It makes sense too. I see being on that list as a negative signal. You’re spending time jumping through the right hoops and social circles to get nominated instead of building.

You can actually nominate yourself for a lot of those. Naturally, that is very attractive to self-aggrandizing bastards with very little to offer to the world.

Costs $30k I believe

What actually happens is the VC firms have a relationship with Forbes and push their most favored start-ups on them. A big chunk of people don’t do anything to get on the list, except write their own bios and of course getting funded by said VCs.

That being said, yes, there’s quite a lot of vain people in there.

The comparison is apples to oranges though. It's like comparing a CEO's claims of future great success to actual shipped units.

To raise funds someone has to actually give up money. When it comes to government prosecution and lawsuits the government and aggrieved parties are more or less free to use motivated reasoning, mental gymnastics and other sorts of faulty logic to make whatever fanciful claims they want so long as there's some shred of a reason for the claim. There's no check being cut, no skin in the game so the numbers aren't ever as grounded in reality as fundraising numbers. These "reality inspired" numbers then gets haggled down to a numbers that are supported by evidence over the course of court proceedings. And then the internet peanut gallery compares the fanciful initial headline to the settlement that is supported by hard evidence and gets their jimmies rustled.

That said I'm sure that list is full of shysters and slime balls.