MBP: Optimize Your Personal Introduction

How you introduce yourself to potential strategic partners sets the stage for the entire conversation

You only get one chance to make a first impression. But even more importantly, your introduction sets the trajectory of the entire conversation. Make it count. It’s not filler time. It's the first move in what may be the most important game of your professional life.

It’s both amusing and shocking how bad many startup execs are at introducing themselves. They wander through an almost random selection of personal facts and histories only to stumble to a slightly confusing close. A jumbled mess of disconnected statements leading nowhere.

Why is your introduction so important? 

Everything gets priced into the deal. Everything. 

So, you want to set everything up as well as you possibly can. You are a big part of everything, arguably the biggest part. You want to set up their impression of you as well as you possibly can. In addition, your introduction sets up everything else, and you want to set all that up as well as you possibly can also.

As we know from the MBP startup valuation = opportunity/scarcity. So you want your introduction to both frame the opportunity, and establish your scarcity.

The poem of you

Your introduction should be a piece of professional poetry. Referencing Marilyn Singer’s site on what makes a great poem, you want to inspire both intention and emotion. Intention around your, and your startup’s, approach to this new market opportunity. Emotion through the excitement you are perfectly positioned to execute upon it.

You were born for this

You’re not going to go back to birth. But you want the throughline of your journey to show you were made for this moment. You didn’t stumble into it. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be and all your previous experiences, even the ones that at first blush don’t seem relevant, led you to be here, now. 

But what exactly is the moment? The moment is a blend of forces that you both anticipated and for which you are acutely prepared. But you can’t jump right to those or you’ll sound like a megalomaniac. There needs to be a buildup.

The ingredients of a great introduction to potential strategic partners

• Interests

• Education

• Early work experience

• Realization of long range market forces

• Key professional junctures

• Later work experience

• The moment of clarity

• Transition to your startup

I’ll do me

Nice to meet everyone. I’m Ezra, General Manager of Advsr. We are going to discuss Advsr more later, but as a bit of background on me I’ve always been interested in big ideas.