The thing that strikes me as odd is how is it that Delve becomes an unicorn superstar (by iself), and the company they steal stuff off of, is much much less of a success story.

It would make more sense that the people who actually built the thing would do the thing better and do it first.

I think in real life, cheaters win.

Without proper punishment, groups who "play fair" are at a strict disadvantage against those willing to break the rules.

At least in the US, we seem to be rapidly moving away from punishing groups for breaking the rules. All the mega successful companies (and people) seem to break a lot of rules to get there.

Conversely, the honest "play by the rules" groups can't be mega successful. Without punishment, the cheater always wins.

Actually building something useful and fun and spending your time convincing investors to give you enough money to maybe turn it into a profitable business some day are not really complimentary personality traits.

Steve Wozniak alone could've maybe built Apple without Steve Jobs, but his time would be wasted by doing something he (presumably) didn't enjoy very much and it would've been a much bumpier road.

Basically YC + MIT background is a license to raise infinite capital. So they just needed to check some revenue boxes etc.

Even if the prospective investors smell a rat, they might decide that it's likely that a greater fool will arrive on the scene later - justifying investing in a known scam