The trap
A demo is seductive because it creates motion. A device turns on. A waveform appears. A prototype runs. A customer nods. A founder can point to something visible and say, "It works."
That may be true. It may also be commercially irrelevant. In semiconductor and hard-tech markets, the demo often proves only that something can happen once, under conditions the company controls, with people who already believe.
A product is different. A product has a buyer, a use case, a manufacturable path, a qualification plan, a cost structure, a support burden, and a reason to be adopted now. The demo may prove none of those.
Warning signs
Watch for demos that are not tied to a customer bottleneck, demos that require heroic setup, demos that cannot be repeated across process variation, and demos that create no clear next decision except "raise more money."
The worst version is the beautiful demo that lets everyone avoid the hard questions: who buys, what changes, what does it replace, how is it made, what must be qualified, and what evidence would make a skeptical buyer act?
What good evidence looks like
A useful demo should kill a specific uncertainty. It should show something the customer values, under conditions that resemble the future product environment, with measurement criteria defined before the result is produced.
For investors and boards, the question is not "does it work?" The question is "what business risk did this demo actually reduce?"
TIGRE lens
TIGRE pressure-tests whether the demo supports a product wedge, a customer adoption claim, a manufacturing path, a defensible milestone, and a capital decision. If the demo is real but not decision-grade, the right move is not celebration. It is re-scoping.