You know what they say, the only constant is change. And boy has the world of selling software changed.

In the early aughts, reps traveled onsite to demo live. Today, people can walk through your product straight from your homepage.

Where does it go from here?

To make sense of the current demo software market and how it might evolve in the next few years, we interviewed Navattic’s three cofounders, Neil McLean, Randy Frank, and Chris Hoyle.

Below, we walk with them down memory lane, detailing the frustrations that led them to start Navattic in the first place.

From there, we get into the problems demo software has solved for buyers and GTM teams since then, where there’s still room to grow, and what excites (and scares) them about the future.

It’s hard to believe, but the idea of letting buyers use your product was revolutionary not so long ago.

While Neil and Randy were solutions engineers at Oracle, they kept hearing the same thing from prospects:

“It was some version of, ‘Hey, this demo was great, but we’re about to spend upwards of $100K with you guys. Can we get hands-on with the product?’” Neil remembers.

More often than not, the answer he and Randy had to give was no.

“Giving prospects access to a proof of concept environment was a ton of work,” says Randy.

“Besides getting them credentials, you had to think about training and enablement and seeding relevant data, all so that they could maybe see a spark of product value.”

Keeping prospects removed from the product created unnecessary friction in the sales process and put more pressure on SEs to convince them the value was truly there.

Even from the outside looking in, the way enterprise sales worked seemed backward.

Per Chris, who was leading a design and development studio at the time: “It made intuitive sense that prospects would be able to try the product. But no one was doing it because of the tremendous amount of engineering resources it would take to get there.”

The three of them knew there had to be a better way, and teamed up to build it.

Turns out, Neil, Randy, and Chris weren’t the only ones thinking that B2B SaaS sales could use an overhaul.

A few years after they’d launched Navattic, product-led growth began to gain traction. G2 and TrustRadius became popular stops along the buyer journey.

Slowly, prospects began to expect not only to see your product but to explore it.

To do their own research, form their own opinions and questions – without ever having to speak to a salesperson.

Ideal timing to be building demo software.

“If you look back at how many websites had an interactive demo on their website in 2020, it was like 0.2%,” Neil points out.

“In the span of six years, it’s become common practice for prospects to experience the product early on in the buying cycle. It’s no longer a luxury.”

According to our 2026 State of the Interactive Product Demo report, 18% of B2B websites had an interactive demo CTA on their marketing site.

“Looking back, I’d say there’s been a huge mentality shift when it comes to gatekeeping your product,” Randy observes.

“Demo software has enabled buyers to see the product faster and enabled vendors to showcase their product’s value faster, too.”

Besides giving prospects more of what they wanted, interactive demos turned out to have several other benefits:

1. Better qualification

Before, a poor-fit lead could eat up just as much of an AE's time as a great one, and you wouldn’t know it until the call was over.

“What we found is that it’s equally important to use demo software to qualify in buyers as it is to qualify them out,” Randy explains.

“People can use demos as a first filter to ensure they’re hitting on the right type of buyer and spending their sales team’s time wisely.”

2. Use across GTM

While Navattic’s cofounders originally intended to build demo software to ease the burden on SEs and reps, they didn’t anticipate how useful interactive demos would be outside of sales.

“We realized every GTM team has a really compelling use case for demos,” Neil highlights.

• Marketing can use them for lead gen and to inform future product launches.
• Customer success teams can add demos to knowledge bases, freeing up their time to focus on enterprise clients with more complex environments.
• Partner teams can use demo software for enablement.

“Seeing the product is such an expectation that demo software has become a universal part of the GTM motion,” says Neil.

Interactive demos have solved the “try before you buy” problem.

But they’ve also introduced a new problem and underscored an age-old problem that the cofounders are eager to address in the next year or two:

1. The need for (even more) personalization at scale

Yes, you can already inject personalized account and contact details into demos on any channel.

And by using interest demos, you can ensure prospects get a more relevant experience.

With more and more informed people coming into the buying process, though, the bar for what’s considered a “tailored demo” is much higher.

“By the time someone lands on your website, they know whether it’s the right solution or not, and they’re coming to get confirmation about something specific,” Randy notes.

“They want something super personalized to their industry, and day-to-day that’s going to compel them to either buy a plan right then and there or talk to sales.”

2. GTM team bandwidth

In many ways, AI has sped up demo creation, with features like AI Copilot prompting and Capture editing to make changes to text and demo data using natural language.

By the same token, AI has accelerated the pace of product development. Which means demos go stale way faster.

“Software isn’t static. Far from it,” Chris emphasizes.

“And now, engineers are releasing at speeds they’ve never done before with coding agents. This has put a massive strain on GTM teams.”

There’s also still a persistent expectation from sales that SEs will be looped into every call, rather than building demo templates reps can customize on their own.

“We heard this in 2020, and we heard it 60 days ago at an SE dinner,” Neil shares.

“It’s a continual challenge to get the team away from doing 101-type work and letting them be those technical experts for more strategic opportunities.”

Not because agents are the shiny new thing. In fact, Neil, Randy, and Chris would be the first to warn against adopting AI for the sake of it (more on that next).

But because agents directly address current challenges with demo software.

Agents can personalize demos in real time

There’s a lot of upfront work that goes into planning content and ensuring you have the right coverage for every segment of your ICP.

With generative AI, you can ensure every buyer has a conversation unique to their particular needs, industry, and role – automatically.

“In my view, the future of product content will be completely bespoke,” Randy says. “No two experiences should look the same because no two prospects are the same.”

Agents can offer around-the-clock coverage

Your consumers are in every timezone, speaking every language, and it’s impossible (logistically and economically) to have that many regional experts on your team.

With agents, you don’t have to.

“Agents can be fluent in your product, fluent in your customers, and available at any time in any language,” says Randy.

For SEs, this is a big boon.

They can rely on agents to help qualify international buyers and conduct preliminary discovery, which will speed up prep for a more in-depth discussion down the line.

It also takes the pressure off for smaller inbound accounts. Agents can handle those conversations while SEs concentrate on the whales.

Agents can adapt to your product as it changes

Continuously feed agents your docs, sales video software, messaging and style guides, and they will continuously refresh their knowledge.

Agents can also learn from previous conversations and get better at qualification, routing, and presales over time.

“Self-improvement loops are going to be a huge part of agentic workflows, making sure agents are learning from every interaction, and are able to consistently match what they know about a customer to what they know about your product,” Chris notes.

Agents can double as internal enablement coaches

If agents have access to the latest and greatest product information and are constantly learning from new conversations, they can pass on their knowledge to new reps.

“Agents can basically be an on-demand demo coach GTM team members can use to practice and hone their skills,” says Neil.

He sees this as a complement to an even bigger shift he’s seeing in GTM: the lines between presales, sales, and CS are blurring.

“We’re seeing the pre-sales and post-sales roles start to converge within the GTM function, especially with more forward-deployed engineer roles popping up,” he remarks.

“I think this is better for the end customer, because the same person who’s picking up where an agent left off is the same person helping them implement the new software they’ve purchased.”

For all the potential wrapped up in agents, the trio is clear-eyed about the risks.

“There are human elements of buying and working with customers that are critical to preserve,” Neil cautions.

“Without thought and attention, automation can be overapplied to a detrimental degree. You have to know the distinction between when it makes sense and when it doesn’t.”

Part of that is setting the right expectations.

“There’s clearly something super magical about new tech, but you have to be realistic,” says Randy.

“I’m always thinking about how to draw the line between what’s possible today and what will be possible in three years, in five years.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve bet on an inflection point, though. As Chris puts it:

“We got to help define the patterns sales and marketing folks adopted and suggest best practices at a huge industry transition before, and the opportunity to do it again with agents is even better.”

Want to see what a Navattic Agentic looks like? Try one for yourself.