How to get people to try your demo

Today, Max and I went out to Berkeley to talk to Memeja users and hear their opinions on various things, including: album concepts, recreating experiences and privacy.

The conversation usually goes like this:

"Hi, we're launching a startup. Would you take a minute or two to check out our demo and tell us what you think?"

Important things: 

1. Always have a smile on your face! I find that people are much more likely to engage if you seem like a happy, well-adjusted individual.
2. Time constraint: What's interesting is that you can see people's thoughts and opinions on their faces even before they say anything. I've noticed that creating a time constraint (like a minute) is just enough to get your foot in the door. Even if the demo doesn't actually last a minute, people tend to be much more engrossed once they're playing around with a live demo.

"This is our working prototype. It just has functionality -- it's basically a shitty safe mode. So go ahead and play around with it and tell us what you think. Don't hold back! We have wills of steel."

Humor is great for reducing social pressure (especially when you have two people around a table listening to you). We don't want them to feel pressured because we want them to speak their mind! 

It also makes the experiments funner for us too!

"Imagine you're with a friend when you see something crazy happen. Like....  a hobo rob a kabab stand (which is totally possible). Now you want to share it with your friend because only he knows what you're talking about"

At this point, we'd either ask them about how they would share an experience (to see if there is a problem)... and try not to lead them on. We want honest opinions and feedback. Or we'd just take them through the demo by creating an album and adding different memes into them, explaining the concept.

It's especially important to keep checking if he/she understands what you're explaining.

We've noticed that people tend to continue along even if they don't fully understand the concept. Perhaps shyness or social courtesy discourages them.

...

Insights today:

Everybody knew what a meme was! And everybody knew what a rage comic was (if they didn't, we showed them an example and they recognized it)

People really love the album concept but don't seem to fully grasp actually recreating experiences.

A small number of people commented on how they would simply use Facebook message or create it on Reddit and then send the link over. I'm curious why so I will be following up on them.

We found it helpful to explain Memeja as a Google Docs for experiences.

Almost everyone said they knew a friend who would love the site, even if they wouldn't use it themselves.

Everyone said they would click through an invitation link if it was from a personal friend (we have that by passing the full name as context in Python).

Many people commented on  how they liked how the memes were all in one place.

For the people who didn't make memes, they didn't see themselves as creative enough.

BUT many people WOULD share existing memes they found funny with friends in albums (like a private Pinterest). It might be interesting to create a prototype Javascript extension that allows people to interface with Memeja.

Many people wanted to see a mobile app that complements the webapp. We are already making plans for this.

For the people who really liked Memeja, they understood that it was a better way of sharing experiences with everything integrated.