People like to get rich, and if you can craft a narrative outlining a path to riches many will pile in. Sometimes it’s not even that difficult, in hindsight, to identify the red flags that should have generated some level of uneasiness. Sticking with revenue and using Enron’s growth as an example, authors Schilit and Perler make an entertaining observation:
Curious investors might have questioned how frequently companies tend to grow their revenue from under $10 billion to over $100 billion in five years. The answer: never.