Many tech launches look fake, but beauty is hard to fake, a founder says
A communications adviser to elite founders says bought engagement is easy to spot, and careful work is easy to see.
David Senra · Lulu Cheng Meservey, Founder of RostraLulu Cheng Meservey, founder of the communications firm Rostra, which advises a small group of technology founders, was describing what bothers her about startup launches in 2026. Her complaint was simple: almost everything around them looks fake.
She says many startups now post similar movie style launch videos that felt fresh the first few times and now feel copied. The response can look bought as well. She pointed to one launch with about 100 likes but 4,700 reposts, and to other posts boosted by empty accounts in developing countries that exist only to promote products.
When she spots that pattern, she says she dismisses the whole company and founder as fake. She would not buy the product, do business with them, or recommend that anyone work there. She argues it is better to reach 50 real people who care than to chase thousands of reposts that look bought, and to lean on friends and longtime contacts, because relationships cannot be bought that way.
Her test, in her words, is that "Fake things are not beautiful." By beauty as a scoreboard, she means beauty shows the effort underneath, something she says is hard to fake because no one puts that kind of love and care into something fake.
She compares it to health, she says, in that care for yourself is visible and cannot be pretended. Her example is the website for her client General Matter, a nuclear company. She says a talented team worked on the site for a long time and cared deeply about the choices. They argued back and forth, she says, probably longer than they should have.
The result is simple and elegant, she says. The short part is the mission and the manifesto, which took what she called an unfathomable amount of billable hours and brainpower. A quickly assembled site with generic artificial intelligence text or a borrowed template, she says, probably would not look the same.
Questions people ask
How can you tell if engagement on a launch is fake?
Look for a mismatch between how interesting the post is and how much activity it has, like very few likes but thousands of reposts. Then click through the accounts doing the sharing. If they have few followers, almost no original posts, odd locations, and histories full of promotions, that is a strong sign the reach was bought.
What is vibe coding?
Vibe coding means describing what you want to an AI coding tool in plain language and letting it generate the website or app, often with little hands-on design or review. It is fast and useful for prototypes. The downside is that many results look generic, with similar layouts and polished but bland text.
Who is General Matter?
General Matter is an American startup working to enrich uranium in the United States for nuclear power and other uses. It was founded by former SpaceX employees and has raised large amounts of private funding. Its pitch is that domestic enrichment is important for energy independence.