QUEENSLAND STARTUP SCENE SHOCKED TO DISCOVER AI MAKES PITCH DECKS EVEN LESS BELIEVABLE THAN FOUNDERS DO

BRISBANE, QLD – The StartBuddy demo day came to a grinding halt after founders discovered all too late that the organiser's AI agent, Philippe, responsible for collating pitch decks also decided to 'zhush up' their slides. Initially tasked with branding touch-ups, Philippe instead decided to outperform for his human overlords and completely rewrite the pitch decks. Many of those on stage struggled to cope with billboard-sized slides that no longer matched their perfectly rehearsed performances.

Image: Youber founder explaining the rogue AI agent's modest revenue projections

First up for the day was the high-profile startup subtitle.me, whose founders wanted to demonstrate their product's ground-breaking translation capabilities. Critical to their demonstration was real-time translation into Korean for a group of lucrative potential investors attending remotely from North Korea. As is customary at demo days, their product wasn't ready for prime time, so they had to painstakingly insert Korean text boxes in the lower third of each slide. Philippe decided, as a courtesy to the Brisbane-based audience, to translate all slide content into English, leaving the audience perplexed at the value of a product that appeared to translate English into English.

"At first, we thought they were just having technical difficulties. But then we realised that either their product didn't do translation, or their live demo was a mock-up," said Brad Cooper, head of portfolio at Songbird Ventures. Other attendees nodded confidently during the presentation, not realising that the description of the product did not match what was unfolding on stage.

Death Tech Startup Discovers AI's Definition of "Visually Appealing" Includes Things That Cannot Be Unseen

It became increasingly apparent that something was amiss when the next startup took to the stage – death tech venture SoftBox. The founders had originally crafted a sensitive and thoughtful overview of the death tech industry and their revolutionary product. "We had gone to great lengths to use photos that conveyed a sense of hope … bright sunny days, all over-exposed and terribly out of focus," explained Damian Smith – one of SoftBox's founding team.

Once again, the event's AI agent had other ideas. Many of the audience were left visibly shaken after Philippe replaced the stock images with GenAI substitutes prompted by the presentation's key themes. A photorealistic time lapse from the perspective of the deceased lasted for several minutes while the audio-visual team scrambled to cut to a sponsor's logo. "Even I got a bit squeamish when I saw GenAI's take on 'biodiverse decay'. And I work all day in this space!" said Smith.

StartBuddy Organisers: "Technical Difficulties Are Normal, Like When Your Uncle Can't Figure Out How to Share His Screen on Zoom"

Even after the second wayward presentation, organisers were yet to realise that the issue was caused by the updated slides. "We thought it was just a few founders having a bad day. It happens sometimes," remarked Helena Wilde, acting chair of the StartBuddy foundation. She went on to deflect responsibility for the train wreck, adding that technical difficulties are part and parcel of any presentation, suggesting that nobody has ever shared the correct window to an online meeting on their first attempt. As compensation, affected founders would be given free front row tickets to next year's event, so they can watch venture funds throw as much money as they can at other startups.

Youber: "Apparently $8 Trillion ARR By Year Two Is Too Ambitious, Who Knew?"

The penny finally dropped when the third startup, Youber, took to the stage. Self-described as 'Uber, but for ride-sharing', the founders chose not to rehearse their presentation because they were just going to read from the slides anyway. Although the founders seemed mildly pleased reading out their own business plan, the audience was taken aback by a predicted $8 trillion ARR only two years into the business.

"We knew we had the actual model, and the investor model. We had been making some last-minute changes to the investor model to reflect some recent fundraising feedback, being that we didn't have enough ARR" said a spokesperson for Youber. He went on to describe how the founders had outsourced the modelling to an offshore consultancy, so none of them knew what the ARR projection was. "It turns out the ARR estimate should have been closer to $40,000, which was the figure in the pack provided to StartBuddy."

StartBuddy described the glitch as an attempt by the AI agent to make Youber more attractive to investors. "Apparently, startups with higher revenue get more funding. That shouldn't be news to anyone. Anyway, Philippe decided the way for Youber to get more funding was to inflate their projected revenue. Who doesn't massage the numbers just a little bit? It's only a projection, right? StartBuddy is all about backing audacious founders, and any founder backing themselves to gain $8 trillion in revenue is something we would absolutely support."

Youber was quick to point out that nobody except StartBuddy's AI agent was predicting $8 trillion in revenue for any startup. "Maybe if Philippe knows about a market with an unmet need of $8 trillion, he should start that business rather than sitting around converting slides to 16:9 aspect ratio" quipped Youber's head of GenAI.

Day 2 of StartBuddy demo day continues tomorrow.

The Rocket Advocate: Documenting Queensland tech disasters with a higher accuracy rate than most startup financial projections.

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Benjamin Elias is an Angel Investor by day and satirist by night - a combination that explains why he's so familiar with both building software and making fun of it. As a Microsoft MVP, he's perfected the art of explaining why collaboration tools never actually improve collaboration. His expertise spans enterprise software, digital transformation, and convincing VCs that his jokes about the Queensland tech scene are based on extensive market research. He lives with an unreasonable number of productivity apps installed on devices he mostly uses to write satire. Check out CollabSystems for more of Ben's writing.