I’d write a summary of the night but luckily it’s done. The quick bits: Mathew Ingram spoke about how the Globe tries to run like a startup. Then we had demos from TribeHR, Declan Whelan, Steve Hanov, Don Walsh, Arni Mikelsons, and the audience favourite this time around Harry Scanlan.

Get your demo ready for #12 coming in December or January. Sign up to our google group linked off DCG site to stay up to date. My tip for demos? Treat them the same as pitches. I believe it was Austin Hill who summed it up best, hearts, minds, wallets.

Hearts: Tell me a story so I feel the pain you’re going to solve. Even in a technical demo you can pull this off. “So you’re up until 2am once again trying to cobble together yet another build by hand”. All you want is to get to the question “ok, I know what you’re talking about, but how are you going to solve that for me?”

Minds: Get into the techie bits of how you’re going to solve the problem you’ve now got me feeling, “my build tool will manage all your builds by…..”. The goal here is to get me to think “ok, I like that solution, how much?”

Wallets: How much, pricing model etc? Or if you’re raising money from me, how much and what are the details?

Mess up that order and you likely won’t get through it all or I’ll tune out. Most demos start with minds, then the crowd pushes them through questions to wallets and they never get to the hearts. Go for the heart first, make me cry first and then you’ll have my attention!!

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