Excellent read. Having worked for two startups and created pitch decks for several more, you have described perfectly the fertile ground in which optimism can be twisted into fraud. One startup I worked for over a ten-year period (!) got funded by someone who committed fraud to get the money. I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/courting-my-muse/working-remotely-for-a-startup-5515ec0241c5