Once you start doing stuff on the business end of things it's really useful: • You've got a conf call with 3 people from a company and you want to figure out w

Once you start doing stuff on the business end of things it's really useful: • You've got a conf call with 3 people from a company and you want to figure out what their roles there are and other useful bits (where they studied, where they've worked, and other tidbits that can warm up a conversation). • You want to figure out the rough size of a company you're doing a sales call with. • You're cold calling and you want to figure out who to cold call. • You meet a half dozen people at a networking event and would rather have their LinkedIn info than their business card for future reference. • You want an intro to somebody who you suspect is only a contact or two away, but don't know which contact or two. • You want to background check a potential consultant / hire and want to figure out who to run those checks by. Before I started a company I found it pretty useless too. (All of the jobs I'd gotten had always come via intros in my offline personal network, so I never saw its utility there.)