Thankfully (or not...), the consequences faced by overpromising sales people aren't as severe in the 21st century.

Startups after first round of investment would have severe motivation to succeed!

These days it's the transmutation of money into unusable applications.

Hmm now which current hyped trend could the alchemical quest be compared to?

Maybe we can smear all the copyrighted inputs together and lose the copyrights in the process? Magic! It's gold, i tell you!