Elizabeth Holmes Trial: Why Not Other Tech CEOs? | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes Trial: Why Not Other Tech CEOs?

npr.org

These attempts to equate Holmes with other tech CEOs are bizarre.

Theranos was a fraudulent company, full stop. They weren’t even a Silicon Valley darling as many VCs famously passed on the company after some due diligence. Their primary investors were family offices like the Cox family, the Walton family, and Rupert Murdoch because they couldn’t get their fraud passed actual tech VCs, who were handing out investment money to everyone else with a decent idea at the time. Even their board and advisers were mostly composed of people with political and other backgrounds unrelated to blood testing or tech.

There is no equivalence between Theranos’ outright fraud and other tech CEOs being optimistic about the future of their tech companies. The way the media is trying to downplay their fraud and equate it with other, successful companies is bizarre.

In my limited experience, I have seen lots of tech that doesn't work, or that is just some design mockups, marketed as a finished product, in particular in th AI space. I wouldn't call it fraud, so much as optimism or confidence, but there is definitely a dark side to this kind of practice.

If Theranos made an "AI" document analysis software that presently farmed out tasks to people behind the scenes because the tech didn't work yet, while simultaneously marketing it as AI, I dont think anyone would bat an eye.

The big difference I see is that this was in the medical space so it affects human health.

I do not think Holmes was competent enough to understand that tech would never work (this is still up for debate though, "never" is a very broad timeframe).

Instead, she did waht every CEO does - hired people whom she believed to be capable of making the tech work, gave an optimistic world view to the investors to make sure she has the time/money to get to production, and demanded the results from her employees.

If anything, she was too successful - she got too much money, and she got Walgreens to agree to a test run way too early. The rest is textbook Silicon Valley.

> The rest is textbook Silicon Valley.

Absolutely, 100% no. Read some of the books/articles on the completely bizarre (and frightening) internal dynamics of Theranos - e.g. anyone who was slightly willing to tell the truth was fired or worse, threatened. This is not "textbook Silicon Valley".

Not at all, I agree that she crossed the line but there are plenty of companies that raise money under false promises using a mockup. Even when they have a marketable product they continue to make the rosies of promises. Juicero is a good example. They raise millions to put out a product that was mainly useless. I'm sure the investors were totally surprised of the product the company produced. That's one that was a famous example but I'm sure there are plenty more that never made the headlines.

She went over the line and should be prosecuted given the harm she caused by putting out testing machines that did not work but there plenty of companies that come close to crossing the line onto fraud.

Not surprised to see Ellen Pao's voice in here, who continues to do a disservice to women everywhere by blaming any situation where a woman fails on sexism.

If anything, the rise of Holmes was specifically enabled by the fact that Silicon Valley wanted a "female founder of mythical proportions" so badly that they overlooked some obvious red flags early on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com