When You're an Entrepreneur, Word of Mouth Isn't Good Enough

This week I’m cursing the name “Maxwell von Stein,” a 22-year old graduate of the Cooper Union in New York City.

Maxwell and I have never met, but I’m trying desperately to reach him. I’m tempted to turn to the personals ala the movie "Desperately Seeking Susan," as that might be my only option left.

The truth is that Maxwell von Stein has been in the news a lot this year. He's the inventor behind an interesting flywheel device for bicycles that actually gathers energy when you brake and reuses that energy when it’s time to pedal again. I’d like to interview for Maxwell for a story since I have a couple of editors who want to know more about this potentially game changing technology.

But I can’t reach him. He has no website that I can find, and my last option is to contact him through LinkedIn.

The very thought of that gives me a headache, because as I’ve previously noted I’m a bit of a LinkedIn Luddite. I long ago joined LinkedIn because so many colleagues that swear by it. Yet I never felt the need to add a long profile or anything like that. I just use it as a way to occasionally reach those I can’t reach via other means.

Even with LinkedIn, however, I can’t connect to this extraordinary fellow. I’d love to write about his invention, but LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to send connections unless you know that person. As the site says, “Connecting to someone on LinkedIn implies you know them well.”

I don’t know Maxwell at all! No one I know seems to know him either. In the end LinkedIn doesn’t work at all for connecting to people you don’t know. I’m more LinkedOut at this point.

In itself this isn’t really a LinkedIn problem. It is understandable that many users probably don’t want to be contacted by many of the people they actually do know. Imagine how unwieldy the service would be if you could simply connect to everyone on LinkedIn! It would turn LinkedIn into the white pages.

It is, however, a problem with depending too heavily on LinkedIn to stay visible and connected. As a young, upcoming innovator and inventor I would think that Maxwell might want to make it easy for people to contact him. Apparently he can’t be that hard to reach, as Wired and Reuters, have managed somehow to track him down.

This should all be a warning to some small businesses, start ups, innovators, and inventors. People need to reach you. As a journalist I probably want to write about you. Investors might want to contact you; larger companies might want to hire you.

If we can’t, we move on and go to the next thing.

In my case I’m a busy freelancer and while I am always looking for innovative fitness products for KineticShift.com, a site I run on the side, I get dozens of pitches each week. As a business reporter I get dozens of pitches a day. In other words, if I can’t connect with you quickly I give up -- unless I vent my frustration in a blog post.

So if you are a freelancer, a small business, a startup, an innovator, or an inventor, by all means use LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It never hurts to make it easy to be found if you have something big to say.

But don’t overlook the old school route, which isn’t really all that old, of posting a simple Web page. It is easy enough to get a simple email address.

It might work to be an upscale restaurant that has no phone book listing, and somehow word of mouth packs the house. For the rest of us we need to make it easy to be found. Are you there, Maxwell?