Thanks, I think I understand your perspective better. It sounds like you care more about the lack of genuineness or professionalism than the act of reaching out and selling, if I'm understanding correctly.
I think the takeaway for me is to work in a space/field of genuine interest so that building relationships can be a genuine activity.
No, it's exclusively the lack of profesionalism. Business is business. I don't want a "genuine" sales/marketing person. Your product is not my baby.
The right way to do this is to 1) sponsor the event and then 2) send out a professional email/flyer/whatever pitching the product through the official mechanism.
I also want to add that he emailed me under false pretences. He conjured up an imaginary world in which we were close friends and I cared about what he did at the hackathon and what he’s doing afterwards (I’ve never met the guy). He undoubtedly wanted me to believe that he handwrote this email for me alone when its a copy-paste marketing email that he’d reused many times.
Not only is it dishonest and wastes my time, the execution is so bad I feel embarrassed for the guy (really? You “arrived” at a virtual hackathon?)
Edit: Oh my god and I almost forgot. He sent this to me at 3:21 AM!
I'm really surprised that this is taking so much of your mental energy :/ I remember you wrote quite an aggressive message on the Hackathon Slack that had to be removed by admins..
It seems like you took my email so much more serious that you should have!
I definitely didn't want you to feel like I was faking a friendship, this was a cold outreach done because I believed that this could add value to you.
But it's just cold emailing. I didn't mass email people without a reason :) You met people, you might not want to lose touch, that's it.
But agreed - totally a grey area - I'm not complaining, I should of course expect such reactions!
I think the takeaway for me is to work in a space/field of genuine interest so that building relationships can be a genuine activity.