Silicon Valley Is Filled With Liars

Also, when creating/leading you often have to preemptively believe things at the edge (or just over the edge) of plausibility, in order to have any chance to "make them true". Such statements are not 'true' in a rigorous academic or legal sense, and even have a risk of becoming completely falsified as events develop.

But at the time and in the spirit in which they were offered, they declare the speaker's honest hopes and beliefs about what's possible. Sometimes the speaker is even deceiving themself, by signalling more certainty than is warranted about uncertain outcomes.

Culturally, people should understand that implicit disclaimers apply... as when a coach tells their team, "we're going to outplay our opponent" or a commander tells their soldiers, "we're going to take this objective". The statements are aspirational, not yet literally true, and they are spoken aloud as an intentional mechanism for increasing their chances of coming true.

I agree that there's a fine line between making a legitimate sales pitch for your startup and lying to your investors, but the article doesn't address that point at all.

It was "Don't point out your own short comings"

I was saying things like 'in the final run the paint job will be better', highlighting the deficiencies of our Xmas decorations instead of highlighting the positives.

If you've ever met a good sales person working for your company, they're almost blind to the deficiencies in your products. It's not that they're deceiving you, it's that their internal reality is that that they see the positives, that's all they talk about. That's the product they're selling. If you try and say 'well this bit isn't great', they give you a confused look.

As soon as the 'negatives' click, their sales plummet. It's a built in defence mechanism to add confidence and to be honest it's up to the client to see the deficiencies, not the sales person.

That's kind of like a start up founder is, they've got to focus on the positives just to keep going. To stay working the hours, to keep their team going. To keep believing it will work out in the end. Having been part of a failed startup, I think the time for honest reflection and learning is afterwards.

But saying you've met x and y and z, worked for a company you haven't and photoshopping yourself in photos?

That's not the same thing at all.

That's just fraud.

Let's not conflate the two as this article has.

"We're doing well, our investors are happy!" is saving face (or, perhaps they want to believe it so badly that they do).

What she did is the equivalent of falsely saying "We have an investment from Andreessen Horowitz -- see, here's a copy of our term sheet!" and then using the person's credit card to buy yourself a plane ticket.

Everybody lies a bit to themselves feel better when things are going badly. Congressmen leave to spend time with their family, breakups are always "mutual", etc. This is completely different than the TC article.