Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

A comment left on the previous post made me realize that it was time to discuss a subject I was going to save for latter – ethics.
While the story about the Potereo benchmarks was about relentless execution, its glib description of designing the benchmarks could be read as we cheated.  Given we consciously worked hard not to, here’s what we were thinking.
https://steveblank.com/2009/04/02/startup-ethics-albatross-or-essential/