[sanderjd]

Yes. It's professional, not personal, it is in no way weird or creepy to just say "hey interesting background, any interest in getting coffee with me?" just like you would with a new colleague at work. But it's pretty much everyone you can meet that way, not just people at your own company.

[moneywoes]

Have you come across a playbook for doing it the right way?

[sanderjd]

Here's a playbook:

- Find someone you're interested in connecting with. (Maybe you want to work where they work or where they used to work, maybe they live in your town and work on similar stuff, maybe they just seem to know a lot about something you're curious about.)

- Maybe get an intro from a person you both know. (This definitely increases the odds they'll respond to you.)

- Much lower friction than getting an intro and a nice feature of LinkedIn: You can both see people you both know. Reaching out to those "2nd" order connections increases the odds that they'll respond.

- Then I think the playbook for what to write is just "be yourself and sound like an actual person rather than a spam bot".

- Then don't be upset if you don't get a response, especially from people who probably get tons of messages.

There is also a step 0 that is an ongoing effort, which is to have a background and expertise yourself that is interesting to the person you're reaching out to. I love it when I get messages from people I might have messaged myself if I had come across them first.