How we will win.
Why I think we've found a new Blue Ocean worth $billions
My favorite newsletter is How they Grow by Jaryd Hermann. He looks at the growth-loops behind ultra-successful startups.
I am writing this post in that same style. Except I am explaining future growth. This is the story of how my own startup DemoTime will become a unicorn in a wide blue ocean.
In case you’ve not encountered DemoTime before: we automatically edit every demo meeting into a highlight-reel video & send that to the attendees.
So each time you demo on Zoom/Teams/Meet we automatically create a highlight video (e.g. “Your demo with AcmeCorp in 8 highlights”).
The $multi-billion elephant in the room
There’s an adjacent software category called Revenue Intelligence with some hugely successful companies: Gong ($178M ARR), Clari ($68.3M ARR) and Chorus ($55M ARR).
You might think DemoTime exists in their shadow. But in reality it’s more like a mirror; we’re a different & complementary solution to the same problem.
These provide a very similar core value to DemoTime: we are all designed to help demo ➡️ deal conversion rate.
Let’s compare the core thesis of the two:
Revenue Intelligence: by applying analytics to demos/calls, you indirectly improve close-rate by discovering strategic insights and coachable moments.
Demo Rengagement: by applying video-editing to demos/calls, you directly improve close-rate by re-engaging people. One demo becomes multiple touchpoints. The highlights re-engage/reinforce/remind them of the value & hopefully also reach their boss/team/stakeholders.
The Revenue Intelligence market has clearly demonstrated that demo➡️deal is something people will pay a lot for.
DemoTime’s wide Blue Ocean is the ability to do this in a genuinely new, more direct way.
Two sides of the same mirror?
If these categories are two sides, let’s compare the two.
Everyone Loves Loops 🔁
There is no direct loop in Revenue Intelligence.
The indirect/weak loop is that salespeople talk & have high turnover. So a lot of new reps join each year, and somebody might say “Hey we used Gong at our last company…”
This loop applies to us too of course.
But DemoTime also has a much stronger loop: you can’t use the software without showing it to people. Once a company has installed DemoTime - every single demo they do will be edited into a highlight-reel & sent to the attendees (with a strong focus on further spreading to their boss/team/stakeholders).
To illustrate the point - let me be like Jaryd and do a diagram (his are better):
One company with 100 reps x 40 demos = 4,000 demos per month x 3 attendees = 12,000 people per month seeing a DemoTime highlight-reel video. From that one company.
Maybe 10% of those are also software companies?
You see where I am going with this. Once the flywheel starts turning - it’s easy to see a lot of companies at least becoming aware that demo ➡️ highlight-reel video is possible & a great way to boost close rate.
A whimsical blue ocean? 🐳
I keep mentioning it. But the ability to automatically edit demo ➡️ highlight-reel video is brand new.
Yes - this means less competitors… but it also has a novelty factor.
People have almost never seen such a high-effort follow-up. So this amplifies everything; from the loop above, to word-of-mouth, to the engagement rates on the videos themselves (and therefore their conversion impact).
Price Advantage
The last advantage we think Demo Rengagement has over Revenue Intelligence is price. We price similarly (about $140 / rep / month) - but our market research has shown this is considered cheap. So it’s likely we can charge more over time (grandfathering in our early adopters). And we can enjoy that higher perceived value.
It makes sense: editing & distributing e.g. 40 videos per month into unique highlight-reel videos feels far more valuable than simply analyzing them.
Vertical SaaS
The market for Revenue Intelligence is larger. That’s because DemoTime is vertical-SaaS: it works far better for software companies. So our addressable market is maybe 40% of theirs.
The flipside of this: vertical SaaS is attractive for a reason. It solves a problem for one specific group very well, and therefore the product and GTM can be more focussed.
In DemoTime’s case: we very specifically help SaaS companies go from demo ➡️ close by editing every demo-meeting into a highlight-reel video & getting that watched.
We only care about companies who sell high-ticket software with demos.
How we will grow with Big Dominos
One part of our strategy is really simple: focus on the “big dominos”.
By this we mean the big software companies who also often sell to other software companies.
In fact - once we have a few of these, it will start to look inevitable that demo ➡️ highlight-reel video will become part of the standard playbook for sales-led SaaS. (So our valuation will likely quadrouple once we land the first big deal, double on the 2nd, etc.)
This is because we can turn a small investment in top of funnel (in person event sponsorship of SaaStr/SaaStock, etc. and some Substack / Podcast sponsorships) into both deals and significant secondary exposure. Our laser-focus on sales-led SaaS companies definitely helps.
Our test marketing has shown that exposure to an audience like SaaStr converts very well - and is disproportionately likely to also sell to software companies or sales teams - helping us with our indirect exposure loop.
Let’s not forget
This article is meant to be an impression of How Things Grow. And Jaryd starts every article with an origin story.
Ours is the familiar tale of a founder scratching their own itch.
In my first company people loved us on the demo ❤️. But it was really hard to keep that momentum going afterwards💔.
Also I hated following up. Not because I was lazy. But because the demo itself was a tough act to follow.
It feels bad to go from a great demo to something really basic (“just checking in…”).
So one day I downloaded the Zoom recording & manually edited it into highlights.
“Surprise…!” I wrote, linking to the highlight-reel.
Obviously they’d never seen anything like that before!
People loved it. But it took literally 4 hours per demo.
Being a software engineer I had an idea: what if I wrote a tool which logged everything on the demo? This would give me precise timestamps. This would speed up my manual editing (as I know where to cut).
Then you can picture the evolution. Successive versions of my weird-demo-thing would automate more of the process. Until one day it was fully automated (but still specific to my company).
The motto of every pivot: “We all like this better!”
The best part of doing a demo became the reactions when I sent the highlights.
People had never seen anything like it… and they were surprised (especially given the speed of creation).
We liked this weird demo tool more than we liked our actual product. So in June 2022 I went to SaaStr Europa. I was the scruffiest person there with tourist-shorts & a literal orange carrier bag.
My goal: find out if anyone else would like to send highlight-reels after their demos.
The answer: yes. Despite it being just me walking around & talking - there was enough obvious & legitimate interest for us to officially pivot & go “all in” on our weird demo thing.
The problem was: it only worked for our software.
By the time I returned to SaaStr Europa in June 2023 I had a real product which could reliably edit any demo meeting of any SaaS product into an engaging highlight-reel.
It was very satisfying meeting some of the same people - telling them that idea had become a real product!
A happy ending?
As I write this in July 2023 - we’ve hit a major milestone. We’ve got official approval from Zoom. The product works incredibly well (we’ve run hundreds if not thousands of tests).
The problem is - we’re very short on funds.
Everything DemoTime has done so far I have funded with the revenue from my first company. And the other company has suffered from the diverted resources and split-focus. So we cannot continue without some kind of external capital.
So to be frank: executing the above vision likely depends on raising a pre-seed or seed round. This will give us the ability to continue, to invest in a little top-of-funnel to start the flywheel, and to truly go “full time” on DemoTime.
If anyone could make a warm intro - that would help. I’d imagine we’re fairly “investable” as:
We’ve built a really good product
We’ve validated the market
We had enough conviction in the above to fund it ourself for so long
As a team we are very comfortable selling enterprise software. This is in our DNA. But this time we have a much, much better product with a vertical focus.
If you’re able to make an intro - please write to me on sam@demotime.com.
Also write to me if you sell software with demos! (I have something for that 😉).