"Venture capitalist Tim Draper, an old family friend of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who led an early $1 million investment into the company (split between two investment firms).."

This is an incredibly defeatist/self pitying line of thinking that I'm seeing more of (the world is stacked against me, you have to be born into it, etc) and is related to a lot of other self-defeating thought patterns. It's not going to help you or anyone else who subscribes to it. Maybe it's just that bad news is much easier to see, thanks to the web, so people think bad behavior is more common now, and it's turning people cynical.

Anecdata, but: I left academic hard science because I realized it was too difficult to get ahead; moved to the bay since I can code and it was a way to create a runway and find myself, and pitch companies. Got a contract coding gig, because a professor on the board of my roommate's company was impressed that I had independently implemented his prototype as a personal side project. Applied to 10+ startups for "real programming jobs", including through triplebyte, rejected by all, finally got hired by a roommate's friend (on reputation only) whose company needed asses in seats for an investor meeting.

Meanwhile, I'd been pitching 3 biotech ideas and one tech idea (I had written verilog for a hardware prototype of a deep learning chip) and got no bites on any of my pitches.

Finally, a friend offered me a VP product position (because he needed someone he could trust) which I was about to jump ship for, and then my current CEO counter-offered by agreeing to put his personal money as a lead in one of the biotech startups I'd pitched (that was somewhat meritocratic because he has seen how I operate as a coder in the company and was impressed, and I think he figures, probably correctly that if I'm that good a coder then my biotech skills are even better because that's what I'm formally trained in)

Since getting here, I haven't once advanced through pure merit, and have always advanced through connections.

I got my first foot in the door via an internship on a referral from a friend who had interned there the year before. I had no formal credentials (just taking CS classes on the side of an Econ degree in college), but I had spent all of my math/CS classes studying with this kid. He knew I was smart and put his own ass on the line to get me an interview.

You can be successful purely by reading books in a room, writing code alone, and building some brilliant startup. (E.g. look at the CD Baby guy, what's his name). But it's SUPER unlikely. You're way better off being a social human being, building relationships/trust, and paying it back/forward to folks that do right by you when you know you deserve it.

A lot of the SV narratives circle around meritocracy (or other ways of 'hacking the signalling game' even. And when you say "it's SUPER unlikely", I think you're 100% correct. And so challenging the meritocracy myth is important.

That was 20 years ago. As much history as Larry Ellison's story in 1970s. Things have changed a lot, and the Silicon Valley today is a poster child for cronyism.

The VCs don't even bother opening "cold emails" (a ridiculous term for something that purports to be an open club). It's a herd of arrogant hipster bros who have no clue what they're doing and try to CYA by "warm introductions" (when their bet fails, they can shift the blame on a 3rd party).

The investment is not completely off-limits (my own story is a testament to that), but it's magnitudes harder to get if you're not connected, and oftentimes you have to pay through the nose to the "people who know people". I also know some rare cases when super-angels answer to complete strangers and subsequently invest, but these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Can you back up this statement? Why is it self-defeating? You put it in your post as if it somehow logically follows from the rest but it doesn't.

The claim is that people who were not born or just lucked into connections with the rich and powerful are going to have to work significantly harder or get lucky to get access to those opportunities. While the people that do, can put some work in and basically claim the opportunity or just simply try again without significant loss or even having to settle for less.

"Lots of counterexamples" don't mean anything unless you can show that there are in fact so many counterexamples that they outnumber them in a similar ratio as the people in the first group utterly outnumber the people in the latter group. Or even by a factor of ten.

But they don't and almost nobody would be having this discussion if they did.

> Maybe it's just that bad news is much easier to see, thanks to the web, so people think bad behavior is more common now, and it's turning people cynical.

And you're going to need more than those words to properly argue that this is a bad thing.

Because a lot of bad news wasn't visible enough. And people have been underestimating the magnitude of bad behaviour. And a lot of people in a lot of places in the world most definitely aren't being cynical enough.

Sure there are psychological downsides to being bombarded with bad news and negative information all day, and we need to find ways to handle that, for our collective mental health. Doesn't mean the bad news is somehow wrong or faulty.

Doubt it. I don't think In-Q-Tel/CIA will write you a check because you just happen to have this shiny new search engine that may or may not change the world.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/intelligence-histor...

"Close" does not mean part of the organisation. The founder Norman R. Augustine isn't even a CIA person. It is somewhat similar to a spinned-off company which runs independently but has tight connections (and a contract, in case of In-Q-Tel) with the organization that spinned it off.

* In-Q-Tel (theoretically) may have other contracts and major partnerships.

* In-Q-Tel gets to pick who they invest into; CIA may express interest in a particular area or a company but In-Q-Tel manage their portfolios.

* While In-Q-Tel is non-profit, the profits flow back and the employees may profit from it. Meaning, while part of the funds come from the CIA (taxpayers), part come from the past profits.

More detail to those interested in law: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten....

It's fairly unusual for the US, but similar structures exist in countries trying to nurture their startup ecosystem.

Think about the decision that he had to make in 2016. He had to choose between admiting his mistake and doubling down. The downside of admitting his mistake is that he's guaranteed to get negative points; the upside is that it will minimise futures downsides. By dubling down, he's guaranteed to reduce his negative points in 2016 but exposes himself to magnified upsides (if he's proven right) and downsides (if he's proven wrong) in the future.

Now think rationally how you'd choose. The second strategy is a lot riskier so it better have better return as well! But the second strategy can only have higher reward if you either believe high probability of future upsides (i.e. Theranos might be faking till you make it, but they'll make it) or low probability of future downsides (i.e. I'm not sure what's going on, but definitely not fraud). I submit that the only way that you could come to believe either is if you're hugely misinformed about the company.

I.e. that guy is just a bit incompetent.

Draper has no doubt had many chances in his life to provide negative but true and positive but false comments on his investments. If society punishes negative but true comments he's damn well going to notice and make fewer of them. If society further fails to punish positive but false comments about his investments, he's not going to invest the mental resources that would be required to avoid them.

A little experience substitutes for a lot of strategy.

Generally, "they're family" sounds like a sensible default attitude for a VC towards their investments.

Re a previous Holmes forfeiture: "Warmenhoven added Ms. Holmes showed “a level of selflessness and grace reflecting her commitment to the company’s success.”

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973420