Tim Elam spent part of last week “tagging” the whiteboards around Atlanta Tech Village with news that his first startup, DemoFox, officially launched.
The message he wrote on the whiteboards was simple: Understand Your Developers With DemoFox. But behind that message is a big goal. Because at its core, DemoFox is looking to bridge the communication gap between engineers, stakeholders, and other team members.
The platform, which launched early this month, is an AI-powered platform that can quickly help people understand the impact of a demo video by pulling out key insights and how those align with a company’s goals. This allows engineers to focus on actually being engineers without having to spend the time translating their work to non-technical audience members. That can make it easier for them to communicate with their bosses, department heads, product managers, clients, or other key stakeholders.
Elam described it to Hypepotamus as a “highlight reel for engineers.”
Get To Know The Founder
Elam previously served as the Director of Engineering at UserTesting, a video-based market research and feedback platform that was acquired in late 2022 by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. He previously served as Software Development Manager for Atlanta-based lending fintech Kabbage.
It was during his time at UserTesting that he saw the power of short-form video in an enterprise setting. It was a helpful way to explain to clients how their customers and potential customers actually used their products.
But it was also during his time there that he realized how difficult it is for remote team members to get fully noticed for the work they do. He sees DemoFox as a way to ensure that an engineer’s “impact and visibility” line up by giving them a way to easily translate how their work impacts the rest of a project.
A Look At The Launch
Elam left UserTesting in the early part of 2023 following post-acquisition consolidations at the company. In May of that year, he graduated from Georgia Tech’s evening MBA program and has been working on building DemoFox since then. He credits Pitch Practice at Atlanta Tech Village, a program run by Jacey Cadet, for helping him find its catchy name and get ready for launch.
A few days after launch, Elam said he’s already learned some important lessons around the B2B marketing world and how hard it is to do straight cold email outreach to get the word out about a new startup. But he sees an opportunity to grow DemoFox in the agency setting, where collaboration across technical and non-technical teams is paramount.
In the world of startups, you will often hear investors ask if an early-stage startup has a product that is a vitamin or a painkiller. That question is designed to assess whether a startup is an absolute necessity or a nice-to-have feature. Elam said that DemoFox could best be described as a mix of both. Or, in his own words, “cheesy broccoli,” since it solves a big pain point around communication while helping technical team members get the recognition they deserve.
“We’re helping companies be more transparent and support cross-functional collaboration,” he added. And that is a message that could resonate with tech-focused teams of any size.
