“Tell me about yourself”

“What do you do?”

“What makes your product different?”

There is so much to say (you are a passionate entrepreneur!), but most people asking just want the basics. If they want to know more about the technology, they will ask. If they want to further discuss the impact, they will dig in. Your job is to give them just enough so they can ask for more if they are interested.

A carefully crafted pitch delivers your unique value proposition, anticipates questions before they come up and lets you start strong without tripping over “umm’s” and “uhh’s” scrambling for an answer.

The ideal pitch should aim to be under 30 seconds, around 75 words, and can be easily adapted, made longer or shorter for different contexts, with the ultimate goal of creating opportunities.

One last thing: Remember that the people you are talking to may not be experts in your domain, so use language that anyone can understand in your pitch. Some people call that “dumbing down” the pitch — at District 3, we call that “smartening up” the pitch, because if you give the people you are pitching to the words they need to be able to tell your story to their network, that is just plain smart.

A simple and effective template

Template:

My name is [YOUR NAME], founder of [YOUR COMPANY]. We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for [TARGET MARKET] to [VALUE PROPOSITION].

Unlike [THE COMPETITION], we [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR]. And we recently [RECENT MILESTONE].

[CALL to ACTION]

Example:

My name is Braveen Kumar, a writer at Shopify. We offer a platform that enables both the early entrepreneur and the large enterprise to build and run their own stores.

Unlike most marketplaces where you can sell your products, Shopify lets you build and brand your own online store with the tools to sell across a variety of channels, manage inventory, start small and scale fast.

Today, over 500,000 entrepreneurs use Shopify to power their businesses.

If you’ve got a product to sell, visit Shopify.com to start your 14-day free trial.