The Limits of ‘Fake It Till You Make It’

The line between whatever-it-takes and lying is finer than we like to believe.

Bloomberg is reporting today that venture-funded mayonnaise brand Just Mayo may have gone to extraordinary and unethical lengths to demonstrate growth to its investors and buyers, including buying up its own product off the shelves of product retailers.

My first reaction was “Who knew there was venture funded mayonnaise?”

My second was “Man, what assholes those guys are.”

My third was “I get how they got there.”

I’m a marketer, and an entrepreneur. I make a living bringing new things into the world — ideas, products, businesses — that didn’t exist before. Doing that requires certain skills… to synthesize inputs, clarify vision, and communicate effectively. But more than those it requires the sheer force of will that is only enabled by unreasoned conviction you are right, by a certain kind of belief that drives good entrepreneurs right up to the line of deception, and sometimes past it into fraud.

A brief story illustrates… When we were trying to get a business called m-Qube off the ground in 2002, we quickly figured out we needed the support of the major wireless carriers to win. Our vision was for a mobile marketing…