Investors push founders to promise SpaceX-scale outcomes while demanding absolute conviction, forcing them to choose between overstating progress or abandoning their vision. This tension between inflated expectations and long-term commitment creates conditions where fraud becomes tempting.
On one side, investors are setting expectations pretty extreme that founders feel pressure to misrepresent what they built. And then on the other end, they're now asking founders to prove that they have conviction to stay the course no matter what. Gizmo, how do you like hold both of those dynamics at the same time?
For investors, the only companies that really matter are the big scaled outcomes. That's it. That's kind of the whole game right now. It's the whole business. Kind of stinks, but it is what it is. Which means investors are trying to figure out very quickly, Is this company SpaceX? Is this company Databricks? Is this company going to make me famous and rich? And founders are like, I want to be in the bucket of companies that matter. I know the bucket of companies that matter are the high performers. I need to make sure I'm a high performer.
