A Conversation with Copado’s David Venegas, 3x Demo Jam Winner

If you’ve ever joined us for an AppExchange Demo Jam (either live at a trade show or virtually through the monthly webinar series), you know that these fast-paced competitions are never boring. With four or five AppExchange partners on the clock for three-minute live demos of their apps, there’s never a dull moment for the audience — particularly when it comes time to vote on the winner.

If you’ve ever joined us for an AppExchange Demo Jam, you also may know David Venegas.

After all, as a Product Manager at Copado (a Salesforce Release Management and Continuous Delivery solution), David has taken home three of the coveted Demo Jam trophies so far (and is in danger of needing more desk space). So, we caught up with him to learn his secrets — how he approaches each presentation, the challenges of giving a live demo (no slides allowed), and what he’s learned about winning over audiences in three minutes or less. Check out our conversation below.

How did you develop your approach to presenting these three-minute demos?

David Venegas: I decided that the best approach would be to display the functionalities that solve the biggest challenges our customers face, while also prioritizing the ones that are more graphical so that, in the least amount of time, the audience could grasp the big picture of what our app achieves.

What did you find to be the most challenging part of the competition?

DV: The biggest challenge was how to explain a technical product that solves complex challenges in a three-minute demo. It requires a lot of thought to structure the both the features to be shown and the order in which they’ll be shown. It also can be nerve-wracking to do this all in front of a big crowd — but the hosts of the Demo Jams are great in keeping us confident.

What’s your favorite part of participating?

DV: Being able to celebrate the achievement with my colleagues is my top favorite memory from each Demo Jam. It’s also great to get to know the other Demo Jam participants, and get a glimpse of all the cool things they’re doing in their products.

What have you learned from these pitch competitions?

DV: I’ve learned to extract the value of a product and be able to explain its usage in a limited amount of time. I’ve also been able to interact a lot with other people from different companies and learn how they communicate their product, which was truly outstanding.

What advice can you offer for making the best of those three minutes?

DV: A few tips that I’ve learned along the way:

• Have all the tabs of your app already open — just in case the internet fails.
• Get feedback; ask your colleagues what they think some of the highlights of the product are and make sure it’s included in your Demo Jam demo.
• Engage with the audience, but make sure it’s in a way that feels comfortable to you (it will be obvious that you’re uncomfortable if not).
• Be very brief on your greeting, but don’t forget to say ‘hi.’
• Practice, practice, practice!

What‘s next for you and for Copado?

DV: I was just promoted to Product Manager, and we’re working hard to offer a greater user experience as well as top-notch features to our existing and future users. We’re also expanding our app to be established as a Release Management Platform within Salesforce.

This year will be huge for Copado. We’re working on something unique which will be a game changer, something that nobody else is building and we will officially introduce it during Trailhead DX. We will participate as main sponsors of the event — and, of course, in the TrailheaDX 2018 Demo Jam!

Copado enables Salesforce customers to manage their end-to-end release management processes as well as compliance and testing automation requirements. Learn more here.