When Hype Rises Too Fast, The Fall Hits Harder
Riyansh Kapoor stood in front of a sea of flashing cameras, his voice confident, his message simple: “Tell our system your idea. AI will build your app - faster than you can imagine.”
His startup, Codematic, was everywhere - podcasts, panels, newspaper covers. It wasn’t just a product; it was a movement. People believed. Investors rushed in. Clients signed up. Codematic became a symbol of what tech tomorrow could be.
Inside Codematic’s stunning headquarters - all glass walls, neon signs, and voice-activated screens - the energy was contagious. Town halls buzzed with applause. Every Slack channel had emojis flying. The company was scaling rapidly, onboarding clients in bulk, celebrating every feature shipped with cake and confetti.
But behind the glossy pitch decks and bold claims, a quieter reality pulsed.
Instead of AI magically building apps, it was hundreds of engineers manually writing code, sprint after sprint. Among them, Anika, a backend developer from Jaipur, often joked over her third cup of coffee: "Maybe we’re just training the future AI… one code commit at a time."
She wasn’t bitter - she was proud. The team was united by ambition, long hours, and a belief that someday, their sweat would power the tech the world expected. What they didn’t realize was that while they were building the base, the marketing had already built the sky.
Websites claimed fully automated builds. Case studies inflated timelines. Revenue numbers were structured more for storytelling than transparency. The brand raced ahead of the product - and the people holding it together started to feel the weight.
Then came the questions. A blog post from a former client. A leak. An internal all-hands meeting where the cheerful tone cracked just a little. Within weeks, layoffs were whispered about. Within months, the company quietly shut down.
No grand announcement. No big scandal. Just silence.
And Anika? She walked away with her pride intact - and a quiet, lasting lesson that even bright ideas need honest scaffolding.
Flash: In today’s fast-moving world, perception can travel faster than reality - but it also crashes harder when the truth surfaces.Fake marketing and inflated claims may give temporary fame, but they mislead customers, erode internal trust, and set teams up for silent burnout.Your product doesn’t need to be magical. It needs to be honest. Because in the long run, authenticity builds better brand equity than any headline ever can.
Moral: Codematic didn’t fall because it lacked potential - it fell because it let fiction overtake function.When the team believed they were training the future, the top was busy selling illusions. If your foundation isn’t honest - no amount of hype can hold the roof.Every story you tell your market must also hold true for your people.
Reputation is built in whispers and lost in headlines!!
Rashmi Agarwal
Thursday, June 05, 2025
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