:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/nreduce-demo-day/

Hey guys, I like what you're doing. Here is some unsolicited advice: create a startup news magazine like HN.

That's it. Will read it from day one.

HN vs NR.

Endless fights, endless clicks, endless promotion for your startups.

We all win at the end.

The only drawback is, there isn't alot of buzz going for it in the media. When it picks up, things will significantly pick up, time will tell.

Yeah we have been focusing on providing value for our users. Will be making more of a public presence in the fall.

I like building sleepers :)

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