The affair may seem trivial, because it concerns plenty of other companies, but I don’t think it’s as trivial as all that.

Plenty of start-ups put out figures nobody can check, when they’re not deliberately leaking them whenever it suits them. And yet publishing their accounts would provide a shared, real and certified basis for judging their actual results.

I hear those who say that, in the end, nobody cares who has the biggest (margin). But they’re often the same people playing who’s got the biggest (round).

This war of figures reminds me of the one waged by the bullshit-o-coaches, on LinkedIn and elsewhere, who brag about their results, their performance, their investments and so on, posing for photos with nice houses, planes and cars (when it isn’t girls). We all know the reality: few property-investment gurus have actually made their fortune from property. And none of them has ever published their accounts. Not in property, not anywhere else.

And what if that were real success: transparency.