To be accurate, Theranos wasn’t hawking their blood testing kit to people on some version of a home shopping network. They used the most sophisticated means available to startup technology companies to sell their idea to investment savvy venture capitalists, national drugstores chains, and private investors (eg. Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison). Aunt Mildred wasn’t being targeted to waste $19.95 on one of her after midnight credit card splurges.
Theranos was knowingly selling a medical testing product that didn’t work. How they did it is the pinnacle of con artistry. The scheme wouldn’t have worked without the frightening sociopathy of Elizabeth Holmes, who had no remorse for the potential harm she did through promoting the Walgreen-backed Theranos Wellness Centers between November 2013 and June 2016. What if you were a Theranos “patient” who was being screened for 240 possible tests, and something pernicious or medically worrisome in your bloodwork wasn’t discovered because the product was a scam? That’s NOT Aunt Mildred buying cellulite cream in the hopes that she’ll be bikini ready come summer.
Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t invalidate the “Girlboss”, of which magnificent entrepreneurial women like Martha Stewart and Diane von Furstenberg were iconic pioneers. What Holmes DOES validate is the equal opportunity incarceration of female white-collar criminals.
Abe Stamm
1 year ago
To be accurate, Theranos wasn’t hawking their blood testing kit to people on some version of a home shopping network. They used the most sophisticated means available to startup technology companies to sell their idea to investment savvy venture capitalists, national drugstores chains, and private investors (eg. Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison). Aunt Mildred wasn’t being targeted to waste $19.95 on one of her after midnight credit card splurges.
Theranos was knowingly selling a medical testing product that didn’t work. How they did it is the pinnacle of con artistry. The scheme wouldn’t have worked without the frightening sociopathy of Elizabeth Holmes, who had no remorse for the potential harm she did through promoting the Walgreen-backed Theranos Wellness Centers between November 2013 and June 2016. What if you were a Theranos “patient” who was being screened for 240 possible tests, and something pernicious or medically worrisome in your bloodwork wasn’t discovered because the product was a scam? That’s NOT Aunt Mildred buying cellulite cream in the hopes that she’ll be bikini ready come summer.
Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t invalidate the “Girlboss”, of which magnificent entrepreneurial women like Martha Stewart and Diane von Furstenberg were iconic pioneers. What Holmes DOES validate is the equal opportunity incarceration of female white-collar criminals.
Peter B
1 year ago
It’s straight up fraud. End of. All the “girl boss” stuff is just nonsense. Noise. Irrelevant. There were real and serious problems here. But the “girl boss” agenda isn’t one of them.
“If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her”.
So who’s the “we” here ? Certainly doesn’t include me. I frankly don’t care at all whether the CEO is a woman or man. I do care a lot whether they are competent and honest and treat people decently. And there was more than sufficient evidence at the time that Elizabeth Holmes was none of these things.
That’s before we note that she was creating a medical product It’s one thing to fake a product demo at a tradeshow for a gadget or piece of software that isn’t life critical – sometimes these are glitches that are easily fixed. It’s something completely different to pretend that a medical device that doesn’t work (and it seems never could work) does. The author seems unable to tell the difference.
As for the claim that if Elizabeth Holmes was a credible business person:
“The twist is, Holmes probably could have been wildly successful, even legit, if she’d just set her sights a little bit lower. With those brains, that face, that voice, and her pitching skills, she could have launched a startup — or become an influencer — in any number of fields.”
Ludicrous.
The author appears to believe that the skills required to run a startup company are mainly superficial and do not include deep technical and product expertise in the domain. She’s clearly never worked in a startup (I have). Also a major reason why Theranos failed.
It’s just pathetic to try to project the blame for what Elizabeth Holmes and co did onto the rest of us.
It was obvious at the time that the Theranos story was too good to be true and that Elizabeth Holmes was a wrong un. I see she finally got setenced to at least 11 years last November. Not long enough.
And frankly, some of the people who financed and promoted this fraud should be inside too. Real people had misleading medical diagnoses as a result of this fraud.
Peter B
1 year ago
It’s straight up fraud. End of. All the “girl boss” stuff is just nonsense. Noise. Irrelevant. There were real and serious problems here. But the “girl boss” agenda isn’t one of them.
“If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her”.
So who’s the “we” here ? Certainly doesn’t include me. I frankly don’t care at all whether the CEO is a woman or man. I do care a lot whether they are competent and honest and treat people decently. And there was more than sufficient evidence at the time that Elizabeth Holmes was none of these things.
That’s before we note that she was creating a medical product It’s one thing to fake a product demo at a tradeshow for a gadget or piece of software that isn’t life critical – sometimes these are glitches that are easily fixed. It’s something completely different to pretend that a medical device that doesn’t work (and it seems never could work) does. The author seems unable to tell the difference.
As for the claim that if Elizabeth Holmes was a credible business person:
“The twist is, Holmes probably could have been wildly successful, even legit, if she’d just set her sights a little bit lower. With those brains, that face, that voice, and her pitching skills, she could have launched a startup — or become an influencer — in any number of fields.”
Ludicrous.
The author appears to believe that the skills required to run a startup company are mainly superficial and do not include deep technical and product expertise in the domain. She’s clearly never worked in a startup (I have). Also a major reason why Theranos failed.
It’s just pathetic to try to project the blame for what Elizabeth Holmes and co did onto the rest of us.
It was obvious at the time that the Theranos story was too good to be true and that Elizabeth Holmes was a wrong un. I see she finally got setenced to at least 11 years last November. Not long enough.
And frankly, some of the people who financed and promoted this fraud should be inside too. Real people had misleading medical diagnoses as a result of this fraud.
Jonathan Nash
1 year ago
Wealthy ageing men relieved of funds by attractive young woman. Let’s not over-think this.
The Walton family, the largest investor in Theranos, is full of youngest men and women, invested $150 million. Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary, and her family invested $100 million. But yes, a pretty blonde wearing a black turtleneck is apparently catnip to old men with too much money at their disposal, even though most of them are sophisticated titans of industry, including Carlos Slim.
The Walton family, the largest investor in Theranos, is full of youngest men and women, invested $150 million. Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary, and her family invested $100 million. But yes, a pretty blonde wearing a black turtleneck is apparently catnip to old men with too much money at their disposal, even though most of them are sophisticated titans of industry, including Carlos Slim.
Gosh, Jonathan!
Surely you are not having some doubts about the “Settled Science™” of the Patriarchal Hegemony?
Whatever next?
Jonathan Nash
1 year ago
Wealthy ageing men relieved of funds by attractive young woman. Let’s not over-think this.
Mark Goodge
1 year ago
“every life-altering tech innovation started as an idea too crazy to work”
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. While there are a few inventions that are genuinely completely new ideas, the reality is that the vast majority of life-altering tech innovation is simply an interation on a product which already exists or a concept whicch has already been proven to work. The Internet, the iPhone, electric cars – none of these arived ex nihilo, they all became viable consumer products as a result of many, many developments over a lengthy period of time.
As for the iPhone, the difference between Jobs and Holmes is that Jobs knew he could make the iPhone work. Because none of it, individually, was new technology, he was just combining it in a new way and doing his best to improve it. Iteration, iteration, iteration, until you’ve got something you can show the world. Holmes’s Theranos device, on the other hand, was a flat out lie from the beginning. Not only did it not work, but it could never possibly have worked – not even in theory.
But the reason that Holmes was able to get away with her lies for so long is that too many people – including investors who should have known better – bought into the myth that life-altering tech innovations start out as ideas too crazy to work. Because the moment you stop asking yourself, “What are the foundations that this is built on?” and, instead, start believing that the foundations don’t matter, it’s easy to get suckered into the hype.
So there’s no existing technology that this could be an innovative development on? So no competitor is working on anything even remotely comparable? So no university, or well-funded Big Pharma company, has anything like this in the lab? So what, we’ll just redefine the laws of physics while we’re at it! But, as eny fule kno, ye cannae change them.
Exactly so.
Steve Jobs had also done the 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) building up experience with a real electronics expert (Steve Wozniak). They had spent a long time learning (largely through failure and improvement) and knew what worked and what didn’t.
Elizabeth Holmes essentially had no experience.
One really does wonder where the VC investor due diligence was here … but that’s another subject.
The problem is partly the suckers who want to buy the “girl boss” story nonsense. When they’re really buying a medical products company (which they don’t understand).
Exactly so.
Steve Jobs had also done the 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) building up experience with a real electronics expert (Steve Wozniak). They had spent a long time learning (largely through failure and improvement) and knew what worked and what didn’t.
Elizabeth Holmes essentially had no experience.
One really does wonder where the VC investor due diligence was here … but that’s another subject.
The problem is partly the suckers who want to buy the “girl boss” story nonsense. When they’re really buying a medical products company (which they don’t understand).
Mark Goodge
1 year ago
“every life-altering tech innovation started as an idea too crazy to work”
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. While there are a few inventions that are genuinely completely new ideas, the reality is that the vast majority of life-altering tech innovation is simply an interation on a product which already exists or a concept whicch has already been proven to work. The Internet, the iPhone, electric cars – none of these arived ex nihilo, they all became viable consumer products as a result of many, many developments over a lengthy period of time.
As for the iPhone, the difference between Jobs and Holmes is that Jobs knew he could make the iPhone work. Because none of it, individually, was new technology, he was just combining it in a new way and doing his best to improve it. Iteration, iteration, iteration, until you’ve got something you can show the world. Holmes’s Theranos device, on the other hand, was a flat out lie from the beginning. Not only did it not work, but it could never possibly have worked – not even in theory.
But the reason that Holmes was able to get away with her lies for so long is that too many people – including investors who should have known better – bought into the myth that life-altering tech innovations start out as ideas too crazy to work. Because the moment you stop asking yourself, “What are the foundations that this is built on?” and, instead, start believing that the foundations don’t matter, it’s easy to get suckered into the hype.
So there’s no existing technology that this could be an innovative development on? So no competitor is working on anything even remotely comparable? So no university, or well-funded Big Pharma company, has anything like this in the lab? So what, we’ll just redefine the laws of physics while we’re at it! But, as eny fule kno, ye cannae change them.
To be accurate, Theranos wasn’t hawking their blood testing kit to people on some version of a home shopping network. They used the most sophisticated means available to startup technology companies to sell their idea to investment savvy venture capitalists, national drugstores chains, and private investors (eg. Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison). Aunt Mildred wasn’t being targeted to waste $19.95 on one of her after midnight credit card splurges.
Theranos was knowingly selling a medical testing product that didn’t work. How they did it is the pinnacle of con artistry. The scheme wouldn’t have worked without the frightening sociopathy of Elizabeth Holmes, who had no remorse for the potential harm she did through promoting the Walgreen-backed Theranos Wellness Centers between November 2013 and June 2016. What if you were a Theranos “patient” who was being screened for 240 possible tests, and something pernicious or medically worrisome in your bloodwork wasn’t discovered because the product was a scam? That’s NOT Aunt Mildred buying cellulite cream in the hopes that she’ll be bikini ready come summer.
Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t invalidate the “Girlboss”, of which magnificent entrepreneurial women like Martha Stewart and Diane von Furstenberg were iconic pioneers. What Holmes DOES validate is the equal opportunity incarceration of female white-collar criminals.
To be accurate, Theranos wasn’t hawking their blood testing kit to people on some version of a home shopping network. They used the most sophisticated means available to startup technology companies to sell their idea to investment savvy venture capitalists, national drugstores chains, and private investors (eg. Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison). Aunt Mildred wasn’t being targeted to waste $19.95 on one of her after midnight credit card splurges.
Theranos was knowingly selling a medical testing product that didn’t work. How they did it is the pinnacle of con artistry. The scheme wouldn’t have worked without the frightening sociopathy of Elizabeth Holmes, who had no remorse for the potential harm she did through promoting the Walgreen-backed Theranos Wellness Centers between November 2013 and June 2016. What if you were a Theranos “patient” who was being screened for 240 possible tests, and something pernicious or medically worrisome in your bloodwork wasn’t discovered because the product was a scam? That’s NOT Aunt Mildred buying cellulite cream in the hopes that she’ll be bikini ready come summer.
Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t invalidate the “Girlboss”, of which magnificent entrepreneurial women like Martha Stewart and Diane von Furstenberg were iconic pioneers. What Holmes DOES validate is the equal opportunity incarceration of female white-collar criminals.
It’s straight up fraud. End of. All the “girl boss” stuff is just nonsense. Noise. Irrelevant. There were real and serious problems here. But the “girl boss” agenda isn’t one of them.
“If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her”.
So who’s the “we” here ? Certainly doesn’t include me. I frankly don’t care at all whether the CEO is a woman or man. I do care a lot whether they are competent and honest and treat people decently. And there was more than sufficient evidence at the time that Elizabeth Holmes was none of these things.
That’s before we note that she was creating a medical product It’s one thing to fake a product demo at a tradeshow for a gadget or piece of software that isn’t life critical – sometimes these are glitches that are easily fixed. It’s something completely different to pretend that a medical device that doesn’t work (and it seems never could work) does. The author seems unable to tell the difference.
As for the claim that if Elizabeth Holmes was a credible business person:
“The twist is, Holmes probably could have been wildly successful, even legit, if she’d just set her sights a little bit lower. With those brains, that face, that voice, and her pitching skills, she could have launched a startup — or become an influencer — in any number of fields.”
Ludicrous.
The author appears to believe that the skills required to run a startup company are mainly superficial and do not include deep technical and product expertise in the domain. She’s clearly never worked in a startup (I have). Also a major reason why Theranos failed.
It’s just pathetic to try to project the blame for what Elizabeth Holmes and co did onto the rest of us.
It was obvious at the time that the Theranos story was too good to be true and that Elizabeth Holmes was a wrong un. I see she finally got setenced to at least 11 years last November. Not long enough.
And frankly, some of the people who financed and promoted this fraud should be inside too. Real people had misleading medical diagnoses as a result of this fraud.
It’s straight up fraud. End of. All the “girl boss” stuff is just nonsense. Noise. Irrelevant. There were real and serious problems here. But the “girl boss” agenda isn’t one of them.
“If Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent her”.
So who’s the “we” here ? Certainly doesn’t include me. I frankly don’t care at all whether the CEO is a woman or man. I do care a lot whether they are competent and honest and treat people decently. And there was more than sufficient evidence at the time that Elizabeth Holmes was none of these things.
That’s before we note that she was creating a medical product It’s one thing to fake a product demo at a tradeshow for a gadget or piece of software that isn’t life critical – sometimes these are glitches that are easily fixed. It’s something completely different to pretend that a medical device that doesn’t work (and it seems never could work) does. The author seems unable to tell the difference.
As for the claim that if Elizabeth Holmes was a credible business person:
“The twist is, Holmes probably could have been wildly successful, even legit, if she’d just set her sights a little bit lower. With those brains, that face, that voice, and her pitching skills, she could have launched a startup — or become an influencer — in any number of fields.”
Ludicrous.
The author appears to believe that the skills required to run a startup company are mainly superficial and do not include deep technical and product expertise in the domain. She’s clearly never worked in a startup (I have). Also a major reason why Theranos failed.
It’s just pathetic to try to project the blame for what Elizabeth Holmes and co did onto the rest of us.
It was obvious at the time that the Theranos story was too good to be true and that Elizabeth Holmes was a wrong un. I see she finally got setenced to at least 11 years last November. Not long enough.
And frankly, some of the people who financed and promoted this fraud should be inside too. Real people had misleading medical diagnoses as a result of this fraud.
Wealthy ageing men relieved of funds by attractive young woman. Let’s not over-think this.
The Walton family, the largest investor in Theranos, is full of youngest men and women, invested $150 million. Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary, and her family invested $100 million. But yes, a pretty blonde wearing a black turtleneck is apparently catnip to old men with too much money at their disposal, even though most of them are sophisticated titans of industry, including Carlos Slim.
Gosh, Jonathan!
Surely you are not having some doubts about the “Settled Science™” of the Patriarchal Hegemony?
Whatever next?
The Walton family, the largest investor in Theranos, is full of youngest men and women, invested $150 million. Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s education secretary, and her family invested $100 million. But yes, a pretty blonde wearing a black turtleneck is apparently catnip to old men with too much money at their disposal, even though most of them are sophisticated titans of industry, including Carlos Slim.
Gosh, Jonathan!
Surely you are not having some doubts about the “Settled Science™” of the Patriarchal Hegemony?
Whatever next?
Wealthy ageing men relieved of funds by attractive young woman. Let’s not over-think this.
“every life-altering tech innovation started as an idea too crazy to work”
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. While there are a few inventions that are genuinely completely new ideas, the reality is that the vast majority of life-altering tech innovation is simply an interation on a product which already exists or a concept whicch has already been proven to work. The Internet, the iPhone, electric cars – none of these arived ex nihilo, they all became viable consumer products as a result of many, many developments over a lengthy period of time.
As for the iPhone, the difference between Jobs and Holmes is that Jobs knew he could make the iPhone work. Because none of it, individually, was new technology, he was just combining it in a new way and doing his best to improve it. Iteration, iteration, iteration, until you’ve got something you can show the world. Holmes’s Theranos device, on the other hand, was a flat out lie from the beginning. Not only did it not work, but it could never possibly have worked – not even in theory.
But the reason that Holmes was able to get away with her lies for so long is that too many people – including investors who should have known better – bought into the myth that life-altering tech innovations start out as ideas too crazy to work. Because the moment you stop asking yourself, “What are the foundations that this is built on?” and, instead, start believing that the foundations don’t matter, it’s easy to get suckered into the hype.
So there’s no existing technology that this could be an innovative development on? So no competitor is working on anything even remotely comparable? So no university, or well-funded Big Pharma company, has anything like this in the lab? So what, we’ll just redefine the laws of physics while we’re at it! But, as eny fule kno, ye cannae change them.
Exactly so.
Steve Jobs had also done the 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) building up experience with a real electronics expert (Steve Wozniak). They had spent a long time learning (largely through failure and improvement) and knew what worked and what didn’t.
Elizabeth Holmes essentially had no experience.
One really does wonder where the VC investor due diligence was here … but that’s another subject.
The problem is partly the suckers who want to buy the “girl boss” story nonsense. When they’re really buying a medical products company (which they don’t understand).
Exactly so.
Steve Jobs had also done the 10,000 hours (Malcolm Gladwell) building up experience with a real electronics expert (Steve Wozniak). They had spent a long time learning (largely through failure and improvement) and knew what worked and what didn’t.
Elizabeth Holmes essentially had no experience.
One really does wonder where the VC investor due diligence was here … but that’s another subject.
The problem is partly the suckers who want to buy the “girl boss” story nonsense. When they’re really buying a medical products company (which they don’t understand).
“every life-altering tech innovation started as an idea too crazy to work”
Sorry, but that’s simply not true. While there are a few inventions that are genuinely completely new ideas, the reality is that the vast majority of life-altering tech innovation is simply an interation on a product which already exists or a concept whicch has already been proven to work. The Internet, the iPhone, electric cars – none of these arived ex nihilo, they all became viable consumer products as a result of many, many developments over a lengthy period of time.
As for the iPhone, the difference between Jobs and Holmes is that Jobs knew he could make the iPhone work. Because none of it, individually, was new technology, he was just combining it in a new way and doing his best to improve it. Iteration, iteration, iteration, until you’ve got something you can show the world. Holmes’s Theranos device, on the other hand, was a flat out lie from the beginning. Not only did it not work, but it could never possibly have worked – not even in theory.
But the reason that Holmes was able to get away with her lies for so long is that too many people – including investors who should have known better – bought into the myth that life-altering tech innovations start out as ideas too crazy to work. Because the moment you stop asking yourself, “What are the foundations that this is built on?” and, instead, start believing that the foundations don’t matter, it’s easy to get suckered into the hype.
So there’s no existing technology that this could be an innovative development on? So no competitor is working on anything even remotely comparable? So no university, or well-funded Big Pharma company, has anything like this in the lab? So what, we’ll just redefine the laws of physics while we’re at it! But, as eny fule kno, ye cannae change them.