Indeed. Theranos happened not because Elizabeth Holmes wasn't smart, or because she initially set out to deceive people -- she just thought she had a world-changing idea and all that was missing was the implementation, and her strategy for getting from here to there was "fake it till you make it".

Which kinda works much of the time in software -- trowel on enough JavaScript frameworks, polyfills, and glue code and eventually you will have something that resembles your vision (though it runs like a pig). But Theranos ran headlong into physical problems that the biotech industry hadn't found clean answers for yet (and may never find) -- and its leader had vision and ambition, but not the knowledge or experience to see the pitfalls.