Fake It Till You… Meh – Scratch That
Fake it till you make it has been the credo of the tech industry since the very earliest days of the industry. Make big promises and bold statements and no matter that the product may end up as shovelware of vaporware, founders were inventing the future and no matter that investors who bought into the hype were expecting big payoffs that often didn’t happen. You pay your money, you take your chances. So it goes.
Erin Griffin wrote an excellent piece in The New York Times recently entitled The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley and it’s must-read. “Faking it is over. That’s the feeling in Silicon Valley…Not only has funding dried up for cash-burning startups over the past year, but now, fraud is also in the air, as investors scrutinize startup claims more closely and a tech downturn reveals who has been taking the industry’s “fake it till you make it” ethos too far… the chorus of charges, convictions and sentences have created a feeling that the startup world’s fast and loose fakery actually has consequences.”
Gee, who’d have thought? Considering that California was basically founded on the Gold Rush, and the tech space was essentially the state’s second Gold Rush, didn’t investors realize that during that first Gold Rush, many were taken in by Fool’s Gold? History does have a way of repeating itself, and if it worked the first time…
