[wpietri]

My (limited) understanding of people like this is that they're not really thinking.

Among startup founders, puffery is endemic. You have a vision and you try to talk it into being. Whatever you're doing probably won't work, but you can't say, "Well, there's a 90% chance we'll fail," because nobody gives you money or labor then. You have to develop this (unjustified) confidence, and a deep understanding of what people want to hear. Silicon Valley culture definitely encourages this.

To succeed, one also of course has to develop an equally deep understanding of the reality of the business domain. But as we see with Theranos or Hampton Creek or uBeam, you can get surprisingly far on vigorous self-promotion and creating the appearance of success.

The thing that really keeps me awake at night is that there are surely a lot of companies that faked it nearly as much but managed to find a real business before things caught on fire.