The great British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that entrepreneurs are necessarily optimistic, with the fear of failure “put aside as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death.” There is, however, a big difference between optimism and chicanery. Telling yourself that you will succeed is quite different from raising money by hoodwinking investors.
Silicon Valley has a sordid history of chicanery. “Vaporware” are products that are promised to be ready, or ready soon, and then delivered late or not at all. A Microsoft engineer coined the term — an apparent reference to selling smoke — in a 1982 description of Microsoft’s Xenix operating system. The term gained traction when Bill Gates announced Microsoft Windows as a worthy competitor for Apple’s graphical user interface on November 10, 1983, and released a flawed bare-bones “operating environment” on November 20, 1985, prompting tech columnist Stewart Alsop to give Gates a “Golden Vaporware” award. As in this case, the intent of vaporware is often to persuade customers not to buy competing products.
A similar type of chicanery is the mantra “fake-it-till-you-make-it” that is used to persuade customers and investors that a company has a finished product when it doesn’t. Customers sign on by buying the product or service and the deceitful company does what it can while scrambling to...
Image: Facebook/SAPS The IDAC has rubbished rumours that it has a J50 warrant of arrest for KZN provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi as “false”. This comes after re...