Another suggestion - make sure that the person giving the demo knows the product inside and out. There's nothing that sabotages a demo like a question about the demo that can't be answered because the demonstrator doesn't know the intricacies of the product. This typically happens when the president/CEO is doing the demo, but wasn't on the team that built the product. At the very least, make sure that a product expert is in the room during the demo to answer any questions that might come up.

"It has to be short. It should take 5 minutes or less in person. An online video should be no more than one and a half minutes long."

That is so true, i have attended some demos that went over 20 minutes, at the end I felt like punching the demo-er in the face.. some people literally walked out of the place.

Remember, if you are not Steve jobs do not talk more than 5 minutes.

This is great advice.

I especially like "Adapt your demo for the audience" and "Use real data".

Your audience doesn't have time to think - Just inject something into their reptialian brains immediately. Anything they already know works faster.

thanks for the tips! I think it will really help this weekend, I especially like the "It has to look really really cool" tip. I really think that having really fancy looking demo is key to getting people excited about your product, even though that's not how it will be when you finally launch.

Question to those who have interviewed for YC before: Is it structured so that we can present from beginning to end, or should we expect to be fired with questions and possibly get a little sidetracked before finishing?

You will definitely get interrupted and sidetracked, so don't expect to get through your entire demo.

hopefully this arrives in time to help some people out this weekend :)

my #1 piece of advice to anybody that asked me about interviews: have a demo! even if it's something that you whipped up in 2 days, let them know that, but have a demo!

Generally this is true, but keep in mind that a non-technical audience will often have strong negative reaction to a demo based on what seem to hackers as the silliest, most trivial things: a rough-around-the-edges design, links that don't work yet, minor UI glitches, etc. Bear in mind that this audience can't distinguish between your application and your application's UI, so the most important part of the linked article is probably "It has to look really, really cool."

Of course, it sounds like you're giving advice on one event specifically, so the above may not apply. What's happening this weekend, anyway?

> ... links that don't work yet ...

Personally, I've found that clients react fine to broken links when there's something at the other end like a message that says "this doesn't work yet." But this is in the case where they're trying out their software halfway through on their own... not a demo up on stage or them trying out the complete project.

The basic idea to take away is that non-technical types don't like to be surprised. If they know something isn't going to work, and they click on it and it says "this isn't quite ready yet", everyone will be OK with that :)

that's a good way to explain what I was trying to capture in the "looking really cool" point. a demo is a visual thing, and people don't distinguish between the UI and the application, so make sure everything looks smooth.

i wrote this post about all technical demos, but released it today as the YC interviews are coming up this weekend.

Thanks for this list. Very cool of you to get it out in time for interviews.