[TameAntelope]

What is lying, then? Startups very frequently pitch the "best version of themselves" to potential investors, it's (in my understanding) extremely common.

The problem with Theranos and now Nikola is that the industries they're doing it in have very specific laws that you can violate just by speaking/writing. That isn't usually the case with startups, and so when one founder stretches the truth about how far along their SaaS platform is and it's fine, Nikola rolls a car down a hill and their CEO gets indicted.

I just think there are some habits that come out of SV in particular that are fine within that bubble, almost expected really, but come out not looking very good if you try to apply that behavior/logic to a more scrutinized part of the market.