[Wilya]

There doesn't seem to be much drawbacks to this strategy.

I can think of very few startups that failed because of shady early tactics, as long as it stayed only a way to get to traction, and wasn't a decisive part of the business model. If you're small, nobody will care enough about you to learn about your tactics. If you're big, you should have enough money to rebuy a reputation with marketing/PR.

[moepstar]

I don't even think there's any drawback to this strategy.

Let me explain:

So $business_name faked their way into relevance, $somebody found out about it, $angry_mob_of_other_founders argue and rally against it.

Nothing of this will matter in any way cause it's almost certain Joe Normal will never ever hear the slightest about it and will happily continue using $business_name.

The only possibility of Joe Normal ever finding out is if $business_name overdid it in a way that might prompt (inter)national media to report about it or have it mentioned by a buddy to him.

Even then, he couldn't care less about it cause he still could peddle his wares on the site (or whatever), make a profit from it, and just shrug about the advice given by his buddy.

[loceng]

Except for being genuine, authentic. You can't be 90% genuine - that's not possible.

[jerf]

Mmm, I think you may be confusing perception vs. reality. As much as we'd like to think the two are inseparably joined and it's impossible to fake being genuine (or vice versa, impossible for a really genuine thing to be perceived as inauthentic), I don't think the facts support that idea.

[pessimizer]

Authenticity is a brand, and you will be rewarded for it by the customer.

Honesty is a quality that can only be recognized when someone maintains truthfulness and fair-dealing when they know that they will be punished for it.

Honesty will, if anything, destroy your authenticity.