I'll be direct: I spent my first two years as a founder lying.
Not maliciously. Not consciously at first. But lying nonetheless.
10 signups became "100 signups" when someone asked.
$1,000 MRR magically doubled to "$2,000 MRR" in conversations.
Every metric got a 2-5x multiplier before it left my mouth.
Why? Pick your psychological term: impostor syndrome, insecurity, ego protection. I had them all.
But here's what I learned after wasting two years on this performance: nobody actually cared about the difference.
$1K MRR versus $2K MRR? Equally unimpressive to a VC. Equally irrelevant to a potential hire. Equally meaningless to other founders.
The only person who cared was me. And the only thing it did was make everything harder.
The Performance Trap
It's 2020. Every founder on LinkedIn is posting funding announcements. Series A. Series B. Even pre-seed founders are making it look effortless.
Meanwhile, I'm struggling to get 10 people to use our product.
The cognitive dissonance was unbearable. Is there something they know that I don't? Why is everyone else crushing it?
So I started performing too.
I remember a friend who spent four years building a company. Raised millions. Built a team of 30. Then got acqui-hired—which, if you don't know the term, is a polite way of saying "we failed and needed jobs."
His LinkedIn post: "Excited to join [BigCo]! Learned so much, grateful for the journey, can't wait for this next chapter!"
The reality: $0 outcome after four years. Investors got nothing. Employees got job offers (maybe). Founder got... a consolation prize and a LinkedIn post that looks like a win.
I'm not criticizing him. I understand the impulse. The pressure to maintain the performance is immense.
But here's the problem: the performance becomes the product.
The One World Trade Center Effect
I knew a founder who got office space on one of the top floors of One World Trade Center. Video calls with him had this pristine NYC skyline backdrop. Impressive.
He'd only raised a seed round.
Months later: acqui-hired.
The office wasn't for his team. It was for the performance. For the Zoom backgrounds. For the perception. For the investors and press and other founders who needed to believe he was winning.
When you're performing, you optimize for the wrong things:
- Investor perception over customer problems
- LinkedIn engagement over product quality
- Conference invites over team morale
- Press mentions over actual revenue
The performance demands feeding. It requires maintenance. It consumes everything.
The Cost of Every Lie
Here's what nobody tells you about exaggerating numbers: you have to remember them.
Not just once. Every time. With every person. Across every conversation.
When I said we had "100 signups" instead of 10, I had to track who I told. When someone followed up months later, I had to remember what I'd said. I had to maintain consistency in the lie.
It's exhausting.
And for what? The person I was trying to impress didn't actually care. The number wasn't going to change their decision. It wasn't going to move any needle that mattered.
The performance was entirely for my own ego. To protect myself from the vulnerability of admitting: I don't know what I'm doing yet.
Why The Culture Enables This
The startup ecosystem rewards performance over progress.
Raise a round → TechCrunch writes about you
Hire 50 people → LinkedIn celebrates
Get fancy office → Instagram content
Speak at conferences → "Thought leader" status
Pivot three times → "Learning and iterating!"
Shut down → "Grateful for the journey!"
Meanwhile, the founders actually building—solving customer problems, shipping product, generating revenue—get no press. No celebration. No conference invites.
They're too busy working to perform.
This creates a toxic selection bias. The performing founders become the visible founders. New founders see them and think: That's what success looks like. I need to perform too.
And the cycle continues.
The Alternate Reality
The most dangerous part of performing isn't the lying. It's what it does to your decision-making.
When you're performing, you start living in an alternate reality. A reality where:
- Perception matters more than metrics
- Funding rounds are victories (not oxygen)
- Team size is success (not efficiency)
- Press mentions are progress (not distraction)
You stop seeing what's actually happening. Your customers aren't happy? Doesn't matter—you just got featured in TechCrunch. Your burn rate is unsustainable? Irrelevant—you're speaking at a conference.
The performance becomes a drug. And like any drug, you need bigger hits to maintain the high.
I've watched this happen to people I respect. Smart people. Capable people. They get caught in the performance trap and suddenly they're optimizing for all the wrong things.
The Shift
It took me two years to break the habit.
The turning point wasn't dramatic. No come-to-Jesus moment. Just exhaustion.
I got tired of remembering which numbers I'd told to whom. Tired of the anxiety every time someone asked for an update. Tired of the gap between what I was saying and what I was actually building.
So I started telling the truth.
"We have 10 users. Trying to get to 100."
"$1K MRR. Need to figure out why people churn."
"Not sure if this is working yet."
And you know what happened? Nothing bad.
Nobody laughed. Nobody dismissed me. Most people appreciated the honesty. Some offered actual help because they understood the real problem, not the performed version.
The founders I started respecting most were the ones telling the truth. The ones willing to say "I don't know" or "that didn't work" or "I'm struggling with this."
Not because struggle is noble. But because authenticity is the only remaining moat.
Why Authenticity Wins Now
Here's the uncomfortable truth about 2025: AI can copy anything.
Your product? Someone can build it in a weekend with Claude and Cursor.
Your marketing copy? ChatGPT can write it.
Your code? Cursor can generate it.
Your growth playbook? Already documented and shared.
The only thing AI can't replicate is your specific experience. Your actual failures. Your real journey. The expensive lessons you learned by living through them.
Every time I write about my $300K quant trading failure, people tell me it saved them from making the same mistake. Not because I have some secret formula. But because I actually did it, lost the money, and can tell you exactly why it didn't work.
That's not copyable. That's not performable. That's just truth.
The Performance Test
Want to know if you're performing? Ask yourself:
Would I be embarrassed if my customers/team/investors knew the real numbers?
If yes, you're performing.
Am I optimizing decisions for how they'll look on LinkedIn versus what's actually best for the business?
If yes, you're performing.
Do I have to remember what I told different people about our progress?
If yes, you're definitely performing.
The antidote is simple but not easy: just tell the truth.
Not the spun version. Not the hopeful projection. Not the numbers you wish you had.
The actual truth. Today. Right now.
What Authenticity Looks Like
Real authenticity isn't pretty. It's not curated vulnerability. It's not "look how honest I am about this minor setback" while hiding the major ones.
It's saying:
- "We're at $5K MRR and I have no idea how to get to $10K"
- "Lost our biggest customer and it hurts"
- "Considering shutting this down"
- "Made a hiring mistake and fixing it is expensive"
- "Pivot #3 because I keep getting it wrong"
It's admitting when you don't know. When you're scared. When you fucked up. When the performance would be easier but the truth is better.
The Founders Who Get It
The founders crushing it in 2025 aren't the ones with the best performance. They're the ones who stopped performing altogether.
Pieter Levels tweets his revenue numbers in real-time. Sahil Lavingia wrote "The Minimalist Entrepreneur" about building Gumroad without the typical founder theater. The Indie Hackers community exists entirely around revenue transparency.
These aren't perfect founders. They make mistakes. They have setbacks. But they're building real businesses, not performing success.
And ironically? The authenticity is what scales. The truth is what resonates. The vulnerability is what builds trust.
The Permission You Don't Need
You don't need anyone's permission to stop performing.
Not your investors. Not your team. Not other founders. Not Twitter.
You can just... stop.
Tell the real numbers. Share the actual challenges. Admit what you don't know.
The worst case? Some people think you're failing. (They probably already do.)
The best case? You build a reputation for honesty that becomes impossible to fake and valuable beyond measure.
And here's the secret: the energy you save by not performing becomes energy you can use to actually build.
Every hour I spent managing the performance—remembering lies, crafting updates, maintaining the image—was an hour I didn't spend solving customer problems. Every ounce of anxiety about being "found out" was energy I couldn't direct toward making the product better.
Stop performing. Start building.
The truth is simply... easier.
What I'd Tell My 2020 Self
Stop lying about the numbers. Nobody cares about the difference between 10 and 100 signups except you.
Stop trying to impress people who don't matter. The people who matter will appreciate the truth.
Stop thinking performance equals progress. They're opposites.
The performance will break eventually. It always does. And when it does, you'll have wasted years optimizing for the wrong thing.
Just build. Just be honest. Just tell people what's actually happening.
It's not sexier. It won't get you TechCrunch articles. You won't be invited to speak at conferences (at least not right away).
But you'll sleep better. You'll make better decisions. You'll build something real instead of something that looks real.
And in 2025, when AI can fake everything except lived experience, your authenticity becomes the moat nobody else can cross.
The performance is over. The building continues.
That's the only founder story worth telling.
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