One way to stand out in a crowd of startup deals: Make stuff up

Competition for deals in the current market has crunched the time available to VCs who want to conduct thorough research, and that has led to sloppiness. — Hands photo created by rawpixel.com - www.freepik.com

Last autumn, multiple investors were chasing an Atlanta-based company called Knightley. It makes professional networking tools for the founders of tech startups and their backers. At a hot moment for private companies and their valuations, it seemed like potentially the right product at the right time.

What drew prospective investors to Knightley was a listing on Crunchbase, a popular database for tracking venture capital deals. It showed that among the company’s impressive roster of backers was the VC kingmaker Marc Andreessen. This same page attracted the attention of a Bloomberg reporter who set up an interview with the founder Graham Gintz.