The one kind of founder vcs will never fund

medium.com

10 points·mese848··6 comments

This piece is excellent advice. It’s way better to retain integrity and build on that than to dissemble and fudge things, if only because maintaining separate realities is a tax on your brain.

However, the title is completely false.

Anyone who has been around the industry knows that both founders and executives can achieve success through exaggeration, distortion, “acting as-if”, “fake it till you make it”, dissembling and outright lies.

These things create low-trust toxic environments, but people can still make a lot of money in those environments.

Don’t engage in these behaviors. They make the world worse for both you and everyone else.

But don’t gaslight yourself into thinking that people are not successful because of them.

TLDR: "...a founder that doesn’t tell the truth is the one kind of founder that VCs will never fund.”"

Clickbait title but right-on punchline.

A business partner that is perceived to "lie" will kill your business, no matter what business you are in.

True in the limit, but they can easily be funded and create the impression of success for a long time, and even exit before that outcome.

Theranos, and WeWork would be good examples.

Right, some people certainly do manage to build a business around lying, and how they get past the societal defenses against that is a question -- "WeWork" is a unicorn precisely because it is an exception to the rule.

It’s only an exception because of how large/egregious it is.

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