Looking back, written the day after demo day. Part 5 of 5 of the Launchpad series.
Launchpad, part 5: Demo day
A pitch to investors, the result as announced to the teams, and two weeks in Pennsylvania as date lines.
Yesterday was demo day. As announced to the teams, we won Launchpad: USD 100,000 in prize money, no equity. Written confirmation is still pending.
Five teams pitched to investors on Sunday, and we were one of them. I’ll write more about the pitch itself once Stan clears it. What I can tell you now is the two weeks before. As date lines, the way I have them in my head.
Saturday, October 3: one hour of sleep, nine hours of flying, three of us in one double bed at night.
Sunday, October 4: bus at 9 am from Times Square. In the evening my MacBook tells me it has run out of memory.
Monday, October 5: three posts, a launch video at 11:30 pm, the app breaks at night.
Tuesday, October 6: at 3:28 am I’m still dictating features. During the day, six customer interviews. Through the first elimination.
Wednesday, October 7: “Ten interviews are worth nothing. You need to sell.”
Thursday, October 8: our first two sales, way too cheap. At night, a progress bar for the LinkedIn import.
Friday, October 9: prices up. For the first time someone pays while still on the call.
Week two: the second elimination becomes a revenue ranking, and we’re in the last ten. Then a pitch round, and we’re in the last five.
Friday, October 16: pitch deck in Slidev, 18 commits in one day.
Sunday, October 18: demo day.
Losses: one holiday in Tenerife, two university courses and a lot of sleep.
My GitHub shows around 470 commits for October, in Kobe V3, the desktop client and the pitch deck. Most of it you’d never see from the outside. Loading states, retry logic, an import that no longer looks like a crash. That part is my job as founding engineer. In a camp full of creators it barely shows. Still, every demo Nils gave stood on it.
In part 1 I wrote that in two weeks I’d know whether trading beach for forest was worth it. Deciding to cancel Tenerife took twenty minutes at most. The night at the end of September when we cut half the plan was a lot harder. Both were right.
And the thing I really learned here has little to do with code. My reflex was always: build first, show later. In Pennsylvania I saw how much faster it goes when you show early, ask early and let the customer judge the unfinished thing themselves.
There was an after-party to close it out, and today the camp ends. For the next few days we’re staying in New York with a few other participants, meeting up in one of their co-working spaces and sleeping at another team’s place. We even get one free night in New York.
After that it’s back to Potsdam, into a semester that started without me.