Not a joke. Not a mistake.
An experiment.
Bhavye Khetan, a Berkeley grad, created a fake company with:
🧠AI-powered everything
🔗 Web3 integrations
📦 Decentralized data pipelines
✨ Scalable buzzwords
No product. No team. No business.
Just a landing page and a polished deck.
27 venture firms showed interest.
Some even asked for follow-up calls.
📉 What does this say about early-stage VC?
Pattern-matching is winning over conviction.
FOMO over fundamentals.
💡 And meanwhile…
Real founders — solving real problems — are being overlooked.
The ones:
✅ Without a Stanford badge
✅ Without the perfect slide deck
✅ But with actual traction
This stunt didn ’t just troll investors.
It exposed the gap between what we say we value… and what we actually fund.
As someone who *didn’t go to the right schools*,
Who *had to build credibility from scratch*,
This hits home.
📣 Let’s stop rewarding style over substance.
Let’s back the builders. The real ones.
FoundersVoice UnderdogFounders VentureCapital Startups DueDiligence Innovation BuildInPublic
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