I have seen it first hand, someone managed to convince a few investors who were old and not very quick thinking that they should invest in his company.
The product idea was just awkward and made up. It was as if someone is given a 5 minute task to quickly think of a startup idea.
But he was a good smooth talker, so millions of dollars later down the drain, with a private office in the Valley, he can now claim he was a serial entrepreneur, CEO, mentor. He'd go to all meetups and give talks. Would publish a blog post here and there so he was also an "author".
Every time he was asked to present his product or asked when it was going to be shipped, he'd claim he saw this trendy technology at a meetup (last was some container thing) and claimed he needed to rewrite his stack using that to go "faster". That lasted for close to 5 years.
People claim it was a failure. I claim it was a major success for him. He's probably off to the next adventure. Not bad overall. Ride the hype and you'll make it!