(I'm leading engineering at Algolia) Very sorry to read that the trial period you've experienced was that stalkerish. In order to provide the best customer & support experience to our users, we do ask our teams to do some research before reaching out to our users. I assume this went a little bit far in your case, most probably because you've listed the company you were working for on your GH profile? Please feel free to reach out to me personally if there is anything I can do or anything you cannot share on HN, my email is sylvain@alg..

The irony of a person commenting on a companies aggressive sales tactics and having the company immediately respond with sales tactics. Love it. I bet you definitely alleviated and sense of being stalked.

Ultimately, though, if a sale is made in this space we’d probably be right in assuming the deal is mutually beneficial.

Step 1 in sales is knowing who you're talking to. If your LinkedIn profile is public, what's the problem? They're a business selling a service so it's reasonable they reach out.

Why on earth are you offended that a company responded positively when you created a relationship with them? If you think visiting your LinkedIn profile is stalking, you should delete it.

Totally agree that sales teams can overreach though. Perhaps there should be a little “why are you signing up? Personal/work/etc” quiz when you sign up, then emails reduced accordingly.

I don't get why people expect privacy on information they made publicly available. It's hardly stalking if your information is just a few clicks away.