But it wasn`t just Demo Day that helped us raise funds. Compared to fundraising in Europe, the process in the Bay Area is extremely efficient and user-friendly for founders. Pre-Series A investments are usually made through a standardized and simple agreement called SAFE, which is 5 pages long. The Company receives an investment in exchange for granting rights to the investor for future equity in the Company, similar to a warrant. There are no lengthy negotiations with investors on investment terms and no expensive lawyers or notaries to hire. The contract is signed electronically via the Clerky online platform. In practice, this means that the time of an investor who says “Yes, I want to invest” until you receive the money in the bank can only take 2 days. This can be critical to the success of your business, as you can get back to work faster and continue to build the team and product. “What`s the difference with Zoom?” Meanwhile, the entire sales stack has been moved to the cloud, with the exception of online meeting software. What sets Demodesk apart from Zoom is our revolutionary screen sharing technology. Existing tools record the screen of the moderator`s local office and broadcast this video to the client.
Instead, we`ve set up a 100% web-based virtual ad that anyone can access by simply clicking on a link. The benefits include: no downloads, no delays, meetings are truly interactive, as the presenter and viewer can click and type at the same time, and presentation content can be automatically preloaded at the beginning of the meeting. YC`s Pioneer Fund offers mock interviews to everyone who has been invited. You can schedule them online via this booking link pioneerfund.as.me/interview-prep. The interview process alone was a great learning experience for us. But, of course, it was nothing compared to what we learned during our time in Mountain View. I`ve tried to condense our biggest conclusions below. Alex and I moved to Mountain View on January 2nd.
We rented a house where we both lived and worked. We were lucky and found a nice sublet on Craigslist that was just around the corner from YC`s office on Pioneer Way. By the way, if you haven`t entered after being together 24/7 for three months, it`s probably a good co-founding match ;). When we arrived at the first consultation, we were very happy to meet our group partners, Adora, Dalton and Solomon. Surely they would know exactly what we should do to find the product market and how to get on the unicorn path. Of course, they didn`t – what they told us was to talk to our users, refine our product, and keep up with our growth. There were no shortcuts. We knew our market much better than any YC partner, screen-sharing expert or potential investor. We had spoken to our customers more than ever before. How could they have a better response than our customers and us together? They couldn`t, and the only way we could make progress was to keep iterating and keep building what our customers wanted. Try Avodocs and you`ll have fewer headaches to deal with.
“How can this be a billion-dollar business?” The market potential is huge with 20 million sales representatives having a market size of $20 billion. Demo Day is the grand finale at the end of the program, where founders introduce their companies to Silicon Valley`s most prestigious investors. .