Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

Re:Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab eq... by ryandrake on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @01:10PM (#28696689)

A little history helps [EDIT: Maybe not!] explain it a bit. Back when Holmes was a rising star, we were in the middle of #MeToo, Tech Bro companies were getting increasing scrutiny about their treatment of women, and in general how tech companies were struggling with diversity, and then all of a sudden, we have this company founded by a seemingly smart, driven, technically-savvy woman, educated at Stanford (!) and who wears turtlenecks like Steve Jobs (!!!). It was the perfect narrative. This is the kind of exec they were all looking for right at this moment! People were willing to suspend a lot of disbelief in order to make it real. I imagine these investors had the X-Files "I Want To Believe" poster in their offices. It wasn't so much gullibility as it was a perfect narrative that everyone desperately wanted to believe in.

EDIT: Oh yes, I 100% agree [1] that her outsized personal charisma was a large part of it!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674285

EDIT2: You're right, I got the MeToo timeline wrong. I seem to have remembered anti-sexism momentum building up long before 2017 but yea the actual hashtag and Weinstein stuff was in the news long after the company rose.

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Re:Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab eq... by dumbfoundded on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @01:27PM (#28696975)

Your timeline makes no sense. Theranos started falling apart in 2016 with charges being filed against Holmes in March 2018. MeToo started in October 2017 with the release of the Harvey Weinstein assault stories.

By the time MeToo started, Theranos had been sued by investors, Walgreens, and CMS. Additionally, Holmes was banned from running labs and Theranos had failed many inspections with severe penalties. Theranos was all but dead by the time MeToo took off.

What really happened (according to my recollection of reading Bad Blood) is that Holmes never really connected with the medical community. Anyone with any domain expertise knew her tech claims were impossible. She used her personal connections to generals, politicians, and wealthy individuals to spin this web of lies and keep raising money. Most of the Silicon Valley Investor elite had nothing to do with Theranos.

I really dislike your interpretation of events. Not only because it makes no sense with the actual history but you play on stereotypes & generalizations to make a point. Tech certainly needs more female founders but you're not helping by twisting what really happened.

1) https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-me-too-timeline...

2) https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/tech/elizabeth-holmes-therano...

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Re:Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab eq... by NationalPark on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @01:14PM (#28696745)

That doesn't really square with her board, who were notably from the military and older, conservative leaning men like Kissinger or Shultz. I think they were more taken in by her charisma than they were motivated by feminist activists.

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