Society attributes value to them for having taken the risk, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was a risk worth taking.
I would ask if there are moral implications of selling what you believe you can do (to employees/customers/investors) as if you actually can/have done it.
Also, someone doing it with their own money and doing it with someone else's money mean two different things.
This will probably seem like I'm throwing cold water on your founders, but that's not my direct intention. These are the issues that I think about when thinking about how to build a company.
> I would ask if there are moral implications of selling what you believe you can do (to employees/customers/investors) as if you actually can/have done it.
My grandfather co-founded a now-giant engineering company. When they were getting started, they would bid for any job. If they didn't know how to do it, they learned how to do it. I think that's a great attitude, and a winning attitude. They knew they could learn new skills promptly, so I don't see the problem.
They succeeded. It worked out. You may say, "They could have failed" but they could have failed no matter what policy they had for taking on projects so I don't really see a difference. Whenever I take on a non-trivial programming project I have to learn some amount of new stuff in order to complete the project. And I know I can do that. My belief I can learn things is true. This is just normal, shrug.
People buy from startups knowing that you're a startup, usually. There are always ethical issues when it comes to selling, but I don't think that "ability to execute" is the biggest one, as long as you actually believe it could happen, and try.
"someone doing it with their own money and doing it with someone else's money mean two different things"
I think it's legitimate to point out that there is not a lot of personal money risk for the founders. They probably went without much income for a while, and work a lot. But if the startup fails, and they pick up a job afterward, they probably won't be in the negative.
I agree that "making big decisions" should not be equated with "taking a big risk". They are related but not the same.
"I would ask if there are moral implications of selling what you believe you can do (to employees/customers/investors) as if you actually can/have done it."
I totally agree and think it's SUPER important to be honest. Example: I'm a coder. If someone wanted to hire me for a Python job, I would be totally honest, yet confident: "I've never coded Python, but I know Ruby, and I think I could learn Python pretty quickly."
At a previous job, I sat next to a manager who often interviewed programming candidates on the phone. If somebody was trying to BS him, he always looked and sounded irritated. In contrast, when I interviewed, I gave confident answers for what I knew and said "I don't know" if I didn't, often asking questions about what I didn't know because I was curious.
If I were hiring a company to do something and felt they were BSing about what they could do, I would run. But if they said "we THINK we can do it," and explained why, I'd be way more comfortable.
Even better: "we think we can do it, but since we haven't done this before, we're willing to work more cheaply so we can get the experience." That way, I know exactly what I'm getting, and I can weigh the risks. And if all goes well, next time they bid, they can truthfully say "we have experience in this."
I would ask if there are moral implications of selling what you believe you can do (to employees/customers/investors) as if you actually can/have done it.
Also, someone doing it with their own money and doing it with someone else's money mean two different things.
This will probably seem like I'm throwing cold water on your founders, but that's not my direct intention. These are the issues that I think about when thinking about how to build a company.