10 startup lies 👇

“Forbes 30 under 30” —> I paid a PR firm $50,000 so my mum could be proud of me

“We decided to raise less money for this round because we don’t really need it” —> We did a down round, and I now only own 5% of my company

"We have a highly experienced advisory board." —> A few industry experts agreed to have coffee with us once.

“Our sales team is crushing it!” —> About 25% of our sales team hit quota

“We’ve been developing our own AI for years” —> We use chatGPT and have a nice UI

"We have a disruptive business model." —> We're not making any money yet.

"Our burn rate is under control." —> We're running out of money, but we're trying to sound optimistic.

"We have a strong company culture." —> We occasionally order pizza and play ping pong in the office to keep morale up.

"We're in talks with several Fortune 500 companies for partnerships." —> We had one introductory call with an intern at one of those companies.

"We've growing 100% month-over-month" —> We have 2 users, last month we had 1.

What would you add?


This post was originally shared by Guillaume Moubeche on Linkedin.