This article is part of a series about the importance of confidence and how to cultivate it. Read the other articles here
My newsfeed is full of bullshit.
Not just the funny, cringy kind, but serious bullshit.
Bullshit like the comeback of Adam Neumann last week, who just received a16z’s largest ever check for 350m USD for his new company, Flow. As much as I admire a16z, I can’t help but join the ranks of the many who think this is preposterous.
Bullshit like the posts from Dan Price, the holier-than-thou CEO that preached his thoughts about ethical leadership to his millions of followers for years and just had to resign last week as well amid assault allegations. Even if you do not recognize the name, I assure you that you have seen some of his sleazy, self-promoting posts before.
Bullshit like SPACs falling like dominos after unscrupulous bankers pushed more than 600 questionable companies in 2021 to go public through them without the diligence required for SEC filings. Don't tell me they were not deliberately deceiving their naive investors to rake in millions in fees.
And before that was the bullshit of Enron, Theranos, and many others, fraud stories that reached global scale and burned tens of billions of dollars.
What would Netflix do without them?
The above stories are surreal and epic, but don't just happen in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street.
We are surrounded by bullshit companies and bullshit "leaders" in our day to day. Whether it is outright fraud, misinformation, or over-optimism, is not always clear.
Hell, we sometimes even celebrate bullshitting as “hustling”. Is this a tradition that dates back to Thomas Edison?
One thing that is common among all these stories: a charismatic bullshitter, who knows the reality of what is going on, yet confidently shares a completely different story for years.
And then we wonder where businesspeople get the bad reputation from.
It's unbelievable.
Yet very intriguing! I was once advised that if something frustrates me, I need to look inside - and I openly admit I am jealous of these bullshitters.
Why are they so much more persuasive to their customers, employees, partners, and investors? How did Dan Price become "the one moral CEO in America” despite his clear and evident transgressions? How could Adam Neumann convince Masayoshi Son to invest 4.4bn USD in his company in 12 minutes, fail at such a large scale, and then convince one of the most prestigious VC firms to back him up (again)? How could a board of eminent statesmen and business luminaries truly believe 19 year old Elizabeth Holmes is revolutionizing healthcare without ever seeing the actual product? What did Skilling and Madoff project to be able to BS millions of relatively sophisticated investors?
The bullshitters are clearly effective, confident communicators.
Why is confidence so critical for effective persuasion? And what can we learn from these masters of BS?
Share your thoughts in the comments section. And stay tuned for the upcoming posts about my journey to learn from the masters of BS – instead of just complaining about them.
Have a spectacular weekend!
/M
Great blog post as usual ya Bido! Maybe one reason is I guess investors want to believe the picture painted by the enterprenuer so they naively accept all they say. Theranos is the first example that comes to mind here - they loved the idea and wanted to be part of it so they just went with everything she said - am not justifying their stupidity just trying to analyze their thought process