My old boss swore by the 'fake it till you make it' approach for our startup

I worked at a SaaS company in Austin back in 2018 that was trying to build a project management tool. The CEO kept telling us to launch features that were half-baked and promise customers we'd fix them later. We launched with 200 beta users in January, but by April we had lost 150 of them because bugs piled up and nobody trusted us. The worst part was we burned through $400k of VC cash in 4 months trying to patch things we should have built right the first time. Has anyone else had a boss push that same advice and see it blow up?

2 comments

2 Comments

harris.uma1mo ago

@emmam32 did that CEO ever admit his approach was wrong, or did he double down on it?

emmam321mo ago

Right? That approach is a dumpster fire waiting to happen. Shortsighted, desperate, and totally disrespectful to the customers who trusted you. Real trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy.