Something went wrong with the personal development of Elizabeth Holmes. How she could have such an astounding deficit of basic integrity is baffling. There must be some mental illness there. She’s a fascinating character, a biotech Wizard of Oz, who thought that if she wore turtlenecks and gave TED talks, the rest of it would fall into place. Cargo Cult Entrepreneurship fails miserably it would seem.
We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
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Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#42An interesting side note about this story is the homogeneity and lack of relevant background among Theranos's board of directors. All the outside directors were white, prestigious (former generals, senators, cabinet secretaries, etc) and relatively old. Research shows that homogenous groups are less likely to challenge each other.
My coauthor and I wrote about this in our book Meltdown (Published by Penguin Press in in March). We drew on Carreyrou's excellent reporting and some pretty interesting research about how team diversity affects decision making.
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#43The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…
"there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning" Were there? I'm not doubting your claim, just wondering if anyone really spoke up. Reading about the challenges they would have had to overcome to back up their claims, there were some serious fundamental problems, and those were challenges the industry had been wrangling with when it came to tha…
I remember there were immediately after the 2014 TED talk. Heck, I watched that talk and immediately thought it was a complete fraud. Turns out that's like 7 years into this company being around and a year after they'd been full-on defrauding investors.
I can't recall of hearing of Theranos before then though, but I'm not in the valley.
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#44[deleted]
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#45Those stupid scooters and e-bikes will be the Aeron chair of this cycle.
I'm still shopping for a good Aeron chair... I had one years ago and it was the best thing I've every put my tooshie on. Joke aside, a damn fine office chair.
Aeron is the best damn chair I've ever sat in. It's pretty easy to find them used on craigslist.
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#46Something went wrong with the personal development of Elizabeth Holmes. How she could have such an astounding deficit of basic integrity is baffling. There must be some mental illness there. She’s a fascinating character, a biotech Wizard of Oz, who thought that if she wore turtlenecks and gave TED talks, the rest of it would fall into place. Cargo Cult Entrepreneurship fails miserably it would seem.
I don't know about you, but I pretty much breezed through school and for the first 20 years of my life pretty much got nothing but praise from adults for how smart I was.
Not once in that period did anyone really impart lessons of integrity and hard work. At best, I encountered adults (specifically, teachers) who went out of their way to impede my success, but I usually overcame that. Through that period of my life, I can count the number of people who had a positive influence on my personal development on one finger.
I came into my early 20s a combative, arrogant asshole who couldn't really achieve anything and it took almost a decade and significant hardship (including brief periods of homelessness) to undo that.
That's not to empathize with Holmes or her fraud, but if I have to be honest, a lot of the "intellectual elite" (in tech) that I encounter think that their shit doesn't stink.
Edit: Oh yeah, this feels appropriate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUh4FZIf8E
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#47The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…
>The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers.
Rupert Murdoch put 125 million dollars into Theranos, so the press itself was invested.
This investment was only public after investors sued: https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/rupert-murdoch-among...
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#48The most amazing thing about this whole situation is that there were experts in the field who were shouting out about the impossibility of Holmes' claims right from the beginning. The media, though, never paid enough attention (or was possibly subverted by Theranos itself) to the naysayers. These incidents ought to remind us the exponentially important role media plays in our lives and how important it is that we com…
Sure, there were skeptics. And there were also SV gurus shouting "Fake it till you make it!" "Impostor Syndrome!" "Ignore the haters!" When you immediately equate all self-doubt with Impostor Syndrome -- rather than develop actionable heuristics to detect when said doubt is justified -- don't feign surprise when some people take it seriously. Maybe they were just fooled by your confidence. ("You" in the general sense…
I don’t know. That thinking might paper over a middling start-up with a mix of sincerity and hype but just a poor product or unsuccessful funding rounds.
Theranos, and other unicorn-scale hype, is a whole different thing. It doesn’t get this bad unless there is a seriously malevolent drive for the money, essentially saying that you deserve money just for an idea, just for being a made-up executive, regardless of all else, and you’re going to lie, cheat, intimidate, swindle, and unapologetically steamroll your way to the money no matter what.
It’s a technology narcissism problem.
Not mere overconfidence or being swept up in the hype while at least trying to genuinely build something even if it ends up not working.
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#49Something went wrong with the personal development of Elizabeth Holmes. How she could have such an astounding deficit of basic integrity is baffling. There must be some mental illness there. She’s a fascinating character, a biotech Wizard of Oz, who thought that if she wore turtlenecks and gave TED talks, the rest of it would fall into place. Cargo Cult Entrepreneurship fails miserably it would seem.
Don't be so quick to categorize as wrong and mentally ill. People make odd choices all the time. Once you get set down a path, it's hard to change.
Re: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised at the Theranos Fraud
#50Something went wrong with the personal development of Elizabeth Holmes. How she could have such an astounding deficit of basic integrity is baffling. There must be some mental illness there. She’s a fascinating character, a biotech Wizard of Oz, who thought that if she wore turtlenecks and gave TED talks, the rest of it would fall into place. Cargo Cult Entrepreneurship fails miserably it would seem.
It’s not that uncommon in my experience. I’ve met several people similar to those in Theranos management.
It’s partly “fake it until you make it”, “double think” and a certain lack of understanding of the basic technology.
And investors reward that behavior mostly investing in a persons connections and projected confidence. Theranos raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re by no means the only company like this. In fact, many of them do manage to fake it until they make it and become successful.