Going against the grain, AngelPad kills its demo day

Earlier this week, at the expansive Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., Y Combinator introduced an exhaustive (and exhausting) 141 startups to investors who gathered to hear quick pitches about how each of the teams plan to disrupt their predecessors. Roughly 30 miles away, in San Francisco, another top-ranked accelerator, AngelPad was busy blowing up its own demo day. Though in recent years, the eight-year-old outfit has similarly packed rooms with invite-only crowds of investors to hear startup pitches in rapid-fire succession, AngelPad thinks investors have had enough of the construct, says co-founder Thomas Korte. “Demo days are great ways for accelerators to expose a large number of companies to a lot of investors, but we don’t think it is the most productive way,” he says, so AngelPad is introducing the idea of investor “preview” days instead. The idea: to pair founders with only the most relevant investors for same-day, one-on-one meetings. It makes sense, particularly for an outfit like AngelPad that has always kept its focus on far smaller “batches” of founding teams. AngelPad’s newest class of 10 startups had more than 200 meetings in one day, but investors were able to get the founders’ undivided attention — and vice versa. The feedback from both sides was “overwhelmingly positive,” too, says Korte. “Founders had their first 20-plus investor meetings, and the investors spent two productive hours with founders rather than sit through a quick show-and-tell presentation.” If you’re interested in learning more about the recent graduates — they join 130 companies that AngelPad has now worked with altogether, including, most notably, the delivery service Postmates — check out the slideshow. Some of our favorites include Meemo and Quoteapro, but you should decide for yourself which you think are the most promising.