Chapter 6

Lie to Me

STEALING IS A CORE COMPETENCE of high-growth tech firms. We don’t
like to believe this, as entrepreneurs hold a special, exalted place in
American culture. They are the spirited mavericks tilting at the
windmills of giant, established corporations, T-shirted Prometheuses
who bring the fire of new technologies to humankind. The truth is less
romantic.
Horsemen, of course, don’t start out as globally dominant
megalodons. They begin as ideas, as someone’s garage or dorm-room
project. Their path looks obvious and even inevitable in hindsight, but
it’s almost always an improvisational series of actions and reactions.
As with professional athletes, we tend to focus on the stories of the few
who make it—and not the thousands who never get past the minor
leagues. Meanwhile, the powerful, deep-pocketed company that
emerges looks very little like the scrappy upstart that broke out of the
garage years—especially after the corporate PR department gets done
rewriting the founding myth. This transformation occurs despite how
much founders fight to maintain the youthful energy of the start-up
phase.
But change is inevitable, in part because the marketplace is always
changing, so companies must adapt or die, but also because young
companies with nothing to lose can (and do) get away with the
deception, thievery, and outright falsehoods that are unavailable to
companies with reputations, markets, and assets to protect. Not to