When I was about 12 I remember doing some school craft competition where we had to make and then sell our wares to our teachers. A teacher said something to me that's always stuck, but I always struggle with following.<p>It was "Don't point out your own short comings"<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>But saying you've met x and y and z, worked for a company you haven't and photoshopping yourself in photos?<p>That's not the same thing at all.<p>That's just fraud.<p>Let's not conflate the two as this article has.
What especially bothers me about this sort of trend is that it forces those of us who aren't big on bullshitting to do it anyway.<p>The impression I've gotten is that prospective investors and the like expect that you're going to contort your numbers into a just-over-the-horizon hockey stick. So, any stance that rejects this fake 'crushing it'[1] mentality is viewed as an indication that you're failing miserably.<p>[1] For the record, I absolutely hate this term. I'm sure Gary Vaynerchuk is a great guy, but I think he's done the world a disservice with this asinine idiom.<p>edit: I'm not justifying engaging in this behavior at all. See <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4457448" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4457448</a>
Every place full of ambitious people is full of liars, but I've lived in several such places and overall the <i>ratio</i> of lying to ambition here is lower than anywhere else I've found. There are a lot more posers in New York and LA and Cambridge than there are in SV.
You think Silicon Valley is bad? Hahaha. You should see Toronto. The distribution here is totally bimodal. The 10 to 15% that get it and the remainder that are so totally clueless it isn't even funny.<p>I once, when I was younger and dumber, had a self-proclaimed "angel" investor tell me that he needed to ask his wife if he could invest 25k after leading me to believe he could close a whole round himself. Of course this was 3 or 4 months after we first started talking to him.<p>Man, I have to stop myself or I'm going to end up being quoted in a Tech Crunch article. At least in SV lies at least have some <i>point</i> to them. Make more money, or initiate a relationship. Over here people don't even lie for a purpose, they do it just to try to look cool and waste other peoples time.
I agree with the general point of this, but disagree on the tone and the implications.<p>The main thrust here seems to be "everyone lies, get over it", which seems counterproductive. There also seems to be some equivocation over, say, using a true but empty metric to promote your business... and photoshopping yourself into a picture with a celeb, or falsely claiming to be an employee of a company.<p>These things are both fibs, but one is IMO much, much greater in magnitude than the other. We're all used to people being overly optimistic and deliberately withholding damaging info, but we're not used to outright fraud at this level.<p>Imagine if a startup claimed to have indexed billions of user contacts (as pointless of a number as it may be) but in fact has indexed only hundreds - all of which from the founders' own phones. This is the severity of fraud we're talking about.
The <i>world</i> is filled with liars. I can come up with examples of this happening outside Silicon Valley for almost all of these points.<p>Vanity metrics? "Customers saved an average of $200 by switching to Geico"<p>Acquisition boasting? I'm sure this happens all the time, but nothing comes to mind immediately.<p>Perpetual Euphoria? Enron's CEO talked the company up until the last minute.<p>Perpetual Euphoria for Investors? Housing bubble.<p>Lying about firings? How many people who publicly resign are actually fired? Happens all the time in DC.<p>Lying about how committed you are? I'm sure this happens all the time, but nothing comes to mind immediately.<p>Lying about how much money you're losing? Enron. WorldCom. Banks.<p>Lying about who you're friends with? Every high schooler in existence.<p>TL;DR - The world is <i>filled</i> with slimeballs.
Maybe it's because I don't live in Silicon Valley... or because I'm less "into the startup scene" than other people on HN... but I'm surprised anyone even cares about the TechCrunch article.<p>Shirley Hornstein is a nobody to me. She fooled some people, which is a shame. But, how many people are really affected by photoshopped pictures with some celebrities on her facebook page. The rest of this isn't particularly newsworthy either.<p>The TC article is irrelevant gossip. This blog response is sort of a stretch too.
I see this often in academia as well, and imo it really damages the scientific literature. When I read an article, I really want an honest assessment by the author of the strengths and weaknesses of their approach and others. I don't only want to hear about how great the author's approach is, but I also want to hear positive things said about the "related work", and negative things said in the Conclusions about their own work. But usually neither of those happens, because then your paper won't be accepted: you need to demolish the existing work and play up your own great contribution. I think it's what happens naturally in environments that are based more on competition than concern for accuracy.
I think the general rule is people who don't do things well that well have to lie about these things. Like everywhere else, Silicon Valley has probably a greater number of people who don't do things well than people who do, so there are lots of people fibbing.<p>That said, there are some people in Silicon Valley who are doing a great job at what they do, and for them statistics, etc. are useful tools to show what they are doing well.<p>As a general rule, it is probably better to focus on the people who are doing things well and to attempt to imitate them, rather than the people telling you about their tech startup while they run a food truck.
I have decided that for me personally, the comments defending the original TC article are what I'll point to when I say "HN really has gone downhill". The article was awful journalism (it shouldn't even be considered journalism) and read like a gossip rag except no one knew or cared about the girl in question.<p>It's not good to lie but writing a takedown piece about a nobody makes you look like a bigger ass than the subject of the article itself. Especially when the entirely of the story could be summed up as "this girl lied about being a big shot. Here's some pictures that may or may not have been made by her and may or may not be innocent like how lots of people photoshop people next to famous people". There was no research, it was a dumb story unworthy of coverage by a widely read blog like TC, and I think it's shameful the story ended up on HN at all without being killed let alone the front page.<p>Yeah sure, it sparked a discussion about ethics and whatnot but if you look at the comments a lot of them read like people discussing the one-sided farces that are reality shows.
The author may have a point in general, but using Holstein is sounding more and more like the wrong example to stand behind.<p>One of the comments in the blog post points to a very in-depth betabeat article that says that Holstein was involved with much more than just name dropping... she has been accused of credit card fraud and ripping off people around her. If the allegations are true, it might be that she is a criminal and a pathological liar with likely mental issues.<p><a href="http://betabeat.com/2012/08/shirley-hornstein-shirls-credit-card-fraud-records/" rel="nofollow">http://betabeat.com/2012/08/shirley-hornstein-shirls-credit-...</a>
I've just returned from a three-week vacation, and one thing that strikes me as I re-enter our little world of tech is how much of the attention and focus of our incredibly rich and fortunate community is spent on bitterness and negativity. I'm not claiming any kind of superiority (I've engaged in my share of negativity), it's just an observation, and I want to see if I can avoid it in the future while still participating in the extreme mental stimulation that drew me to tech in the first place.
Its worth considering why this happens.<p>A startup hub like Silicon Valley is partially valuable because founders / investors / etc run into each other, and presumably something good comes out of these chance meetings.<p>Let's assume John is running a failing startup. John goes to TC Disrupt and meets all sorts of people, some of whom ask him how his startup is doing?<p>John can't say that his startup has no traction, or that they can't get investors lined up, or that the last startup he ran was a failure. If there's a shot this person can help John out, he's best served by presenting an optimistic and selective version of the truth. Which is where things like vanity metrics come in.<p>Even if Valley folks didn't judge startups for having a tough time, it would be in every founders incentive to present a positive outward image.<p>There's an art to this where you shouldn't lie or present metrics so ludicrous they tip off the bullshit-meter of whoever you're talking to. But some combination of honesty, optimism, and determination seems like a better formula than listing the shortcomings of your startup in your first casual conversation with someone you just met.
There's a difference between positive euphemism/spin and outright fabrications.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 think lies are the nature of our industry: it is a self-propelled train, with each element of a chain working mainly to 'sell' everything to the next one, with little regard about its intrinsic value, more to the ability to be sold to the next one (which goes straight to the IPO, see Facebook). In the end, public and pension funds pay for that, so we are basically cashing out people's future pensions now (as we know, almost all pension programs are underfunded, mainly for this reason: their managers invest in shit, for the lack of anything else). This is much like how MLM works, except the last level (victim) is more clearly defined.<p>I am not telling things are totally that bad, but i am sure it is a big part of Silicon Valley success: it is a collection of top sellers in the world, and they are more successful in mortgaging other's future that everyone else.<p>People who are trying to play it fair are labeled 'lifestyle businesses' and ostracized.
Most lies in the startup community are shallow lies that mislead those who don't have filters or don't care enough about a particular entity to do their homework about them. It's deep lies where people attempt to mislead even those that are doing due diligence that are high risk. Shallow lies have a lower, but still significant, risk to the liars.<p>I think it's good to ask why someone is singling out a single person or company for shallow lies, as it might reveal a bias. Something doesn't seem quite right about that TechCrunch post.<p>With some shallow lies, large amounts of money is at stake. Investors will make mistakes and lose money. These shallow lies are worth paying attention to and so are those who keep getting fooled by them.
It seems disingenuous to compare what "Shirls" did with many of the points made in the article.<p>"We're doing well, our investors are happy!" is saving face (or, perhaps they want to believe it so badly that they do).<p>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.<p>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.
Show me an honest company with a solid service or product and I will be more than willing to support them financially.<p>At the end of the day I think people who work for companies like that feel better about what they're doing than [famous lying CEO] wannabes.<p>When you rely on lying over and over again, your whole life becomes a lie. Maybe you are worth something to a market, but to many people you are worthless. As a liar you have no value to them.<p>There is huge value in honesty. Maybe it can't be measured in financial terms. But I personally will pay a premium for honesty. It's of limited supply and always in demand.<p>+1 for nickoneill
The most successful people I know are straight shooters who tell it like it is. Even the mild bullshitters I know are struggling to make anything happen.<p>VCs will not hand over tens of millions of dollars to someone they know is a liar or habitual exaggerator. Sure, they don't always find out in time. But I really haven't seen that strategy work out.<p>There is no benefit to telling a good story unless you actually have a good story.
The premise of the article is wrong. The post would lead to an argument saying every marketing effort is a lie. Which is a dangerous argument, since it would imply everyone trying to say "it cost me x dollars to do this. pls pay y" - in which case, no business would exist.<p>Everyone does a bit of marketing - big mac says total burgers sold a number that always goup. nothing wrong with that, IMO
White lies are a necessary evil in business and in life. Would you tell someone with terminal illness that they look like shit and that there's no hope? It is a good thing, however, that YC has been turning back the dial on presenting vanity metrics + funding pitches at their demo days. At some unquantifiable threshold, white lies do become outright lies.
To me it's funny to hear people complain about people lying in the startup and tech industry. You should hang out with some outside sales people sometime. Those guys make what she did look like a girl scout bake sale.
Like them or not, these kinds of exaggerations and not-quite-lies are common in business for a good reason: if customers, partners, investors, and/or employees ever perceive a company as a failure, <i>they will start leaving the company</i>. Once a company starts losing customers, partners, investors, and/or top people, it can quickly find itself in a downward spiral that is extremely difficult to reverse.<p>When it comes to entrepreneurs specifically, more often than not the positive spin is just a sincere effort to generate momentum 'out of thin air' when facing the harsh realities and stomach-churning odds of entrepreneurship.<p>What that woman profiled in TechCrunch did, however, was very different: she crossed the line.
And then here is Steve Blank, beloved by so many here, asking everyone not to lie: <a href="http://steveblank.com/2012/07/30/lying-on-your-resume/" rel="nofollow">http://steveblank.com/2012/07/30/lying-on-your-resume/</a> while companies are allowed to lie.
People are piling on Shirley Hornstein because (1) she got caught, and (2) she's female. The second of these is 90 percent of it.<p>If you "trick" powerful people into accepting you as one of your own by claiming connections you don't have, and succeed in doing so, you've earned it. (If you fail, then slink away quietly and try again in a couple of years.) A lot of people are dumbasses who let the crowd make their decisions for them, and they deserve what they get from people who can mislead them about the crowd opinion (and mostly, those outsiders are just as competent, and would only be rejected because they weren't born in the "right" place).<p>Overt fraud is wrong. If you claim to be a doctor and don't know a thing about medicine, that's quackery and it endangers people and you belong in jail. If you convince the powerful that you are part of their club until the lie becomes true, then it's not really my thing, but I see nothing wrong with it.