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As a founder, you have everything working against you. You’re likely new to the market, possibly new to sales, no one has ever heard of you, you have few references. No one has a reason to take your call.
That is, until you get a shot to show them. In founder-led sales, that first shot is your LinkedIn profile.
It’s a touchpoint in the sale — a living piece of collateral that drives your business forward.
The biggest misconception that founders make about LinkedIn is that it is a resume. When you are a job seeker, it is. When you are a founder, it’s not.
Your LinkedIn is a touchpoint in the sale. It’s a signal to buyers, investors, future hires, the media and the market that you’re solving a real problem, and have the unique experience to win.
When built strategically and kept updated to align with the objectives you are trying to achieve, your LinkedIn profile becomes a living piece of collateral that drives your business forward.
The principle of ‘minimize search required’
Founders are fighting the attention economy. Buyers are being inundated with emails, asks, messages, meetings, the constant DMs of Slack. And as an early-stage company, you aren’t only competing with these dings. Your real nemesis is time.
In marketing, we talk about good “calls-to-action” or CTAs. Among other things and like all good UX design, good CTAs “minimize clicks required.” This requires doing everything you can to make the number of clicks between the information viewed and the action you want the audience to take as low and efficient as possible.
In sales, apply this corollary principle: “minimize search required.” Get as much hyper-specific data in front of someone, in as digestible a way as possible, as fast as possible. Reduce the amount of effort needed, and you’ll make it as easy as possible for someone to respond.
Worse than getting ignored? Getting stuck in the purgatory of, “I’ll come back to this when I have more time to look into this, so I can be thoughtful.” The truth is, they’re never coming back.
The objective then is to reduce the amount of time it’s going to take someone to decide if they think you are legit, relevant and can help with their pain or solve their problem.
How? Do the work for them:
Provide validating information quickly, make it as clear and targeted as possible, and have everything they could need to know packaged right there or just a single click away.
First impressions are all about chemistry
Whether it’s a cold email, a follow-up from a conversation at a networking event, or prep for a first meeting, your shot does not happen on the first call. That shot happens on the first impression.
We’re not here to become LinkedInfluencers. We’re here to move pipeline, secure investment, and close deals.
It’s not about views on your content, it’s about views on you. People you want to impress, work with, sell to, and invest in you, are going to look you up before you get a chance to talk to them. Put your best foot forward.
In sales, best practices recognize that it takes an average of 8 touchpoints with a lead before they become a customer. Today, these touchpoints come in any ever-increasing number of forms, and are often happening without the company’s knowledge.
Research from a 2024 survey of over 2,500 enterprise buyers with budget, produced by Silicon Valley insights platform 6sense, showed that:
- Most customers are 70% of the way through their internal purchasing process before engaging with a vendor
- 80% of the time, the customer makes first contact and already has a preferred solution in mind
- 85% of customers know their purchase requirements before they contact a vendor
If you receive a contact inbound, that customer is already 70% of the way to committing to working with you because they’ve done their own research. The first call is no longer about you doing lead qualification. By then the customer is running you through an elimination round.
In outbound sales, your LinkedIn profile is that very first impression.
From breadcrumbs to major resources, what did you put out there to drive their research to the outcome you want? When you reach out to someone as a founder, there is no doubt that they have already been to your LinkedIn, or will be heading there the moment a call is scheduled.
And if you’re even earlier in your startup journey, and no one is actively looking for you, you’re likely sending emails and messaging on LinkedIn.
In outbound sales, your LinkedIn profile is that very first impression. It is the first touchpoint in the sales process. Whether you are selling your product, yourself as a founder, or open roles in your company, this is prized real estate to make an impact.
For B2B and B2Gov, it becomes even more important. The bigger the organization, the more touchpoints to a sale, and the more people who will have to check you out. They will all start with your LinkedIn profile.
Now more than ever, this means that your first direct interaction with a buyer is actually about chemistry.
Building a LinkedIn profile that converts
So what do you need to do? What is in the perfect profile? For years, I’ve been recommending this CNBC article for job seekers and this Harvard profile writing template, and still believe that they are both a great place to start.
But founders have to do even more to turn their LinkedIn into a strategic advantage.
Why is this different? Because every company starts out as founder-led everything. You are the lead sales person, the lead ops person, often the lead product person, sometimes the tech lead, always the first head of marketing. This means people are coming at you from every angle.
Your LinkedIn is the first touchpoint, the first piece of collateral the people you are trying to talk to are going to see. We’ve got to maximize every part, so let’s break it down.
Name
Fine, this one is obvious, it must stand on its own. Remember that many people find it obnoxious when someone adds a bunch of other text here beyond their actual name. Are you a PhD or CPA or MBA? Those are the acceptable extensions. Otherwise, skip it.
What to include:
• Your actual name
Headline
This is arguably the most important text of your entire LinkedIn profile. Beyond your actual name, this will be the most read line of your profile. It shows up in search results, it shows up when someone tags you, and is the only line previewed when you send direct messages.
You get 220 total characters, of which only 60 will show up in messages. This is the “Caller ID” of LinkedIn. We have to make it say something.
The headline is a great moment to reflect on the purpose of your LinkedIn right now, and decide on your audience and what you’re trying to achieve.
Are you hiring early team members? Are you using it as a recruiting tool? Are you sending out cold messages to VC analysts? Are you being introduced by your lead investor to other VC partners? Are you doing customer discovery outreach to industry experts? Are you trying to get accepted into a program? Are you pitching news outlets to tell your story? Are you sending cold outbound messages to potential leads?
Here’s the formula: a good headline is language-coded to your industry and uses the big four — title, company, industry, verbs.
Make your headline from:
- Your title
- Name of your company
- Your company tagline
- Your industry or hot tags for your category
- Relevant affinities like university or “alum” of whatever status
- A concise “I” statement about what you are working on
- A very direct line about what your company does
- A statement about who you are trying to connect with
- A statement about your “why”
- Verb that is straight to the point, HIRING, FUNDRAISING, “Seeking Pilot Partners,” “Building X”
Pro-tip: Use the vertical line “|” (officially called a pipe symbol) as a concise separator.
Below are real-life examples from my own LinkedIn inbox. They all convey a meaning that goes beyond the basics, that says, “click me, read my message!” Your goal is that someone will read this as they decide if they are going to respond to you, and that you will have written something compelling enough that they write you back.
Photo
Current, taken within the last two years, and look like you look.
If I get on a call with you and looked you up on LinkedIn in advance, and you grew a beard or dyed your hair coral pink since your last headshot, I’m going to be confused and have questions. If your headshot is from when you were 24 and just got out of the military and now you’re a seasoned CEO with a few companies behind you, same.
This is also an opportunity to set yourself up for the tone of your calls. Is your approach more formal or are you more conversational? A picture says a thousand words. Use it to your advantage, set the tone you want, and leverage this as a strategic part of your first impression.
Header Photo
This little 1584 x 396 pixel piece of real estate is powerful imagery. Treat it like a billboard. It can be a slogan for your company, it can be a product feature, it can be you doing something absolutely badass.
Whatever you choose, remember that this image is an opportunity to bring your intended audience into the world of your brand and bring it to life. It lets your LinkedIn page start to feel like your company and personalizes it to feel like you.
About
The About section is a huge amount of space. We can put a little bit, a ton, or no information at all. It is not a required section, so you have to really think about what you want to get at here. Critically, it all comes back to what you are trying to get out of your LinkedIn right now.
How do you want it to function? What do you want it to drive?
At a minimum, it should read as a micro-biography of you and deliver the elevator pitch for your company. It can be written in first-person or third-person, as long as you are consistent across your profile and use that decision to support the tone that you want to represent yourself with.
At the maximum, it can be a 2600-character essay about you and your company, providing major insight into your solution, and serving as a skimmable-but-information-rich elevator pitch.
Here’s what to factor in to make this a strong section:
- Easily readable in 45 seconds or less
- Professional, no spelling mistakes and grammatically correct
- Inclusive of keywords that are relevant to your industry or work
- Provides insight into your personality through style and tone
- Gives information about your expertise and highlights your relevant or critical experience
- Tells people what you are doing right now
- Includes a call-to-action
- Your education or certifications, if relevant
- Includes references or testimonials
- Point people to the next place for info, like your website or email address
Pro-tip: If you’re struggling to write the Headline, write the About first and make the Headline the title of your mini-article about yourself.
Featured
In this section you can select up to six of your own posts or articles to pin to your profile in advance of your activity and experience. These should again relate to what you are trying to achieve and offer another opportunity to bring the viewer into your brand story, while inviting them to get to know you better.
Here’s a few ways to think about this:
- Fundraising? Post with a video pitch or thought leadership piece that reads like your manifesto.
- Hiring? Post with open positions and pictures of your team having a great work experience.
- Talking to technical buyers? Post with a detailed product demo walkthrough from one of your technical team members.
- Raising awareness? Share a post highlighting your favorite points from a podcast that you were on
- Being reviewed for a pitch contest? Post a video of any kind of you presenting in front of a group or giving your pitch.
This section makes you look legit, validating what you have said above about yourself, and providing secondary sources and references that you want people to look at.
Activity
This is the stream of everything that you do on LinkedIn. From reposts to likes to comments, it all shows up here. The main point of this section from a founder’s standpoint is to show that you are an active participant in the conversation, and that you are actually real on LinkedIn.
Pretty much any advice you read about maximizing LinkedIn views starts with a recommendation to be active on the platform. For founders, that’s not just how you get noticed, it’s how you show who your friends are, and why you’re real.
The counterpoint? The activity stream feature is what holds people accountable to being kind and positive and professionally critical when appropriate on LinkedIn.
It goes without saying, if you’re a jerk, people can see it here. If you are thoughtful, participatory, and are a value-add to others in your network, the evidence is laid out in plain sight.
Experience
For founders, the experience section — the true, original resume-style cornerstone of LinkedIn — can feel like an afterthought.
Many founders choose to reduce this section as much as possible, with only their previous companies and roles listed. While this is maybe the easiest solution, and notably decreases recruiter reach-outs because you reduce the amount of searches you show up in, I’d like to recommend an alternative for any founders who are planning to raise venture capital.
The experience section for first-time founders is the opportunity to provide answers to the questions that will be used to say “no” or “pass” and eliminate you from consideration for funding, before you’ve even had a chance to have a conversation.
When used well, that experience section can help answer one of the biggest diligence questions that VCs have — why is this the right founder to solve this problem? Why is this the right time to solve this problem? Does this founder have what it takes to win? Does this founder have the network it will take to get them there?
The experience section can tie the layers of your career together. This is an opportunity to illustrate that you’ve been building toward this, block-by-block, role-by-role, lesson-by-lesson over the years, and now is the time.
Include:
- Role description and scope of responsibilities
- Number of team members, types of collaboration or cross-functional work, and amount of budget you were responsible for
- Critical skills that you developed that made you successful in those roles that you now are leveraging to be a CEO that will win
- Programs of record or programs that were in public knowledge that you were a part of with specifics, dates, years, and launches or deployments
- Emphasis on your ability to face challenges, solve problems, drive things to completion, and be an effective manager
- Show that you know how to sell, win over stakeholders, and close deals
- Quotes from recommendations or formal reviews that provide context and references
Why all this matters
It doesn’t matter how great your strategy is or how awesome your product is if you can’t get the door open with a first conversation. That starts with the first impression. Having a strategically built LinkedIn that you treat as a piece of collateral in your sales process sets yourself apart from others and up for success.
Of course, it’s just one piece. As a founder, you still have to get the call, have a great meeting, nail the follow-up and then work touchpoints all the way through to the close.
That’s the deal. Make your first shot a good one.
