A Slice on Larson Stair, Co-Founder and CEO of Demoflow
Larson Stair dreamed of going to med school, so he did what all hopeful doctors do, he applied, and got in. However, Stair, a “natural born salesperson” started his first business in his last year of college and decided to transition to business school. He spent a great deal of time in his early career working in medical sales, prior to jumping into software. It was only when Stair and his co-founder (friend and college roommate for two years) decided 10 years ago to leap into SaaS that his software career flourished. It was this move that ultimately led to the founding of Demoflow. The platform in the words of Stair, “is a sales companion for every live selling interaction that might be happening. Helping sellers make better connections with potential buyers, and making sure that all steps needed from leadership across meetings are conveyed regarding both product and value of the solution.”
Before Demoflow was born, there was one other startup company Stair founded…. Let’s circle back to that. This was a company he founded that last year of college when he was only 21 years old. Stair had the idea for a medical scribe business. He was actually working as a medical scribe at the time, a common job for a pre-med student, they follow doctors around the ER taking notes as they visit patients, and document everything. Stair found the role interesting, and thought, “well maybe this could be a staffing business, we could hire pre-med students, staff them out to different medical practices throughout the greater Midwest area.”
When Demoflow was born, Stair and team were accepted into the Techstars accelerator which he says was “fortunate” as they got an expedited education in the VC world. The unfortunate part was that this education was taking place during COVID-19 which made the situation a bit “wacky”. Living essentially next door to some real industry “legends” Stair touted how amazing, and helpful the program was in getting Demoflow off the ground. Through Techstars Stair was able to meet various mentors, and advisors, a few of which have actually invested in Demoflow. Recognizing that he didn’t know everything Stair, was able to learn from those within the Techstars network, helping him answer questions like, “How do you deploy all this capital?” “Where do you put it?” and “How do you make really good decisions?”
For Stair, SaaS was always his passion and he recognized some ways the industry was trending early on. For companies, more often than not, their entire brand is wrapped up within interactions. For instance, “How are your sales reps presenting? How are they presenting themselves physically? How are they presenting their materials? When they share their screen what does it look like? These are all little keys that are combined into what makes you as a buyer feel really comfortable and confident about what we’re providing as sellers.” Especially in light of COVID-19, Stair has witnessed a broader interest not only in the SaaS industry but other industries as well. With mass amounts of companies needing to standardize their presentations for Zoom, among an increased remote selling landscape.
Stair shared a piece of advice for any new entrepreneurs on the scene, “I think something that we continuously learn, is that it’s much harder than you ever began to imagine it would be. It is going to take longer than you ever thought it would. I gotta tell founders this is really hard, so use your network, use your resources, and talk to other founders who have been there because you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Founder Bio
Larson Stair started his journey in med school before transitioning into the business world where he would work in sales. Larson then started his own company, Demoflow, a SaaS platform for salespeople. Connect with Stair on LinkedIn.
