As promised, startup accelerator Y Combinator's impending demo day will be held in person. In fact, YC appears to have begun resuming IRL demo days at the end of the Thanksgiving long weekend, holding an in-person alumni demo day on Sunday for startups in the fall 2024 class.
Squad founder (and later Twitter and Meta product manager) Esther Crawford, Milo founder and CEO, praised the “high energy” of being able to hear pitches from 93 startups firsthand. Avni Patel Thompson calls it “a great pay-forward, not just for the founders, but also for alumni to come back and support the current group.”
The “dress rehearsal” is likely for the company's main demo day, when founders pitch to an audience of investors and members of the press. That demo day is scheduled for later this week on Wednesday, December 4th.
The virtual demo day was a product of the prolonged switch to remote during the pandemic. At YC's September Demo Day, CEO Garry Tan said these presentations would be the last to be held entirely online.
Now, YC describes Demo Day, which features an invitation-only audience of about 1,500 people, as a “return to in-person.” If you can't make it to San Francisco, you'll have to make do with the Demo Day website. Contains information on companies that have made announcements. ”