> I'd argue they want to be pitched, and doing it at scale is just a way to save you a lot of time.

There are sites like www.helpareporter.com which do the exact same thing but the difference here is that the reporters opt-in to get the emails. I think that is a more ethical way of doing it.

>I know you're joking about this, but I'm pretty sure Airbnb would have failed without doing exactly that.

Wow, though as per AirBnB it was a rogue marketing agency which did it without telling them.

Link for the lazy (first article on Google): [1] http://www.tnooz.com/article/airbnb-admits-rogue-sales-team-...