Blog 7: Life Skills Summit

Blog 7: How to Make an Introduction with Marc Randolph

By Payton Grady

This past Tuesday, I attended a Webex meeting with Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix. During this event, he presented on how to make good introductions and made some interesting points. One of the first things he stated was that there are several great skills that the education system can teach entrepreneurs, but there is one that is missing: how to make a good introduction. 

Making an Introduction 

Randolph stated that people generally use the simplest introductions possible, such as "Hi X, this is Y", just stating the names and moving on. These are forgettable because you would only know the person by their name without establishing a connection, the most important part of an introduction. These introductions can be improved by stating where the person is from, their hobbies, or their professional experience. But the best introductions incorporate these attributes and zero in on what is relevant to the audience. After research is done, 3 questions have to be answered: why are you introducing the speaker, why on this subject, and why to the audience.

How This Might Be Applied 

The concept of introductions is something that I have never given much thought to until now. Usually I just go with the simplest introduction which Randolph discussed and occasionally add an extra detail. I can't take an obscene amount of time to introduce people, but at the same time I can take my time and use a detailed summary of their experience to connect with their audience. Aside from introducing people, I feel as if this could be used in a game design setting. A pitch meeting would be a perfect example of making an introduction. In a short amount of time, a speaker is aiming to sell his colleagues on his game idea over their ideas. To achieve this, the speaker would need to consider the target audience, tell them why he wants to introduce the game, why they would be interested in it, and what they would have to gain from it. Marc Randolph himself stated that entrepreneurs have to introduce things all the time, so this would definitely be a good skill for me to develop sooner than later.