I used to dream about landing on Forbes 30 Under 30. The validation, the recognition, the proof that I “made it.” Looking back, I wonder, was I chasing success, or just its appearance?
Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly that it was the latter. To make up for an absent father in my childhood, I craved external validation like a tech bro craves Allbirds and Patagonia vests. Luckily, I never made it to the list. If I had, I might have found myself trapped in a prison of public expectations, desperately trying to cover up my impostor syndrome with increasingly questionable decisions. I guess, sometimes our greatest blessings come disguised as rejections…or, am I just telling this to myself not to feel like a loser?
Ok, I know real success needs to be built on actual foundations, not just clever PR tactics and a loud voice echoing through an empty product roadmap. I never aspired to be one of those prophets who’ve never built anything except their personal brand, preaching about “hustle culture” from their WeWork hot desk. The ones selling ££ masterclasses about “How I Built a 7-Figure Business” while their only revenue comes from selling courses about how to make revenue. That’s one way of making it, but that doesn’t turn me on.
But this is not the story about fake gurus (this one is). This is the story of real, ambitious people who did show potential, only to become casualties of their own success. It’s about watching talented founders transform into fraudsters not through malice, but through the quiet accumulation of compromises, each one justified by the pressure to maintain the image they created. It’s about how the road from TechCrunch headlines to court hearings.
Yesterday’s wunderkind, today’s defendant
Yesterday I read about Joanna Smith-Griffin, founder of AllHere Education. She landed Forbes 30 under 30. She was the Harvard Innovation Lab’s rising star, featured in Inc.’s list of groundbreaking female founders. A former teacher turned tech founder, she spotted a real problem in education and built a solution that worked. She had the perfect origin story, the impressive credentials, the glossy magazine features. Just months ago, she was being celebrated for “leveraging AI to help families communicate and get involved in their children’s educational journey.” Now, she’s facing federal prosecutors. I bet she never woke up one morning and thought:
“Today’s the day I become a fraudster.”
And yet she did, gradually.
Where’d you get your license, a fucking cereal box?
The thing is, we’re all heroes in our own narratives. In 1981, researcher Ola Svenson found that 93% of American drivers considered themselves “above average” – a statistical impossibility that perfectly captures our capacity for self-delusion. Of course it’s them, not you. This “illusory superiority,” as cognitive psychologists Van Yperen and Buunk termed it, is particularly present in the startup world. The “better-than-average effect” documented by Alicke and Govorun shows up everywhere from pitch decks to founder interviews. We’re not just building companies. We’re writing our own heroic narratives.
Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger later formalised this as the Dunning-Kruger effect, showing how people consistently overestimate their own abilities. And then, Roy Baumeister’s work on “self-serving bias” revealed how we tend to attribute our successes to internal factors (skill, hard work) while blaming failures on external circumstances.
So when we massage those numbers or exaggerate that pilot programme’s success, we’re not being villains in our own story. We’re the misunderstood visionaries, the brave disruptors fighting against a system that doesn’t yet recognise our brilliance. Social psychologist Albert Bandura’s work on moral disengagement explains how we gradually convince ourselves that ethical standards don’t apply to our special circumstances.
After all, if Steve Jobs fudged the truth a bit during the first iPhone demo, isn’t a little creative accounting justified? Or adding Harvard graduate to your profile (while in fact, it was just a Harvard-branded weekend online course) helps get your world-changing technology noticed, isn’t that just clever personal branding?
Svetlana Hoffmann raised an interesting point about this phenomenon:
The long road up, the quick fall down
Even the most egregious fraudsters rarely see themselves as criminals. Elizabeth Holmes probably still believes she was trying to revolutionise healthcare. Sam Bankman-Fried convinced himself he was practising “effective altruism.” And their latest peer-turned-inmate, Joanna Smith-Griffin, likely saw herself as doing whatever it took to help reduce student absenteeism. She just slipped a little…
This hero complex makes the descent into ethical compromise so subtle. Each small deception comes with its own noble justification. You’re not lying to investors – you’re “manifesting our future numbers” (hey, they told us to think big!). You’re not deceiving clients – you’re “faking it till we make it.” You’re not committing fraud – you’re “disrupting traditional metrics” – just ask Adam Neumann, who gave us the masterclass in creative accounting with WeWork’s “community-adjusted EBITDA”.
Your competitors are all claiming millions in revenue. Your investors expect hockey-stick growth. The media wants a success story. So you round up. Just a little. Just this once. Each small deception requires a bigger one to maintain the illusion. Like a tech Ponzi scheme, you’re not just lying about where you are, you’re lying about where you’re going. And each new lie needs to explain why the old lies haven’t come true yet.
Just this once
We all carry this duality within us – the angel of integrity on one shoulder, the devil of expedience on the other. Or yin and yang, constantly pulling us in opposite directions. The desire to do good wrestling with the temptation to take shortcuts.
Some say it’s about circumstances, but I believe it’s about choice. Every day, we choose which voice to listen to, which path to take. And oftentimes, doing the right thing feels like shooting yourself in the foot. When everyone else is “growth hacking” their metrics and you’re stuck with honest but unimpressive numbers, it’s easy to feel like integrity is a competitive disadvantage.
But integrity isn’t a strategy, it’s an identity. It’s not about what works; it’s about who you are when no one’s watching. When everyone else is taking shortcuts, choosing the longer, harder path isn’t just about ethics – it’s about deciding what kind of person you want to be, what kind of legacy you want to leave.
The gap between Smith-Griffin’s actual $11k revenue and reported $3.7 million wasn’t bridged in one giant leap. It was crossed through a thousand tiny compromises, each one seemingly justified by necessity or ambition, or both.
The network effect of bullshit
It’s funny how you spend years building reputation, nurturing it, proving yourself worthy of trust. Then one “just this once” moment, one compromise too many, and it all comes crashing down overnight. Theranos wasn’t built on an intentional plan to endanger patients. It started with the same “fake it till you make it” mentality. But when you’re dealing with blood tests and cancer diagnoses, pretending your technology works isn’t just fraud – it’s playing with people’s lives.
I am conscious about it every day. When your AI is analysing emergency calls, there’s no room for creative metrics or aspirational capabilities. And as much of a pain-in-the-ass all those measuring bureaucratic rapports, frameworks and protocols are to fulfil – before anything gets to a production stage – I know they are there for this very reason. So that bad actors can be spotted and eliminated before they do any harm. You can’t “fake it till you make it” when officers’ safety depends on your technology working exactly as promised.
The tragedy isn’t just the legal consequences. It’s the waste of genuine talent and potential. Many of these founders, including Smith-Griffin, were solving real problems. So perhaps instead of judging these fallen stars of the startup world, we should ask ourselves: How many “just this once” moments are we away from our own ethical edge? How many small compromises from our own cautionary tale? When was the last time we had the courage to say “I don’t know” or “We’re not there yet”?
Ashamed to not know the answer
Perhaps instead of judging these fallen stars of the startup world, we should ask ourselves – how many “just this once” moments are we away from our own ethical edge?
The hardest words in the startup world aren’t “we failed” – they’re “we don’t know yet.” There’s a strange kind of strength in admitting that you’re still figuring things out. I’ve seen founders spiral into depression because they feel like frauds compared to their “successful” peers. The irony is, that most of us are also one panic attack away from confessing it’s all smoke and mirrors. We’re all just trying to figure it out, all frightened of being exposed as not quite as brilliant as our pitch decks claim. Maybe, if we were all a bit more honest about this and celebrated honesty, we’d have fewer fraudsters and more actual innovations.
In the end, every shortcut is a long road to somewhere you never wanted to go. Every “just this once” becomes a habit. Every rationalisation becomes reality. And by the time you realise you’ve crossed the line, you’ve forgotten where it was in the first place.
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Cover 📸: My creation supported with Photoshop’s Generative AI fill. I’m loving it 🙂
