{"id":169,"date":"2007-08-20T08:02:05","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T08:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/2007\/08\/20\/ycombinator_demo_day_summer_class_in_mountain_view\/"},"modified":"2007-08-20T08:02:05","modified_gmt":"2007-08-20T08:02:05","slug":"ycombinator_demo_day_summer_class_in_mountain_view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/archives\/ycombinator_demo_day_summer_class_in_mountain_view.html","title":{"rendered":"Ycombinator Demo Day: Summer Class in Mountain View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to my first <a href=\"http:\/\/ycombinator.com\/dday.html\">Ycombinator Demo Day<\/a> this last Thursday.  I wasn&#8217;t sure what to expect, except for the fact that a whole bunch of startups created by near-college grads would be presenting their projects.  I definitely wasn&#8217;t expecting any well-thought out business plans but was hoping to see some really cool stuff.<br \/>\nAfter the event, much has been written about the companies themselves, and you can read about them at <a href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2007\/08\/16\/the-y-combinator-list\/\">VentureBeat: The Ycombinator List<\/a> and at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2007\/08\/16\/y-combinator-demo-day-the-summer-startups\/\">TechCrunch: Ycombinator Demo Day: The Summer Class<\/a>.  There has been enough coverage about the companies, so rather than do that I wanted to write about something else regarding the Demo Day.<br \/>\nUsually when you sit through pitches, they can be relatively dry.  You see lots of graphs and how big the market opportunity is and it&#8217;s usually a more serious and professional presentation.<br \/>\nFor Demo Day, I was pleasantly surprised that each presentation had a healthy dose of humor cleverly injected.  I found myself chuckling at funny demos, laughing at jokes made at competitors&#8217; expense, and smiling to see them laughing at themselves.  During one of the breaks between presentations, I stopped to say hi to Paul Graham (co-founder of Ycombinator) and asked him about whether or not he encouraged humor to be part of the presentations.  He said they were actually more humorous during the dry-runs and that he actually pulled them back from being too over the top.  I shudder to think what they were like before he pulled them back&#8230;!<br \/>\nSitting through 19 demos for 3+ hours could have been a truly grueling affair.  I am glad that the young graduates of this summer&#8217;s Ycombinator class threw some humor into their demos and turning a potentially boring, lifeless afternoon into a more lively event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to my first Ycombinator Demo Day this last Thursday. I wasn&#8217;t sure what to expect, except for the fact that a whole bunch of startups created by near-college grads would be presenting their projects. I definitely wasn&#8217;t expecting any well-thought out business plans but was hoping to see some really cool stuff. After [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angel-investing-venture-funds","category-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}