I'd Just Rather Reply To The Email

I love LinkedIn. It’s an awesome database/social network that I can use to figure out how to reach almost anyone I need to talk to.

Need to find out who runs a product at Google and how to reach them? LinkedIn.

Need to recruit a VP bus dev for a portfolio company? LinkedIn.

Need to do some diligence on a potential investment? LinkedIn.

But I absolutely hate the LinkedIn request emails I get. I refuse to respond to them. If you’ve sent me one in the past six months (and many of you have), you probably think I am a jerk for ignoring them. But here’s the problem with them.

That’s just way too much work for me. I don’t want to click on the link, load a page, fill out information, and hit submit. I want to simply reply and be done with it.

So if you want to reach me, do what I do. Find me on LinkedIn, find a good connection point, and then ask the connection person for a regular email intro.

Given how bad I’ve been on email lately, I can’t promise it will work perfectly, but I can promise you if you send me a LinkedIn request, it will go in the deleted mail folder unanswered.