The people you already know, one message each.

Last updated 24 September 2026

Your LinkedIn connections are the warmest list you have and the one you never write to. HeyLead picks the ones who fit what you are doing now and sends each a direct message in the voice of your own LinkedIn posts. No invitations, no warm-up, no cold strangers.

Who this is for

Anyone with a few hundred connections gathered over the years: former colleagues, people met at events, customers from a previous job. You shipped something, changed direction or opened a new offer, and the right first readers are already in your network.

The brief to type

Say "existing connections", "my network" or "people I already know", and the assistant passes the switch for you. A worked example:

Message my existing connections who lead engineering or payments teams at fintechs.
Tell them about the Stripe webhook debugger I built and ask if they want to try it.
No invitations, just DMs to people I already know.

The setting it uses

create_campaign(connections_only='on'). The campaign is sourced from your 1st-degree connections instead of a LinkedIn search. Each connection is scored against the ICP from your brief on headline data, the top 50 are enriched with their full profile and scored again, and the ones who fit go in the draft.

What the switch changes in the campaign's settings, as the code writes them:

• Invitations off. There is nobody to invite.
• Profile views, follows and post engagement off: the warm-up is for strangers.
• The first touch is the opening message itself, then follow-ups as usual.
• Cannot be combined with exclude_connections (its exact inverse) or with a named list of people.

What the agents do differently

• The first touch is the opening message, written from your brief and the person's profile in the voice of your own LinkedIn posts. There is no separate template for connections; the brief is what makes it read like a note to someone who knows you.
• Opening messages and follow-ups wait for your approval until you switch the workspace to autopilot, so you read each one before it goes to a person you know.
• Replies are read, classified and answered from the campaign's facts; anything ambiguous is held for you. edit_campaign(enable_auto_replies='off') leaves questions and small talk for you to answer; a reply that asks for a meeting still gets one answer with your booking link.

The founder's own numbers

Limits

• Your connections must be synced first; setup_profile does that, and re-running it refreshes the list.
• Messages are paced and go out Monday to Friday 08:00 to 22:00 in your time zone by default; no LinkedIn call is made between 22:00 and 08:00.
• Recruiting and partner outreach work with a custom brief, on this list as on any other. Research and event invitations have no intent yet.

HeyLead is not affiliated with LinkedIn. It reaches LinkedIn through Unipile, which is also not affiliated. HeyLead sends at a human pace: at most 20 invitations a day and 100 a week on a free LinkedIn account, Monday to Friday 08:00 to 22:00 in your time zone. LinkedIn's own rules are in the Terms.

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Related: All use cases · Founder-led sales · Job search · Pricing