I so loved the title of Brad Feld’s post, that I just had to copy the title.

This is an important one.  We live in a world of personal branding, quick online reputation checks and a lot of noise.  Authors, Entrepreneurs and job seekers get less and less time to explain themselves.

This morning I was listening to Guy Kawasaki pitch his new book “APE” in a webinar on publishing.  He talked about the challenge of an author.  “Nobody walks into the bookstore thinking I am here to make Guy Kawasaki a little bit richer.  He walks in with a problem that he wants to solve.  His problem.”

The mentality of someone walking into a bookstore and browsing, and the mentality of an investor share a lot of similarities.  They have their own agenda.  Either you show you can help that agenda very quickly, or there are 20,000 other books in the bookshop that will get their attention.

If You Can’t Explain what You do in a Paragraph, You’ve Got a Problem

I love the energy of entrepreneurs.  I spend a lot of time involved in activities in Barcelona.  I love the entrepreneurial energy. It is great to see people and institutions coming together to build the supporting community.  We need to get better at connecting 1) the people with the resources with 2) the people with the ideas with 3) the people who can execute these ideas.

If you approach me at a networking event and say “I’d like to talk to you about my business.”  I’ll say “Great.”  Then I will ask “What problem do you solve?”

This is the point at which 85% lose my attention.  They try to steer the conversation to describing the technology, or give a generic statement that uses either the word “platform” or “solution”.

I don’t want to hear about what language you are coding in.  I don’t really care about which font you have chosen for your book.  I don’t care when you started.

The 3 Ingredients of What We Do

Brad Feld says the “What We Do” Paragraph should be three sentences: (1) what we do, (2) who we do it to, and (3) why you should care. Sometimes this can be two sentences; sometimes four, but never more than a paragraph.

I believe the major risk of early stage startups is getting customers to buy, and showing that you can sell.  The words “platform” or “solution” are indicative of an entrepreneur who has not spent much time with real or potential customers.

What’s your paragraph?

Photo Credit: saikiishiki via Compfight cc