It's not a mistaken belief. People have been paying forever for meet and greets, intros, and connections--ultimately it's just an expected value evaluation. There are plenty of celebrities and icons that will make a lot of money off of tools like this. Just look at the success of Cameo. A requirement for such a startup to be successful might be that they require the celebrity to open the email and respond, in order that the customer feels their message has gotten through, but I bet there are celebrities with so much clout that they could probably make money for doing less.

It definitely is a variation of that belief. Could you elaborate on why it is mistaken?

I think: 1. Whether something is valuable can only be discovered if you try to set a price and sell it. Until then, you can not know. 2. LinkedIn has big part of it's business selling 'InMail' at around 2$ per piece. So clearly some people's attention is so important that strangers do pay money to send them mail.

Could you please elaborate?

Right! But this time is a little different: - with Lightning Network fees are actually low, compared to on-chain - no need for a new email account, instead you can add inbox fee to existing email - full privacy, as your data never leaves your device, and payments are anonymous

It is, would you try it?