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The guy didn't lie. There is a big difference.


People forget that the only difference between genius and fraud is success. Succeed, and you will go down not as a liar but making "premature promises"[0]. I believe that generally people like Holmes and SBF actually think they will pull these things off. Just spend an hour or two listening to entrepreneur podcasts and you will identify the source of this kind of culture. We reward truth-bending constantly and listen to founder's stories with awe, but as soon as any of these things fail we are quick to judge the failure.

I think it actually has a lot more to do with the social disgust reaction to a big failure, than any well reasoned distinction between fraud and hustle.

[0] https://www.entrepreneur.com/science-technology/how-steve-jo...


SBF used a random generator to generate the insurance report.

Holmes straight up lied about the result.

Neumann lost company's money too. WeWork is not a success. What are you talking about???

Still, they are not comparable to Neumann.




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