I have been contemplating writing this post for about 2 years, and have been jotting down various notes for it for at least a year.

There are lots of ways to unethically nudge your fledgling company along. For example, you can artificially inflate your numbers. “You’ll love our site! Millions of other people are already using it!” Faux-Guerilla marketing, is another example (e.g. posting a message on a forum somewhere pretending to be a user in love with your product or service). “Procuring” copies of your competitor’s proposals by pretending to be a customer is also something I’ve seen before. The sky is truly the limit when you operate with little or no regard to ethics.

However, the widespread use of pirated software among startups is probably the most prevalent problem that I’ve seen.

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