Reporting fake GMV and more

I was into a founder’s office. Working closely with the leadership team of a funded Agri-tech startup (Which shall strictly remain anon in this post)

Does it happen to others the same way as it did to me?

I was one of the first FOs in the org and I was trying to figure what is up with this startup.

About 21 days in to company, I was helping a co-founder with a report that has to go out to investors.

I open up the metrics dashboard to enter numbers when he said “he knew the figures by heart”, so we began entering metrics like GMV and others. These were 5x of my range.

I said we should just double check ? He said there are factors in the formula that I have not considered at all and I finish the report as per the numbers he gave me.

Confused, I later dared to ask the lead PM how are we computing GMV. And told him about my dilemma to tell the founder we need to just double check his calculations. Bless my naiveté.

He had a nervous smile and told me we report numbers that keep the startup exciting and afloat. We will catch up very soon with them.

The next morning, the founder also took me for a meeting and explained how doing this is important for everyone in the company to succeed.

I was very scared but lived in an autopilot of nervousness for 6 months. Part-took in it while being scared of going to prison myself.

I felt a terrible dread in my stomach in every interaction with with the admin and CA teams since in my first interaction I came across what I sensed to be a big fake bill. Was I blind to miss everyone in the office get a new chair the last month?

I never asked doubts on the money numbers the CA team gave me. But had reasons to doubt it basis other business data I had access to.

Everyone seemed to be on the same kind of auto pilot, good people who had never done anything wrong before this as far as I knew. Everyone considered leaving the culture and toxicity every week.

The day I left, I had the email of the investors of the company since I’d emailed them countless decks and reports. I really wanted to drop an anonymous email revealing what I knew to them but I was afraid of the following repercussions to my career and I let the matter go.