Elizabeth Holmes’s trial spotlights Silicon Valley’s thin line between hype and deceit

But lying about “a present, concrete fact” isn’t allowed, Pohl said. “You can’t pitch for new business by claiming that your operation has the technical know-how, or a specific software capability, to get the job done, when in fact you know that’s not true, or you don’t know one way or the other — you just want to get the business and plan to figure it out later,” Pohl said. “That’s where entrepreneurs can get into trouble, even if their sincere hope is to deliver as promised at the end of the day. At my firm, we call this ‘fake it till you make it’ fraud, and we see it all the time.”