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No, it's just that annoying mentality of "fake it till you make it".
by konschubert 8y ago
No, it's just that annoying mentality of "fake it till you make it".
- meowface 8y agoI guess we might find out during the trial.
- paulie_a 8y agoFake it until you make it is just a nice way of saying fraud. People that do that are being deceitful and should be publicly shamed and face criminal prosecution in some cases. They are scam artists, not honest entrepreneurs.
- zebnyc 8y agoAre you going to say that to the founders of reddit & airbnb?
- paulie_a 8y agoI would absolutely say that to them. It's doubtful they actually committed a crime but it shows a lack of character and constituition to say the least and potentially fraud to their investors. Fake it until you make it makes you a scam artist, con man, flim flan man etc... People that embrace that philosophy are frauds and cheats that should not be trusted.
- meowface 8y agoSeeding a community where pseudo-anonymous users submit image/link content with images and links might be fraud by some semantic and technical definition (certainly not a legal one), but 1) it's pretty much necessary to get something like that off the ground, 2) no one is really being deceived or misled in a significant way. I'd say it's pretty harmless. My understanding is reddit did this at the very start of the site's existence and stopped pretty early. They probably would've died quickly if they didn't seed some content.
- asveikau 8y agoIf the way you are going to talk to someone depends on how successful you think they are, you may be doing it wrong.
- Fnoord 8y agoI do, and the "fake it until you make it" doesn't fly very well in Europe; its generally frowned upon. Which also explains why there isn't much of a "startup culture" in Europe.
- stealthmodeclan 8y agoWhich also explains why there isn't much of a "startup culture" in Europe. Europe doesn't reward winners. So Europeans move to the US for their startups. Do you know Europe is the largest buyer of the US securities? They surely feel compelled enough to benefit from the business scene in the US.
- detaro 8y agoWhat did airbnb fake? Reddit is an interesting case, but I'd say there's a categorical difference between faking that you are able to do something you can't (Theranos) and pre-filling a functioning site with content (I assume that's what you are referring to?). It's especially relevant if the difference actually matters for whom you are tricking: If the results had been accurate (which from what I understand they weren't) and absent any other specific claims of superiority Theranos end-users wouldn't care about what tech they use, but for investors relying on claims that they can do something others can't to establish their value it obviously does matter. Which in the case of reddit I guess makes the question: does it make a material difference for users if the site they enjoy is entirely fed by an organic community, or is the most important thing that the site is enjoyable regardless of origin? I guess you could argue that faking a community is also "faking that you are able to do something you can't".
- rdiddly 8y agoAlso known as "Fake it while awaiting unknown outcome." It's not like faking it guarantees making it. And since "unknown outcome" is kind of the default always, the most concise statement of this approach is really just "Fake it." Which is the problem. "Fake it" is so bad, that even if you later "make it" (like Shkreli for example), you still don't get forgiven.
- konschubert 8y agoEdit: And I mean 'just' to be understood with quotation marks.