"Trust Me, I'm Lying"

Deep dive article (5-minute read) as part of Layer 8 Insights in THE STATIC newsletter

In Tech, communication isn’t just a tool. It’s the product. And when the product is a fabrication, it’s not an ‘Oopsie!’ It’s a crime scene.

There’s an ancient ritual every tech founder must perform before they can raise $100 million on a pitch deck that’s basically a Tinder profile in a suit – slick, flattering, and hiding the chaos just out of frame:

The Sacred Art of Talking Absolute Garbage With Complete Conviction.

It starts harmlessly enough. You discover that if you say ‘revolutionary platform’ with enough eye contact, people stop asking follow-up questions.

You realise that if you lean on words like ‘synergy,’ ‘ecosystem, and ‘next-generation’, none of which have to mean anything, you can fill an entire presentation without delivering a single verifiable fact.

And if you add, “This is the most important thing humanity has ever built” (courtesy Elizabeth Holmes), you’re practically invincible.

In tech, communication isn't just a leadership skill. It’s a currency

And the faster you can inflate it, the richer you look, at least for a while.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to building an empire out of PowerPoint slides and emotional manipulation.

Eventually, someone lifts the hood. Instead of a revolutionary engine, they find a Year 6 science project held together with sticky tape and cellophane, or maybe just a call centre instead of an AI-powered shopping experience, and marketed as ‘robotic process automation’.

Some founders escaped with golden parachutes. Others like Trevor Milton, Charlie Javice, and Sam Bankman-Fried traded their branded hoodies for ‘criminal containment cubes’.

Not because they didn’t know how to communicate.

But because they were very, very good at it, in all the wrong ways:

X Trevor Milton (Nikola Motors) – The Gravity Truck

Trevor Milton showed off a hydrogen-powered semi-truck that was so advanced that it barely needed roads. Investors clapped. Shares soared. Small catch: The truck wasn’t powered by hydrogen. It was powered by a downhill slope and good video editing. Milton didn’t lie exactly. He just let ‘impression management’ do all the heavy lifting until federal investigators started asking why the future needed a push start.

X Charlie Javice (Frank) – The Phantom Followers

When JPMorgan asked how many customers her startup had, Javice didn’t blink. "4.25 million," she said. The real number was closer to the attendance of a 7 am webinar on tax reform. Allegedly, she paid a data scientist to invent customer profiles by the thousands. Because in startup land, actual users are optional, but the illusion of momentum is mandatory. The scam wasn't high-tech. It was old-fashioned snake oil, dressed in a fintech hoodie.

X Sam Bankman Fried (FTX) – The Complexity Con

He dressed like a college dropout, mumbled like a distracted genius, and waved off billion-dollar questions with algebra no one else could understand. Effective Altruism, he promised. Save the world later, right after we gamble a few more billion in customer deposits. Turns out, “trust me, it’s complicated” was not a sustainable business model. SBF didn’t talk over people's heads by accident. He did it because confusion is a persuasion tactic, and it worked, until the money vanished.

It starts small: a harmless exaggeration about a prototype, a suspiciously optimistic customer pipeline, and a future revenue projection that requires divine intervention.

Then one day, your sorry arse lands in jail.

And you think to yourself: “How did I end up here - staring at horizontal lines in a concrete box, listening to the plop-plop of water in a stained sink, with a roommate named Axel who collects toenail clippings in a jar labelled ‘memories’?”

Talk tracks for Prophets of Vapour

If you’re a budding tech grifter, here are the communication tactics you can use:

• Vision Inflation: ("we’re not just a company, we’re a movement")

• Credibility Laundering (get famous investors onboard, so no one checks the details)

• Language Fogging (make is so complex that questioning it sounds dumb)

• Urgency Manufacturing (“we have to move now before the window closes”)

• Moral Reframing (“we’re saving the world”, details are secondary)

Where Did We Go Wrong?

There’s a deeper problem: We’ve traded humanistic values like dignity, integrity, curiosity, creativity, and empathy for a culture that glorifies success at any cost. Scruples and restraint now look outdated. Defrauding investors? It's just bad luck. Conscience? Optional. Reputation? Rented.

The Double-edged Sword of Persuasion

Then there’s the science of persuasion – a weapon often wielded to destructive effect.

Brought to us by Aristotle, a foundational figure in western values and thinking, and considered to be the father of persuasion through his three appeals: The Appeal to Logic, The Appeal to Emotion and The Appeal to Ethics.

Further extrapolated through deep research in our time by Dr Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Science of Persuasion, which maps the shortcuts that make us say yes: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Liking, Social Proof, Commitment & Consistency, and more recently, Unity, added as the seventh principle of persuasion.

Combined, these insights have shaped negotiators and salespeople. It has also armed tech grifters, who use persuasion without ethics. 

Because when you strip ethics from persuasion, you don’t get innovation. You get hype, frat house parties and handcuffs (not the fun ones). 

The Quiet Achievers. Grounded in Reason. 

It’s not all bad news. The values that once shaped Western civilisation – reason and rational enquiry, emphasis on critical thinking, and the Rule of Law – haven’t vanished. Sometimes, they get drowned out by noise. But they’re still there, quietly driving the tech leaders who build with substance, not spectacle. 

I work in tech because I love it, and I admire the founders who build for impact, not ego. Think of health platforms that detect strokes early and trigger life-saving interventions. Or rideshare apps that make transport accessible in minutes. Not every founder is a mirage. Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar built Atlassian quietly, with real tools and real growth. Or AirTrunk’s CEO, Robin Khuda’s steady rise in Australia’s cloud scene – no hype, just traction.

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Final Thoughts

Here’s how to communicate without the con:

• Build real things - then use persuasion to highlight, not invent, their value

• Speak boldly - but check if reality is still somewhere in the rearview mirror

• Make it simple - clarity beats complexity theatre

• Keep in mind - if your story can’t survive scrutiny, it won’t survive in the real world

Persuasion isn’t the problem. Delusion, greed and hubris are. Real influence, built on integrity, is the only kind that outlasts the noise.

PS: In the next issue (published 25th June), we cover The Cult of Startup Saviours, with a bonus checklist to help you spot charming, deeply disturbed fraudsters. Subscribe to ensure you get it when published.