I am sure you’ve heard the phrase, Fake It Till You Make It. This has been around for quite some time and just to ensure we are on the same page here, let me explain. Fake it till you make it means acting as if you have something or you have achieved something (when you haven’t) until you actually have it or achieve it. 

It is similar to affirmations where a person repeatedly affirms what he or she wants to see manifested in their life. Almost every self-help book attests to the positive impact and power of affirmations. It is a kind of mental trick that is meant to bring whatever you want to see manifested into reality. There is really no concrete explanation as to how it works even from those who claim to have mastered it. 

But I will reserve my judgment because there are so many things the mind does that science still cannot explain. However, tricking the mind is fine, you are not actually deceiving yourself because you are clearly aware of where you are at the moment. But when applied in business, it is a different story. 

Startups and The Fake It Till You Make It Approach

The startup world can be very exciting and challenging at the same time. Many entrepreneurs have this vision that they have to sell to investors and the public in order to get funded. Not many Startup founders have a pile of cash to fund their projects themselves. So they need all the support they can get if they want to have a fighting chance in the Startup industry. 

And nobody is willing to lose their money by throwing it into some dead-end venture. Investors need to see proof that your idea is worth their money. They look for indicators like; Growth rate, initial revenue, number of active users, daily, weekly, or monthly visitors, etc. 

To convince potential investors, Startup founders use all manner of tactics that most times include stretching the truth and making bold claims. In the end, they can’t keep up with their promises, leading to all manners of scheming. 

A well-known example is Elizabeth Holmes whose startup Theranos previously valued at a whopping $9 billion suddenly turned out to be a scam, taking its charismatic founder from the front covers of Forbes to Jail. 

But before her lies were exposed, Holmes had managed to convince the who’s who in the world of investment, entrepreneurship, health, and media. These individuals who should be able to spot a lie from a mile away were easily deceived and fell for the glamorous storytelling antics of the young founder. 

But Holmes is not the first nor would she be the last founder whose Startup adopts the fake it till you make it approach. Also, raising funds isn’t the only reason that Startups fake it till they make it. They also do it to;

1. Create buzz around their product or company
2. Make them seem important enough to attract top talents
3. Build initial momentum (a practice known as seeding the marketplace), and
4. Create social proof. 

So the question is, what makes some founders succeed in the end while others fail? It all comes down to the reason for doing it and how it is done. For this, let's take a look at a popular social media platform Reddit. 

How Reddit Faked Users and Why 

Reddit was founded by two university students Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. These cofounders were roommates and No, Reddit wasn’t their first idea. The two had initially come up with the idea of an app where users could order food using SMS text messaging. They called it My Mobile Menu, but like its name, the idea was a complete mess. 

After their first business idea failed, Huffman and Alexis came up with another idea, that would eventually become Reddit. With the help of funding from Y combinator, the front page of the internet was born. But despite its catchy tagline, Reddit looked empty. This is expected since the platform had no users at the time. 

But the founders had to find a way to get people talking, and so they deployed the oldest trick in the book, fake it till you make. Huffman and Alexis created several fake users and started posting on the platform. This was all the momentum the platform needed, the rest is history. Today, Reddit is the 7th most visited website in the world with about 6 billion users. 

In a video titled “Growing Reddit”, one of the founders explained how posing as fake users actually helped the site to grow. Here are a few points he outlined.  

‍It helped to set the tone of the website - it could be quite unsettling to visit a website with no idea what it is about. So by posing as fake users, Reddit founders post content on the platform that they liked. Something they thought was interesting and they wanted to see more of on the platform. Now that they had set the tone, any new user who visits the platform would instantly go with the flow. 

It made the website feel alive - Try to picture Reddit with no posts from users. It is basically just a blank billboard. User-generated content is the lifeblood of any social media platform and being the new kid in the block, Reddit had no content, and anyone visiting the platform could feel discouraged and walk away, never to return. So yes, the initial decision to create fake users and post content was a genius strategy.

What Reddit’s founders did is not illegal per se. It is a well-known strategy used by many Startups to build momentum. This is known as Seeding. It is common for Q&A sites to post initial questions and answers on their platform to create the impression that it has a lot of active users. Tinder could also be using the same strategy to keep users engaged. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind when “Faking it”

Be honest

Giving your business the push it needs is not a bad idea, as long as you don’t break the laws or cross certain ethical lines doing so. The problem is lying about it when asked. I understand why founders would be concerned about revealing some of the tricks they employed to get their startups off the ground. But as long as it doesn’t cause any harm, I think most users will be willing to let it slide. Especially if you come clean about it. But of course, there are lines you shouldn’t cross. For instance, posting fake reviews can be damaging to customers, and the business as well. 

Make sure you actually have an MVP

There is a wide gap between “It Can Be Done” and “It Has Been Done”. This is one of the mistakes Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes made. She made bold claims that she must have believed would work, and then after many years of trying and failing, she came up with schemes to hide her failure. Creating an MVP without external funds can be expensive. But you should at least have a proof of concept that actually validates your idea. Otherwise, you may find yourself in the same position as Holmes. 

Own up to your mistakes early 

I read a comment that said Elizabeth Holme's mistake was not opening up to her investors about “the state of her company and technology”. Of course, if she did so, many investors would back out, but she wouldn’t have been accused of financial fraud. However, the ambitious CEO dug her own grave when she claimed the technology was already in use by the US military in Medevacs deployed in war zones. 

Owning up to failure can be a difficult decision, but it is not the end of the world. Many founders and entrepreneurs failed multiple times before they eventually succeeded. So if a venture is not working out the way you had thought, the right thing to do is nip it in the bud early in the process. 

Start small and keep it simple

While it is a good idea to launch your business with a loud bang by disrupting the system, it is not always a necessity. There are many businesses that didn’t have any disruptive ideas at launch but are still relatively successful. Sometimes, the magic happens when we look small. 

Conclusion

I have discussed the issues of fake it till you make it within the startup industry as well as why startups employ this tactic. So here is the answer to a common question, is this good or bad? Honestly, I will toe the line here by not claiming it's either good or bad. Unless you are a founder or you own a business, it is nearly impossible to understand the daily decisions that these people make to keep the business afloat. So It all boils down to how the idea is applied. There are ethical and legal lines that shouldn’t be crossed and I have outlined a few points that should be considered.

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