Peter Hong says he’s like a proud papa in the days leading up to the Startup Factory’s Demo Day, the showcase of the ventures the cohort has developed, investigated, validated and honed for a general audience to see.
“Well, I just hope they do well, and cross your fingers,” said Hong, ISU Startup Factory director.
The Demo Day is May 20 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the ISU Research Park Core Facility Atrium, 1805 Collaboration Place, Ames.
There will be 10 founder presentations made to an audience of supporters of the program, family members, friends, other accelerators in the area and local investors, Hong said.
After the pitches is networking time, where each of the cohort members have a table and people mingle, ask questions and make connections, he said.
“The goal is to say ‘Look, this is your opportunity to practice and engage people,’” Hong said. “Get them emotionally engaged, get them to get their interest up and regardless of whether they have a direct impact on your business, they might know someone. So this is … another opportunity to expand your network and most important, it’s to have you practice getting that next meeting.”
In an interview before the event, Hong had other bits of advice for aspiring startup founders and innovators.
Entrepreneurs must deal with uncertainty with a sense of curiosity.
A lot of the technical people that get involved in the startup factory are used to dealing with formulas and a scientific process that has specific steps, he said. “And entrepreneurship is not like that,” he said. “It’s wandering through the forest, hopefully gathering as much information as you can, get the best straight line you can. But you’re never going to be a straight line, so dealing with that uncertainty and dealing with it with a sense of curiosity are the kinds of things that we try to invoke with the program.”
Simplify your pitch.
When you pitch, pitch in a way that is emotionally engaging and at a level of understanding that a grade-schooler would comprehend, Hong said. You want to be memorable so the person hearing it can repeat it to someone else who may be able to help, he said. “Simplicity is probably one of those concepts that in preparation for demo day … is one of the biggest challenges that most of our founders have.” And that’s because they are so intense about the technical portion of what they are trying to commercialize, he said. “It’s that difference of being the expert in the room about the technology, versus the expert in the room about the business.
“I can’t tell you how much time we spend on just developing a one-liner.”
Make sure to validate your business. Make sure there is demand for it and that there is a pain point big enough that people will pay you for a solution.
After interviewing customers, one member of the cohort this year decided to make a “huge pivot,” Hong said. “He came in with one idea and upon thinking about the market and reaching out, figuring out what his MVP [minimum viable product] would look like, it all of a sudden, took a turn and he said, ‘You know, it’s a better fit if I do this.’” Hong said the cohort had a couple of financial tech companies that took a slight pivot as well.
Not every idea should be a business.
“Sometimes it’s a good idea to go ahead and launch a business,” Hong said. “Sometimes it’s not.”
Listen to your customers in an open-ended way.
Product market fit is so important, and you can only know that through customer discovery, Hong said. And it might seem simple, like asking someone, ‘“Hey, do you have this problem?’” when in fact you should be saying, “Tell me about your problems,” Hong said, cautioning against leading people through the conversation. “You’d be surprised how hard that is for most people to do it, because they’re the expert, right?” Hong said. “They’re the expert in the room 90% of the time, when they’re in the classroom or wherever … so they don’t ask questions in the way that you know someone who doesn’t know anything would ask, and that’s really the way we try to differentiate for people.” Hong said his program relies on the book, “The Mom Test,” which includes fundamentals on how to ask questions, and the audiences you should be talking to, which are not your friends and family, “because they love you and they will never say no to you.”
The following is a list of the ventures that will be presented at Demo Day:
Bioillucens
Mwende Ngie and Erick Otieno
Bioillucens provides Black Soldier Fly biofuel for sustainable rural livelihoods.
BondFlow
Jordan Taylor and Isaac Kalapos
BondFlow uses AI to make corporate bond trading easier for institutional funds.
Driscoll Land and Water Restoration
Joe Driscoll and Pamela Retseck
Driscoll Land and Water Restoration aims to harness the power of plants for restoration.
Ingesta
Qun Wang, Chenxu Yu and Cathy Miller
Ingesta makes oral vaccines and drugs for people who hate needles.
LameScore
Santosh Pandey, Yunsoo Park and John Wagner
LameScore detects mobility issues in dairy cows using AI and video.
My_name_is
Asle Thorson
My_name_is is an enhanced profile tool that allows people to share their story in their own voice, beginning with their name.
Rosåna
John Shaw
Rosåna’s software empowers communities to make zero roadway deaths a reality.
Saber Chemical
Baker Kuehl, Vivek Garg, Michael Forrester and Eric Cochran
Saber makes additives that upgrade brittle bioplastics into strong, durable materials that hold up in real-world use and still break down after.
WearLab Solutions
Rachel Eike, Bahar Hashemian Esfahani, Farhad Aghasi and Damon Eike
WearLab Solutions is a consulting firm and partner to functional clothing brands — developing products through science-backed design and testing for high-risk professionals and medically vulnerable individuals.
XYZ
Ahmed Ismail
XYZ Consulting is a software consulting firm that helps early-stage innovators go from concept to code by helping bridge ideas with execution.