An Indian man listed himself as the CEO of several startups on LinkedIn, and even PitchBook, one of the most trusted global financial databases, fell for it. The person of interest here is Ashish Bagade. According to viral screenshots of his now-deleted LinkedIn profile, he is the “CEO at Anysphere”. What’s more, he even listed himself as the co-founder of Matiks – a company co-founded by Sudhanshu Bhatia.
How did the matter come to light?
Well, venture capitalist Zach DeWitt came across this and raised the issue on X (formerly Twitter). “A random guy (Ashish Bagade) from India lists himself as Co-CEO of Cursor (Anysphere) on LinkedIn,” he wrote, before adding, “PitchBook, the database every VC checks, also lists him as Co-CEO.”
He completed his post with a laughing emoticon and two screenshots. One of them was the LinkedIn profile of the Indian man, where he claimed to be the CEO of Anysphere and is based out of Maharashtra. Pitchbook fell for his profile and listed him as the co-CEO of the organisation, per the screenshot shared by DeWitt.
The CEO of Anysphere is Michael Truell. He is also a co-founder of the company, which is behind the AI code editor Cursor.
Sudhanshu Bhatia quoted his post and revealed, “He is actually one of our cofounders as well.”
‘Soham Parekh version of Co-Founder-ism’
The posts, shared this week, have received views in the millions. Many even retweeted the posts and shared their views in the comments section of the post.
“Move over, Soham Parekh,” said one social media user. Another added, “Soham Parekh version of Co-Founder-ism.”
A third posted, “Ok banger. Invested early. Very, very early.”
“You gotta respect the grind,” commented a fourth.
A fifth tagged him as the “co-founder of the year”.
“Imagine adding yourself to every company database as cofounder and hoping nobody notices lmao,” commented yet another social media user.