Indian-origin Berkeley graduate claims he fooled investors. He has no product, no pitch

Bhavye Khetan, an Indian-origin UC Berkeley graduate claimed on his social media that he fooled investors by dropping fancy words and big names of universities and got responses from them, while he has no product, no pitch and no deck. He just created a fake creator profile, Khetan claimed and his post went viral. His LinkedIn profile claimed that he studied a Bachelor's degree at Berkeley, while his work experience includes a position in New Delhi. He also called himself the founder of a card that apparently combines multiple credit cards.

Khetan claimed that he made a fake founder persona who studied Computer Science at Stanford, worked at Palantir. He said he sent cold emails to 34 VCs and 27 among them replied. Four asked for a call, the Indian-origin graduate wrote, concluding that the game is rigged in ways most people don't understand.

I made a fake founder persona. No product. No pitch. No deck.

Just:
- Stanford CS
- Ex-Palantir
- Used the word “AI” 3 times

Sent cold emails to 34 VCs.
27 replied. 4 asked for a call.

This game is rigged in ways most people don’t understand.

— Bhavye Khetan (@bhavye_khetan) June 2, 2025

Social media users slammed him for shaming the investors and pointed out that taking meetings is not a big deal as venture capitalists take thousands of meetings a year and Stanford and Palantir are good names.

"Yeah, and Americans don’t even realize how degree of how much easier it is for them to secure funding or even just a client compared to euro/indian/asian folks," one wrote.

"This is stupid. You lied. Stanford is meaningful. Palantir is meaningful. AI is meaningful. The only person acting inappropriately is you," another wrote,

"I don’t think it’s rigged, if you lie of course they will take your call but I think you won’t get past that when they figure out you are lying pretty quickly," a third user wrote.

The viral post comes amid a major H-1B row with US tech workers claiming that companies are downsizing to accommodate the hirings from foreign countries whom they pay less.