Self-Proclaimed Bullshit Arrives In Silicon Valley

Omri Shabath

Shirley Hornstein Fake Photo

I have some big issues with faux self-proclaimed “gurus”, “experts” and “professionals.” I hate those fuckers. They are falsely claim to be a high authority at some field, merely to promote their own personal narcissistic agendas (which mostly involves money). The shorter definition of those people (and derivative products and services) is fraud.

Unfortunately for my moral sense, a lot of those scammers loves to reside and distribute their deviousness across many of the areas which I cover in this blog. They are mostly spreading evilness in the spheres of phony SEO services and internet marketing bullshit. However, for the tech and entrepreneurship industries, the scams phenomenon doesn’t only exists in the virtual world but also in real life.

Shockingly (or not if you’re more of a half-empty glass kind of person), it appears that scammers also live and breathe in the Mecca of the tech industry, Silicon Valley. Everybody, meet Shirley Hornstein. “Hi Shirley!” all of you probably naively choir together. Looks like a sweet delicate young girl, right? How on earth maliciousness could be associated with this chaste girl?

Well, apparently it can.

TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha exposed that pure Shirley Hornstein isn’t so pure after all. In fact, she’s kind of a swindler… a startup swindler, no less. It seems that on her day-to-day existence, while most of us tries to earn our decent livelihood, virginal Shirley wanders around in the Silicon Valley’s street preying for some fresh startup founders. Oh, sorry… did I say preying? Because I meant to say preying.

Shirley’s techniques are actually not that different from her scammy peers on the web- She also brag to have valuable deep {and so totally cool} connections to the who’s who of the industry, she also spark her facade through photos with celebrities and she also affirm business relations with reputable companies.

So what if non of that is true… why should the truth get in the way of an aspiring girl? Even the Bible says: “and the falsehood will set you free.” (or something like that, who really cares about this fad Bible thing)

The small difference between the online scammers and this real life con girl, is the marks. While online scammers seek for the vulnerable and susceptible as their targets, Shirley is apparently aiming for more affluent audience which craves to succeed with their startups so much, that they are willing to believe to her fake assertions. At least she’s aiming high, I’ll give her that…

Even though this Shirley got caught and brought to public justice, the sad news are that there are many more Shirlies out there. If you are a young ambitious entrepreneur, always do a thorough due diligence for the people you are going to work with, no matter how authoritative they appear. It’s nothing personal, just business. And remember:

If it looks like a scam, swims like a scam and quacks like a scam, then it probably is a fucking scam.

Great uncovering story by TechCrunch, we definitely need more alarmed tech watchdogs and quite frankly I don’t really like to call out their stupidity. As for little Ms. Hornstein, now that her bullshit has been widely distributed all over the Silicon Valley (and the world), she can always find a REAL honest job at something she actually might be good at, like Photoshopping perhaps: