Draper University participants Cameron Harris, Stephanie, and others share their experience training to pitch their startups at Demo Day. They describe bombing early pitches, practicing relentlessly, and the emotional payoff of presenting to Tim Draper and his fund. The program culminates in a graduation ritual where participants leap off a trampoline wearing capes.
Chapters
Speaking of the first pitch, I bombed my first pitch. I didn't even make it through my first pitch.
What if there was a publicly traded VC fund that anyone could buy into? And I looked at the legal and like, there's a way to make it work. And so I put this on Twitter and it blew up. Like, it was insane. And people were very, very passionate about the topic one way or the other. They loved it or hated it because what you don't want is You want people to feel something. You want them to like either love it or hate it or care. Either way, like enough to respond.
There's a sense of butterflies, and I believe it's good to have, right? You— I think You always supposed to be nervous and have that anxiety, right? I relate it to football. Anytime I walk out of a tunnel, I have butterflies, and I've been playing football since I was 8 years old. I played at the professional level, it does not matter. I still have the butterflies, right? When the lights come on, it's time to dance. It makes you feel alive, right? Yeah, very much so. I like right now, like I said, I feel so exhilarated. I'm thrilled. I'm driven by this, and I'm just excited to go give it what I got, right? It's the best—
my very first pitch in the tech world, so Hi, my name is Stephanie and I'm the CEO and co-founder of SkyPaws.
It's a skill that opens opportunities across borders.
So my online educational platform provides opportunities for teachers.
Which is where Puddle comes into play.
Right now, Puddle was created to, um, Before starting Micro Choir, all the places I looked at, I just looked at the reviews and it was just like scam, scam, scam, scam, scam. And so That's kind of another tip for entrepreneurs. If you just read competitors' reviews, see what everyone's saying is wrong with the business and fix that, you could have a decent business on your hands.
Demo Day is the time where you cannot back down. All the vulnerabilities, everything you've practiced for, everything you worked for, it's time to show it.
Okay, today's big day should be really fun.
Demo Day was the culmination of everything that we've been learning at HERO training. It was a really exciting opportunity to present our company, not just to Tim and other representatives from the Draper funds, but also to show what we'd be working on to our peers as well. So I think that was the most exciting part of Demo Day for me, was actually seeing what everybody else is working on and seeing how far they've come and being able to communicate what it is that they're doing. At Littlebridge, we teach kids the most important skill they will ever learn.
Demo Day in one word is nerves. I had— I've pitched many times, and this is the first pitch I've done since the pandemic. And I was so nervous. Overall, Demo Day was a lot of fun because I got to see everyone's ideas again, and it was such a juxtaposition of the first time I saw them. The first time, everyone was a little bit shyer, everyone was a little bit nervous. We didn't have slides, there were no product demos, there were no visual aids to help you understand what they were doing, so it was really just words and passion. SkyPaws is an all-in-one patent-pending device that measures all the necessary Demo Day was such an amazing experience for me.
I was— first of all, I was just honored. You know, I didn't have a pitch. I had never made a pitch before. I don't have a graphic designer. It's okay to not have everything figured out. That's why I'm here. Like, all of these people are rooting for you, and the VCs are here not to, like, pick you apart, but to just show you you know, different aspects that you may not have seen. So Demo Day really unlocked something very special in me, and I felt like— I felt certainly braver and more powerful afterwards. 500,000 students from the Caribbean take this exam twice a year. 20% of those students come from Trinidad and Tobago.
One win that I— that's most notable to me is The ability to deliver an adequate pitch. That was my main thing being so relatively new to the tech world. I just want to be able to deliver a pitch because I didn't really know what it was. But going through the whole HERO training and failing my first pitch in front of the cohort, being able to deliver one on the showcase day was That was the biggest win for me. What up, what up, what up, what up, what up? All right, my name is Cameron Harris, and basically the vision of Portal is to be the Google of Web3.
Great job, everybody did a really nice job. We were really impressed, and we decided we're going to have 6 winners who go to dinner, not 5. We always like to Overdeliver. Let's hear. Okay, who's number six? It's Max. Number five is Yasmin. Number four, Broderick. Number three, Jiwon. Number two. Yeah, are you guys guessing who it's pretty much undisputed?
I used to be bullied when I was younger for playing Roblox, and now we're changing the world.
So—
Now everybody, everybody, the whole class, you guys stay up here. Whole class. Here, I'll stand there. You guys can be down, up, Superhero pose!
Yeah, so I'm super fortunate. It's my university, Miami. We do a lot of pitch competitions, so came in very confident, very ready to share blocks. We've been practicing the past few days with grill nights, which are amazing preparation. Uh, to really refine the pitch and get it ready for the judges. So, came in confident and guns a-blazing, ready to rock and roll.
So.
So, Stonks is the number one platform for Demo Days. It is the best platform to get in front of angel investors from Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, all the major tech companies in Silicon Valley. So this is a huge opportunity for us in the top 6 to really get in front of this audience. And show them what we've been building.
Thank you.
Knowing that I may never see these people again, it kind of hurts to. To be honest with you, because everybody in my team, they taught me something new. Everybody in my team has been in the world of tech, and I was the newbie. So for them to be so accepting to me and be so helpful, they may think they got rid of me, but they'll never get rid of me.
Will last a lifetime. And I thought I would be here just making professional connections, but I've made, I've made the best friends that I've ever had.
The graduation jump to me was just a full-circle moment. The first kind of introduction into DU is taking the first plunge into the pool and just go for it. And so after applying that kind of mentality through that, through throughout the whole program, pushing and pushing and pushing yourself. And for me, now it's gotten me to graduating Draper University. These people are your starting point. They might not be your next co-founders, but they will always be your sounding board. And so to take leaps from the front of the room all the way to the back, to fall in this beanbag of happiness and tears and just the culmination of your whole experience here, is a moment like no other. I think initially it's really hard to realize what's going on when you're trying not to miss a trampoline, but knowing that no matter what, you're going to be caught, whether it's by your experiences or the founders around you, is just a heartwarming feeling.
As part of graduation, we got to leap into our futures in front of all of our peers. in a way that felt very significant. I mean, a lot of the things here, you have to trust the process.
Walk the road with gusto and enthusiasm!
I'm gonna walk the road with gusto and enthusiasm!
And seeing the trampolines and a big pile of colourful beanbags and seeing everyone in their capes and their hero masks definitely feels like, oh, is this just, is this just for fun? But actually underlying it, there are some really pivotal and significant moments that are happening. And seeing all of your peers graduate and take that leap of faith and jump into their future and doing it yourself in front of your peers definitely felt like one of those moments that you will remember, because from here it's all unknown. Woo!
We're training to become superheroes, so we're going from the, you know what I mean, the normal beings to superheroes. So I get it. That makes a lot of sense. I can understand why.
