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Every startup founder must watch this video

I came across this video recently.

Honestly I think every startup founder should watch it. There’s one clip in particular, from about 0m48s to 1m43s, that I keep thinking about.

Here’s roughly what they said:

Silicon Valley in the tech industry is you can fail and you will be held up and celebrated by the community. It’s okay if your startup doesn’t succeed. It’s not unethical to fail. That’s part of the business. You earn respect from your peers.

But we would always say in our advice to YC companies, there are rules. If you cheat people or lie or follow bad business practices, you will be in trouble. You are out of the business, basically. It is very hard if not impossible to recover from that, and that is not the way to fail.

Over the years it’s become painfully obvious that we’re in a trust-based business.

I love this Silicon Valley vibe so much. Failure is a badge of honor, not shame. You tried something hard, it didn’t work out, and that’s okay. Nobody serious will hold that against you.

But cheating is the line. And crossing it ends the career.

Honestly, I envy the culture too. In Indonesia (some say it’s an Asian thing in general), failure still feels like a shame. People mock others for their failures. Crab mentality is a real thing here. I know it’s a gross generalization, but that’s just what I’ve seen.

And the worst part is, failure feels twice as bad in a society like this. On one hand, you already feel like you’ve disappointed the people who trusted you. You’re already your own worst critic. You don’t need others making it worse. On top of that, society judges you for failing instead of honoring the fact that you tried. So you end up carrying both loads at once. You have to be twice as mentally strong just to keep going, because the environment isn’t helping you at all.

Still, none of that is an excuse for lying. No matter how rough the environment is, cheating is never the answer. Fail honestly. Lying just trades a short-term shame for a much bigger one later.

Which is why a few recent news stories here have really stuck with me. Some of Indonesian top startups, including one I was genuinely inspired by for years, turned out to be cooking the books. That one in particular broke my heart. Not because the company failed (failure happens), but because the founders chose to lie instead.

I really wish more founders here watched videos like this one.

A few things worth remembering:

  • Failing is fine. Faking is not.
  • There is always a final judge. The truth comes out, always.
  • If you’re cooking books just to close the next round, you’re being stupid. It looks like survival but it’s actually digging a deeper grave.

And the thing about raising more money is, you’re also expected to be stronger. More investors to answer to. More employees depending on payroll. More customers whose money you’re holding. Think of it like carrying a boulder up a mountain. The higher you go, the stronger you’re expected to be. If you lie about being strong enough when you’re actually not, at some point you can’t hold it anymore and the boulder just rolls back over you. You’re done.

Always remember, there is always a final judge.