It's not really a lie, it's so-called "make-belief", which entrepreneurs exude in order to justify their own time and money investment, as well as spreading it to the army of employees. This sort of delusion is necessary for the inaugural period of concept development, until you prove whether the concept is viable or not. Some people call it vision. It is an entirely fictional concept, of course.
Sometimes you stumble onto something working that gets traction. Then this lie turns into reality, and the entrepreneur is raised to the rank of prophets.
In other words, he doesn't do it out of malice. These are the rules of the game.
I have to disagree. The differnce in in degree. salemanship and fraud are two different things. Painting a rosy picture of something is difference than lying about specific capabilities. Giving your production capacity using the most ambitious numbers is different than saying you can produce numbers you factually can't in any scenario. Having a future roadmap that is a goal and may not be achieved is different than promising a capability in the near future, as if it is almost ready, when there is no capability coming is lying. That's like saying a Ponzi scheme is just another investment.
In other words, he doesn't do it out of malice. These are the rules of the game.