Do I get to put your AI idea in front of 100K people?

Hey Innovator,

If you baked an amazing cake, then hid it in your fridge from everyone who’d love to eat it…then, what exactly is the point?

It’s an obvious waste, but that’s exactly what some people do when they create AI ideas.

Yes, it’s totally okay to make a cake for yourself, but if your goal from the start was to give the cake to others, then it makes sense to figure out how to get your “AI cake” to the right people.

Now, if you’re making a cake for the first time, I know it’s easy to have your hands full in the kitchen getting it ready, so I thought of a way to make “distributing” your cake a little easier the first time you make it.

I call it:

The AI Incubator Demo Day.

If you’re not familiar with the Demo Day concept, it’s something that’s common among all the great incubators, from huge organizations like ​Y Combinator​ to smaller groups like ​Resilient Coders​.

We throw a huge event where our students show their prototypes (live via Zoom) to hundreds / thousands of fellow AI enthusiasts. In fact, for the next Demo Day, we’re literally inviting 1 million people.

Demo Day isn’t just about publicity – though that’s a benefit, too.

It’s about accountability and serious, meaningful deadlines.

In fact, the biggest challenge for Incubator students isn’t finding the right idea or building a no-code prototype. Instead, the challenge is sitting down and doing the actual work in a way that is sensible, properly prioritized, and results in a solid prototype without letting the process drag on forever.

The worst case scenario for any entrepreneur or creator: sitting on your idea for months or years when you could have already launched it and started beta testing with real customers.

People will say they’re in “stealth mode,” but it’s mostly just cope for being anxious about going live. In the IWAI Incubator, we (gently) push you out of your comfort zone so you actually go from idea to completion (because learning and growth is, by definition, outside of your comfort zone).

Whether you’re trying to improve your health or creating with AI, everything in the graphic here applies.

The community, curriculum and coaching all help you with that – but the really big piece of the puzzle is knowing there is a real event on the horizon when thousands of people are going to see your work.

In the weeks leading up to our most recent Demo Days, I worked personally with all our student presenters, and my favorite part was seeing them rapidly prioritize their ideas and features as soon as they saw the date on the calendar. There is literally nothing harder than getting an entrepreneur to postpone a feature idea or agree upon a leaner Minimum Viable Product – the only way to do it is to give them a deadline when they know other people will be watching.

(If you missed any of the Demo Days we ran in April, you can watch the replays here.)

Here’s what some of our Demo Day presenters told me after the fact:

​Sonja Sulcer, Author:

"Demo Day was great. It actually gave me a deadline to to get focused and to stay focused as I created my app. And it gave me an incentive and an opportunity to gain exposure to a very large audience." Full Video​
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Keanan Koppenhaver, tech founder and investor:

“It was definitely helpful to have a deadline on the project that I was working on. Before, it was open ended, but when I heard that Demo Day was happening there were a lot of features that I was either able to prioritize and finish in time for Demo Day, or cut and not include for that initial version. So it was really helpful to have a deadline to get a first working version shipped and ready.” Full Video​
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Laura Davies, Psychiatrist:

"This would no question have taken me six months if I didn't have Demo Day. So, both working with Rob and having Demo Day coming up made this happen, and now I have a workable app. Never in a million years would have happened had I not done the Incubator." Full Video​
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The bottom line here –

These students are all highly skilled in their fields outside of AI – but there is zero chance they would have had their prototypes ready in less than 2 months if Demo Day wasn’t happening.

The event created accountability, a meaningful deadline, and a real reason to make the tough decisions (like pushing a feature back to Version 2) that are essential to a successful launch of your AI product or process.

You don’t get that kind of accountability from YouTube or Udemy.

Even if you are lucky enough to have friends or family supporting you, they’re going to default to being overly nice to you – which is the exact opposite of what you need to hit that deadline.

(I’m nice too, but I am also not changing the date of Demo Day – because it’s my job to challenge you and inspire you to reach your full potential as fast as possible.)

Because the Incubator lights the fire under you, you are able to move faster and deliver more than you ever expected. In fact, every single one of our student presenters surprised themselves by how much they got done with Demo Day looming.

Then, you show your idea to thousands of people, and this happens:

Erich Archer, Emmy-winning television producer:

“The Demo Day opportunity was amazing. It put me in front of an engaged audience of AI enthusiasts, and I got fantastic feedback. And I had a lot of new LinkedIn friends afterward, and I've had the opportunity to connect with many new people all in pursuit of AI mastery.” Full Video​
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Matt Farr, health and wellness professional published by Simon & Schuster:

“It definitely kept me focused both during the Demo Day and actually in the days after because of some of the opportunities I saw that might be coming my way through the Demo Day. So that was like an amazing kind of thing that was available in the course that was – I didn't expect to be so valuable.

“But also the other amazing thing is I actually ended up with about 50 people, in fact over 50 people now, who've participated in the beta program that I'm developing. I would have had to do it another way, obviously, but, that's 50 people that I didn't really have to do any work for, to get involved and help me in developing this further with the beta testing.” Full Video​

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We’ve all had a great idea that we knew would be valuable if we could just set aside the time to do it. And, sadly, we’ve all missed the boat on some of those ideas because we didn’t have the accountability or mentorship to get the job done and show it to the world.

The AI Incubator and Demo Day ensure you achieve your potential, rather than letting it slip away.

Until next time,

– Rob

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​P.S. Enrollment in the AI Incubator is now open, closing this Friday, April 26. Our next Demo Day is in August.

Whether you're wanting to build your idea from the beach 🏖 or hunker down for serious, focused work this summer, joining this Incubator cohort is your chance to turn your AI idea into a real prototype and share it with 100k+ people before the seasons change again. 🍂🍁

​Here's everything that's included in the Innovating with AI Incubator.​