The idea of "faking it till you make it" is about projecting the self-confidence of someone whose already successful. I've never heard anyone use this phrase as a justification for providing materially false statements to investors or whatever.

I think the problem is that people often get away with doing ethically dubious things in early-stage startups. It only makes news when they got caught.

For example: Airbnb started out by scraping Craiglist for their listings. This was not only ethically dubious, it was against Craigslist's terms of service.

They got away with it, though, and have obviously gone legitimate since. Same with YouTube and copyrighted content.

> I think the problem is that people often get away with doing ethically dubious things in early-stage startups.

No doubt. However, I personally don't see this as being at all related to 'fake it till you make it' as a concept.

In previous threads on Theranos numerous posters defended the practice of early-stage companies lying to investors about their capabilities in order to gin up capital, the rationalization being it was okay if the capital let you eventually actually build those capabilities.

You are 100% correct in defining its original intent. I'm just afraid it is taken a bit to literal at this point.

"Fake it till you make it" seems to work OK for personal development. Not at all as a business plan!

If you don't mind being a liar

I think most folks are working with lies like, "I'm a people person," or "I am confident in this interaction," rather than "I have a PhD in $obscureField."

That would be good. At a bare minimum, let's shelve it from healthcare related endeavors.

Yes fraudulent behavior should be shelved. And "fake it until you make it" is just a nicer way of saying fraud

1-Page.com also had a very similar, although not as well known story. 1-page managed to be a "public startup" without having a product or (real) customers. Very much into the "fake it till you make it". Very fascinating story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2017/05/18/rise-and-fal...

Just like Bernie Madolff did, expect he never made it but to jail. Holmes must had better lawyers.

| most explicit example of "fake it till you make it"

cough Ubeam cough

I have never seen "fake it till you make it" or it's close relative "stone soup" actually work long term.

I think the real "fake it till you make it" does work and is very common. But you have to "fake" things that are reasonable. So when a customer or employer asks if you can do something, you say yes. It's one thing if you have never done it before. You can surely learn. It's another if you are saying you can do something that no one has ever done before.

there is a difference between "fake it till you make it" or blatant fraud.