Not really a good defense of Silicon Valley, considering that Tim Draper was Theranos's first investor and a pretty big proponent of them https://twitter.com/RebeccaJarvis/status/974435962930548736
Theranos' fundraising was primarily from outside of SV: "Documents unsealed in a lawsuit brought against Theranos reveal a number of the high profile investors who had a stake in the nearly worthless start-up: The Waltons, founders of Walmart, with $150 million; Rupert Murdoch, with $125 million; and the DeVos family, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, with $100 million. The investments were made between 2013 and 2015, according to the Journal." - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/theranos-devos-other-investo...
In Theranos' earliest SEC filing, "Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund VII, L.P." is listed as a Beneficial Owner.
Filing Date 2005-01-03
File/File Number 021-72626 05000011
pg, and others pushing back against the Theranos-as-an-indictment-of-Silicon-Valley-venture-capital narrative, are talking about the firms that invested much larger sums after Elizabeth Holmes had gotten a lot of good press and become a hot commodity (and, in most cases, after she'd started engaging in fraud, unbeknownst to most). Those firms lost their shirts in a way that DFJ didn't.
It seems like a weird point to nit-pick, but in most of PG's essays, there are so few demonstrably easy-to-disprove facts. This one is easy. And the misplaced hubris in thinking zero SV firms were foolish enough to invest in a fraud makes you question all his other assertions.