Why is the primary factor behind Theranos's bubble the fact that its founder was a woman? That is a notable aspect but Elizabeth Holmes also leveraged powerful connections and a TED-friendly dream to get that hype. There are plenty of female-led startups that did not reach any notable status despite having a woman at the helm.

I'd like to see a woman hired as CEO for whom the principle talking point isn't that she's female.

I don't fucking care.

Be competent. Be a decent person.

Meg Whitman is a horrible person from everything I've seen. She's managed not to kill what's left with HP after Carly Fiorina drove it into the ground.

I meant to search for "most notable (female|woman) tech ceo", but left out the gender qualification.

A top 10 list fails to include any women:

http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech-ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN

A list of 13 likewise:

http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-...

A slideshow item I refuse to link on principle lists Alibaba, HP, Oracle (co-CEO), IBM, Xerox, Yahoo, YouTube, and ... um, one other I've now forgotten, fuck the slideshow very much. Oh, AMD. None of which are startups.

Women hold 23 CEO positions (4.3%) of the S&P 500, four of which I've already mentioned:

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500

http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-...

I think we'd all love to see the day when a woman reaching the position of Fortune 500 isn't news. As much as we might argue how much of Mayer's meteoric rise was because of her being a woman, I think it's outweighed by the fact that when she fucks up, she has to bear the burden of being the latest face of female inferiority.

The bubble and valuation? Thats not the real discussion here. The meltdown of a company that has no consumer product would never have drawn clicks. Fidelity could have marked it down 50 times and never made the news. There are tons of biotech startups with lofty valuations.

There was a consumer product. They performed thousands of blood tests, which were available in Palo Alto and Arizona.

But it's false that companies that don't have a consumer product don't draw intense interest. Ask Enron. Or WorldCom. Or Blackwater. Or Lehman Brothers. Or the folks behind the AOL and Time Warner merger

You have a point, but it operates under the assumption that there is an interest in disproving a role her gender had in the attention. An assumption I can't empirically prove, nor one you can empirically prove.

I would like to think the blood test product scandal was interesting on its own merits, amongst all of the other frauds going on in this country, but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

Holmes represents something inspirational to a marginalized demographic.

> but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

It was elevated because of the massive PR push by Theranos itself. I never even heard of Theranos until they did a massive PR push in 2013 or 2014. That, combined with the fact the company is valued at $9 billion, apparently has no actual working product and numerious other interesting facts about the company including it's well-connected-to-Gov (and large) [former?] Board of Directors, co-founder who committed suicide, at least two-large corporate partnerships that blew up (Safeway, Walgreens), etc., etc.