Inside Orum’s Demo Evolution: How They Made Payment Infrastructure Tangible

How do you demonstrate the value of an API? For most infrastructure companies, the answer involves diving deep into technical specifications and architectural diagrams. But in a recent Category Visionaries episode, Orum founder Stephany Kirkpatrick revealed why that approach often fails – and how her team developed a radically different demo strategy.

The Traditional Demo Problem

The challenge began with a fundamental question: how do you show the value of something invisible? As Stephany explains, “Like it’s an API, what do you want me to show you?” This simple question captures the core challenge facing infrastructure companies – bridging the gap between technical capabilities and business value.

Finding the Customer Story

The breakthrough came when Orum stopped trying to demonstrate the API itself and instead focused on its impact. “What we’ve learned is that if you build a demo that shows the customer experience from an app perspective or a business user perspective, people go, ‘oh, I get it,'” Stephany shares.

This shift in perspective transformed their demo strategy. Instead of explaining how their payment infrastructure worked, they showed what it enabled – instant money movement that could transform customer experiences.

Making the Abstract Concrete

To illustrate the problem they were solving, Orum used relatable contrasts. As Stephany puts it, “You’re in San Francisco, I’m in New York right now. We could get a massage on demand in our houses in under an hour. If we want to get our money from point A to point B, we’re talking about five to seven days without a product like what Orum has.”

This comparison immediately makes the problem tangible – and positions Orum’s solution as the obvious answer.

Building Trust Through Completeness

But showing the end result wasn’t enough. Infrastructure buyers need confidence in the underlying technology. As Stephany notes, “People don’t want to switch money movement providers when it’s not complete. People don’t necessarily believe that you’re going to have something unique and better and differentiated until they can experience it and run a payment on it.”

This led to a demo strategy that balanced immediate impact with technical depth. While the initial demo focused on customer experience, it was backed by robust technical capabilities that could stand up to scrutiny.

Evolving with Customer Needs

The demo strategy continues to evolve as Orum expands its reach. “We sit across a ton of verticals,” Stephany explains. “The brokerage crypto, the creator economy is a huge space for us. We love earned wage access, factor in logistics, gambling, gig economy, insurer tech… because these are all places where time to money is a huge problem.”

This breadth requires demos that can speak to different industries while maintaining a consistent core message about transforming money movement.

Moving Beyond Features

Perhaps most importantly, Orum’s demos now focus on enabling future innovation. As Stephany puts it, “if what we’re building at Orum had existed a decade ago, you would have never built Venmo.” This forward-looking perspective helps buyers see beyond immediate needs to understand the transformative possibilities.

The lesson for infrastructure companies? Technical excellence is necessary but not sufficient. The key to successful demos is showing how your infrastructure enables new possibilities and transforms end-user experiences. It’s about making the invisible not just visible, but visceral.

As Stephany concludes, “It’s a whole new frontier when you stop having to ask how or how fast to move money.” That’s the kind of vision that turns a technical demo into a compelling story of transformation.