Perhaps it is time that we permanently retire the misguided Silicon Valley maxim "fake it till you make it". And along with that, maybe revisit the wisdom of others such as "fail fast".
But he did try a lot of different filament materials. It would've been really dumb to think he was going to somehow get cotton or whatever wrong material correct if he just stuck with it. Instead he had procedures and a framework to try a lot of candidates and iterate quickly.
I get this argument might not be exactly fair because I can twist it to nearly anything. But that's how maxims like "fail fast" or "haste makes waste" or "a stitch in time..." works. They still have value
These are not actually good strategies, they're virtue signals that founders use to tell investors that we've got the "Silicon Valley" ethos that bought you Facebook/Google/etc.
So people are always going to look for possibilities that are superficially and obviously terrible approaches, but which look like they might be the secret of success if you squint the right way.
It's not merely that these particular slogans are bad and should be eliminated, it's that the nature of the game leads people to look for and invent such things, and if we all agreed not to ever say these things again, new ones would arise. I don't think there is a general solution.
People still laud Uber for illegal behaviour.
I'd personally call that a Silicon Valley success story.
There were three in fact.
Tim Draper invested the first money into Theranos due to a family connection to Holmes. His firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, put early money into them. ATA Ventures and Tako Ventures (Larry Ellison) also invested into them.
Because you have wildly successful companies like FANG, investors get all crazy and irrational when they see startups with the momentum and PR like Theranos had. Even if they're tech or scientific literate, they may suspend their disbelief, just in case the startup is a financial hit.
I have little sympathy for investors that decide to invest in things thy don't know about, but eve less for investors that knowingly invest in unsound tech, just for a big IPO payout - but then cry fraud when it all falls apart.
The "fake it till you make it" image is unfortunately needed to get the big bucks. In order to get funded, you need to act as if you're going to change the world, and convince investors that your product is going to be one of the leading, if not _the_ leading products in the market - doesn't mater if your startup is legit or bogus.
This culture unfortunately makes it easy for fraudsters to blend in - but they're just playing the game as designed.
It boils down to investors wanting 100x - 1000x returns on relatively small investments. And you don't get that kinds of returns unless the company / startup is of national or global size. To tackle and grow something to that size, you need to convince someone that you're capable of doing so.
No-one invests in people that appear to be doubting or lacking confidence. They root for young "super genius" founders that tick off all the right boxes
Maybe we should retire driving? 40,000 dead every single year in the USA, and over 2 million injured or disabled. According to your logic?
I wish this made the headlines more. But it doesn't because it isn't new, exciting or controversial :(
Maybe it needs a better name, like HeartBleed?
Also "fake it till you make it" wouldn't work very well for driving either.
So yeah. Let's reduce driving. Good call.