Tech Entrepreneurs are All Liars

Matt Yglesias just saw the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary. He says that if he had made it, the focus would not have been just on Holmes' lies, but on the culture of lying, distortion and over-promising that permeates the tech world:

I don’t know anything specific about the Alex Gibney documentary on Elon Musk, but it’s by all accounts a very negative portrait of Musk, and I don’t see how any negative portrait of Musk could avoid the fact that he says a lot of things that aren’t true. Musk’s aspirations for self-driving cars, for example, are a notorious cesspool of overpromising and underdelivering. . . .

And yet, it is also true that in 2026, the Tesla self-driving features are extremely impressive. Tesla provides the best vehicle autonomy available in a consumer car product, and it’s second best behind Waymo in terms of developing an autonomous taxi service. It’s not clear to me that Musk is right that his approach to developing this technology will beat the Google/Waymo approach, but it’s also not clear to me that he’s wrong.

Similarly, SpaceX has been consistently behind Musk’s promised timelines. But if somehow Musk had never spoken in public about SpaceX and just released the products, then I think everyone would agree that the rockets work and Starlink works and it’s all very impressive.

Steve Jobs was also a notorious overpromiser who nonetheless really did deliver impressive technology. As a journalist who is aware of the tech industry but doesn’t really cover it professionally, it’s clear that this kind of whopper is an endemic business strategy. I don’t think you’d reasonably say that Apple or SpaceX are fraudulent business enterprises. But it’s also the case that part of how business gets done in the tech field is you need to paint these glorious visions of the triumphant future, and it doesn’t always work out.

I am also bothered by this. It seems to me that the need entrepreneurs feel to lie, or at least exaggerate, says something bad about investors, our business culture, and maybe even all of humanity. I struggle to keep a balanced view of the world, and sometimes I am frankly puzzled by the overproduction of enthusiasm. For example, because I follow the Ukraine war from the Ukrainian point of view, I am constantly being offered links to videos and posts that boast about great Ukrainian victories and Russian disasters. I wonder, who wants this? Doesn't it get old when all this crowing about Ukrainian triumphs runs against the reality that the war drags on? I don't get it.

I would never invest in a company that I thought was being over-hyped. Of couse that means I would have missed out on all of the corporate successes of the Tech era, but I would rather keep a calm view of the world than be rich.