Ask HN: Corporate nullification question

In any case, where reputation counts is among customers and reputation among customers closely trails product and service and less closely trails things that the customer doesn't care about. Of course if this weapon thingy isn't actually the product then spending time on it is a bit of a distraction. If it is part of the product but not part of making users love it, it's also a bit of a distraction because it puts a technology that scales in the middle of trying to find product market fit.

Good luck.

A difference scenario, you do the same harvesting, but you are contacting each contractor to determine if they want to join your lead generation business (or whatever you are planning). In this case, yes the email could be considered unsolicited but it is specifically business in nature and not a scam or spam and the company was advertising the email address/phone so they could be contacted for specific business purposes. You will need to understand the specifics of the Canada anti-spam laws but almost all leave exclusions for genuine business purposes. If you are contacting the business to sell him Viagra, then you are in obvious violation as a general contractor's business has nothing to do with Viagra.

All that said, to stay 100% above board still talk to an attorney and get a reasonable legal opinion. Just remember this, if you talk to an attorney and do it anyway after you have been advised you are breaking the law you loose the 1 time ignorance (oops sorry) defense. While ignorance of the law is not an excuse overall, most of these types of "violations" are excused with an oops sorry defense and maybe a small fine, e.g. its not the same as committing an armed burglary and saying oops sorry didn't know that was against the law.

As for your reputation, that is more important then what a VC thinks of you at this point. Guard that more carefully then caring what one or even ten VC's think initially. In the end, if your methods work, you gain traction, sales etc and you have not shown you have a reckless reputation the VC's will look and judge you on the results. There is a fine line between reckless and forward thinking or aggressive, just find it and walk it the best you can.