[nonchalance]

"The numbers that were shared were not entirely true. It was kind of half-truth and part of the marketing pitch to VCs."

Do you consider that a due diligence failure on the employee's part or a misunderstanding regarding the general nature of numbers?

[greghinch]

If the startup is going to outright lie to anyone not on the inside, then there's not much you can do. But the onus is definitely on the prospective employee to press them for the facts, and recognize people for being shifty. The author is justifiably upset about the outcome, but hopefully this can be a learning experience and move on.

I have to say, as much as YC has a great rep, I was kind of shocked when I heard the sizes of their classes in recent years. When I participated in another accelerator last year, our class had 10 teams, and that seemed like a fairly good size in terms of the folks running program being able to keep on top of the startups involved. I have to imagine when you are running classes of 80 teams (though they temporarily scaled back recently to more like 50, it sounds like they are going to grow the number per session again soon), not only are some going to be duds, but some are going to be outright scammers.

[nknighthb]

If you start rattling off business numbers to someone with nothing more than a layman's understanding of business, finance, and/or the particular field the company is in, the numbers may indeed mislead, even as their true meaning would be absolutely clear to someone more clued in.

Without knowing exactly what was said (and what the actual situation of the company was), I can't credit the author's assertion that the numbers were "half-truth", especially in light of the misunderstanding and naïvety evidenced by the rest of his post.