Last week I had an initial call with a founder team. We started with an intro round. The CEO introduced herself quickly and succinctly. Then the CTO. And the CTO. And the CTO. The intro took ages. I could read from the face of the CEO that she was internally screaming “Stop it! Come to the point! It’s enough!“.

It was so boring. We hate to listen to the long self-intros of others. It often even feels awkward–which is natural: Our reptilian brain–the part of our brain that reacts instinctively to external triggers–is self-centered. It only cares about ourselves. It’s in a “me, me, me” mode. We don’t care about the details of vitas of others (if we’re not trying to recruit them).

This is nothing specific to a fundraising situation. We all introduce ourselves, every day. It’s a crucial part that forms the first impression others have of us. But yet, many are far from delivering a succinct self-intro that impresses.

The CTO I spoke with went through all his career steps. Step by step. With so many details about every role. With details about why he moved to the next company. With so many detours within every role.

This is not a job interview. It’s not about all your career steps. An intro is like an elevator pitch about yourself. It needs to summarize the most exciting facts about yourself in a very short and succinct way.

We all prepare for different kinds of external and internal presentations that we probably deliver only for one time. But what about the presentation about ourselves we’ll deliver almost every day of our work life–our intro? Why don’t we invest significant efforts to develop an impressive intro?

I can only encourage you to do that and benefit from it until the end of your life. To give you some inspiration and make it more tangible, here is what I do:

• I keep a self-intro always under 1 Minute.
• I only focus on the few most important parts of my vita.
• I have a standard intro, but have different versions to customize it in the most relevant way depending on the person I’m speaking to. Examples: If I’m speaking to a founder building a no/low code solution, I’m mentioning my time as General Manager for Wix.com, in most other cases I don’t (as it’s not the most relevant part of my vita for most conversations); when I’m speaking to a founder in the Marketing space, I’m mentioning my marketing background, if I’m speaking to a founder with an immigration background, I tell them that I co-founded the 2hearts Community, etc.
• I usually implement 2-3 short sentences about something very personal, like how and where I was raised and in general things that are telling my very own life story beyond work, and tailor this often to the person I’m speaking to.

So, this is the trigger for you to invest a bit of time to develop the most important elevator pitch of your work life. The good news: Every day you’ll have the chance to test it live and optimize it continuously.