(flickr.com/nanpalmero)

Entrepreneurs and other startup economy workers have started complaining about rising fees of events around town—the sheer abundance of tech events in New York has us habituated to all-star panels and pizza for $0 to $5. But while $35 classes at General Assembly inspire the occasional grousing, there is one thing that seems to really get the startup community riled up: events that charge entrepreneurs to pitch.

Just over two years ago, web publisher and CEO Jason Calacanis blew this issue up by declaring war on a set of angel groups that charged founders to pitch investors. "It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time," he wrote. "Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered 'nothing' or 'the cost of two cups of coffee' you win the prize!"

Other bloggers, VCs and web personalities such as Robert Scoble picked up the rallying cry; even the generally well-regarded New York Angels, which charges a $150 application fee, came under fire. The most egregious offender was Keiretsu Forum, which does not advertise its fees, but reportedly charges entrepreneurs between $1,000 and $8,000 to present. Keiretsu, which has chapters all over the world and bills itself as "the world's largest angel investment community" is still in business. Maverick Angels, another group Mr. Calacanis fingered for "investigation," is still in business and charges entrepreneurs $250 to $1,000 for its events.

Entrepreneur Greg Costikyan wrote in 2007 of the New England Venture Summit (domain expired, cache is here:

That room of 200 people is maybe 25% other entrepreneurs waiting their turn or listening to other pitches to get a better sense of how to polish their own, and maybe 50% service folks who actually want to sell you stuff, and maybe the other 25% are investors of one kind or another. Of whom the vast majority would never invest in whatever it is you're pitching. And of the handful who remain, almost all are so junior that unless they go back foaming at the mouth with excitement, it doesn't really help.

But that was in 2007, you say. Entrepreneurs today are smarter and leaner, and you can find all the VCs you need on Twitter.

In New York, there are a number of pitching events that charge entrepreneurs. The New York Angels still charge $150, which many in the tech scene feel is justifiably low for the service provided and the cover costs of hosting. Ultra Light Startups hosted a pitch panel last week that charged founders $50; the FundingPost recently held an event that ran $75 to present or $350 to present and participate in a lunchtime pitch practice.

So how much is too much? "I've always been curious as to why people think pitching should be free," Ultra Light Startups founder Graham Lawlor wrote in an email. "I think each event is unique and startups should evaluate paying to pitch as an investment, alongside their decision of which lawyer or web host to use.  I like to believe startups that pitch at Ultra Light get far more than $50 worth of value in exposure and feedback (and sometimes prizes). I suspect the people who think pitching should be $0 are not running many events themselves."

"I don't think they're necessarily bad or exploitive of founders, or that there won't be any good companies there," said Trevor Owens of Lean Startup Machine, a hackathon-style event that charges first time attendees $299. "On the other hand, I've never been to one, because I don't need to meet investors like that. The old fashioned intro works for me and I've built up a network in a short time by just being involved."

Meanwhile, New York founders we spoke to say they regularly get come-ons from pay to pitch events.

"Sadly it's a cancer... you need to keep screening for it," Mr. Calacanis wrote in an email to Betabeat. "Event producers get greedy and desperate.... it's easier to sell to desperate startups looking to get venture money than do the hard work of building a conference with the support of sponsors."

Betabeat is working on an investigation into the pay-to-pitch economy in New York City. How much is too much? Are naive founders getting ripped off by paying hundreds of dollars to pitch investors? Let us know in the comments or email ajeffries c/o observer.com.

Don of the Demo

This is a post from Nate Westheimer that originally appeared on his blog.

After running the NY Tech Meetup for nearly two and a half years, and personally curating and coaching over 200 demos, I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes a successful software demo.

First, let’s define a a “successful software demo.” A successful demo is comprised to two important outcomes, no matter the audience:

1. As a whole, the audience comes away with some level of consensus that you’re a smart, self-aware person doing worthwhile things.
2. At least 1 person in the audience has an “ah-ha” moment and comes away with a mission to help your product succeed, either by providing a critical feature idea, a hire candidate, potential partnership, or — in the case of a demo to investors — the desire to fight to invest.

So, how can you deliver the best demo possible, no matter what time you’re given? Follow these rules:

The Core: Software is Magic. A Demo is a Magic Show.

All software have this in common:

1. There are inputs.
2. Those inputs get processed by all of our hard work and labor that goes into our software.
3. And there are outputs which are nothing short of magical.

For a product like Aviary, the magic is quick, visual, and has a lot to do with the complexity of the software. Drag an image over a filter (that’s the input) and a totally new image pops out the other end (that’s the output).

It’s magic.

For Meetup.com, it’s the same, but different. You have inputs, which comprise the creation of a group and scheduling a time to “meetup,” but the output (the magic) is — in the case of the NY Tech Meetup — 860 passionate people in a room all at once.

Aviary and Meetup — both have inputs, both have magical outputs. That’s software at work.

So, it’s pains me when people come to demo and, instead of putting on a magic show — showing off how humans (themselves) and software interact — they try to inspire the audience through their words and by speaking about their ideas; or, just as bad, they flip through a bunch of preloaded tabs in an effort to “show” the product, as if pre-loaded tabs are any better than PowerPoint slides.

Flipping from tab to tab is like showing a tiger in a cage at a magic show, but having never shown the audience that the tiger wasn’t in the cage in the first place! Yes, that will save some time — 5 seconds of page-loads here and there certainly add up — but what people don’t understand is that those 5 seconds of page-loads are the magic we’re looking to see. A magic trick is about experiencing a process, not looking at a before and after picture.

You put in an input (a click? a swipe?) and the output was magic (a new page? interesting restaurant recommendations? a room chock full of people?).

Success.

(Want to see one of the NYTM’s best demos ever? Check out John Britton’s famous Twilio demo here.)

The Preamble: Demo the Problem. Don’t Talk to it.

There are many people for whom demoing their software comes very naturally. Still, there is one major mistake they make leading up to the part of the program where they show their software: they talk about why they built it.

Talking is always a mistake during a demo. If you’re talking, you’re not showing, and while anyone can talk a good game, not everyone can show one.

More practically speaking, telling the audience about why you’re in business is not nearly as powerful as showing them why you’re in business.

Instead of spending the first 10% – 20% of your demo telling your audience why what you built matters, take the time to demo the current state of affairs: the “why” your software matters.

A great example of this recently at NYTM was the Matchbook demo. When Jason showed up at the May NY Tech Meetup, he asked to spend a few seconds talking about “why” they made Matchbook. When we dug into the issue, it seemed that most people were keeping lists of places they needed to checkout on the iPhone’s native Notes app.

When I heard that, I thought like it sounded like the perfect problem to demo. Jason then loaded his iPhone’s Notes app with a lot of tips, opened his demo by showing them, and stole the show.

At the end of the day, it’s okay to demo someone else’s application if it helps illustrate why your app is so great. Most great products are alternatives to existing hacks, so show the existing hack — get the audience on your side by relating to a pain they already experience — and dive right into the meat of the demo: the way you change everyone’s life for the better.

Two small but still important points: Keep it Simple and Stay Cool

Keep it Simple

Some services are barebones and elegant, and others are feature rich. For the barebones, it’s easy to focus on the big main idea behind the process when demoing. However, for the feature rich, people always seem to get bogged down by the nitty-gritty. “And we have the ability to share this new ‘doodad’ on Twitter.”

Even if your app has a lot of features, leave many of them out of your demo. Leave something for the users to discover on their own while browsing. Anyway, sharing on Twitter is useful to some people, but it’s magic to no people — so just leave that kind of stuff out.

Stay Cool

Lastly, when it comes to demos there are so many points of failure. The Internet connection of the venue you’re demoing in, the Internet connection of your webhost, the browser’s configuration you’re demoing in, Flash’s overall shittyness, and even your own stumbling trying to type and talk at the same time.

IT’S OKAY!

Believe it or not, if something goes wrong while you’re demoing, the audience won’t pass judgement on you at all. However, the audience will pass judgement on how you react in times of stress.

When something goes wrong, do you freak out? Go completely silent?

People are drawn to those who handle stress like nothing ever happened. If you can keep your cool, keep talking, get a few jokes out, and find a creative way to let the show go on, you’ll win more hearts and minds than if all the technology even worked. Remember, generally speaking the point of a demo is to get people to think that you’re a smart person doing worthwhile things.

Someone who can handle a bump in the road looks like a smart person.