When hundreds of startup gurus and, concurrently, adherents of prison romance appeared, they all urgently needed to illustrate their stories of successful success. They had little personal experience, so they gathered all internet stories, dug up TV archives, and found ways to illustrate their theses. Unfortunately, the theses needed to be highlighted in the right direction, and therefore the cases and stories, already far from the truth, continued to change along the way from the truth.
I encounter this constantly—in lectures, pitches, and just conversations with startups. Founders retell, get inspired by, and quote stories that are already fiction. Today I'll show one of them, but I specifically chose an old one that was supposedly popularized by Zadornov.

At one time, NASA spent millions of dollars on a pen to write in space, while the USSR figured out to take an ordinary pencil.
What's not true here? Almost everything.

- An ordinary pencil cannot be used in space; it crumbles and quickly fills the space with graphite dust, which is also conductive, so it can lead to breathing problems and fire. Americans used special, very expensive ones, and the USSR used inconvenient wax pencils.
- NASA didn't spend a cent on development. Everything was done by entrepreneur Paul Fisher, who conducted the development himself, then turned it into a trendy product and made a lot of money.
- The USSR bought pens from Paul Fisher because they turned out to be much more convenient than wax pencils.

After these facts, does the story no longer seem so illustrative?
So right now—fact-check your presentations.