Elizabeth Holmes, left to her own devices | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes, left to her own devices

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9 pointsMaro25 comments

She claimed to be celibate in her twenties due to her devotion to her company. Reality: She was living with a much older man who invested in the company.

I strongly suspect this is not how male founders typically operate.

I also still believe her gender was a barrier to her getting meaningful feedback, an opinion that generally draws hatred -- and never mind that it's the opinion of a woman wondering So, how does a woman founder make a successful company?

("Asking for a friend" -- by which I mean me, of course.)

I suspect that being a woman was both a help and a hindrance. Ultimately, it hindered her because she didn't get the reality checks that an unattractive person would have received - or when she got them, she didn't have to listen because there was a fawning group of VCs vying for her attention.

However, I also suspect most people would choose to have easy access to money due to network and attractiveness, even if it meant not having to accept the truth.

I don't think there are many lessons for anyone from Elizabeth Holmes' story, woman or man; founder or not.

I suspect that being a woman was both a help and a hindrance.

The company went from a valuation of $10 billion to zero overnight and she's been sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud.

As far as I can tell, her gender in no way "helped" anything good. It likely helped grow this debacle into one of much larger proportions than it otherwise likely would have been.

And when I talk about that, I usually get dismissed out of hand, not taken seriously as a woman going "So, let's say you're a woman -- as I am -- and want to actually start a real business. Just how does one not end up with this kind of debacle if my thoughts on how and why it went so badly have any merit?"

These people keep projecting their own attraction to certain people onto those people. She's not magical, you just love being in the presence of rich, pretty, young white ladies. Your desire is not one of her qualities (or her fault, really.) The most astounding thing about Theranos was how little work it took to pull the fraud, and how chintzy it was around the edges. If you had been born where she was, looked like she looked, and had powerful older men constantly blowing smoke up your ass and declaring you a wunderkind, it would be hard to resist scamming them.

The army of fawning reporters (and ex-generals and other officials) are the real problem. You're not giving us a peek behind Holmes's curtain, you were Holmes's curtain.

Great point, but:

> it would be hard to resist scamming them

I don't think she even scammed them. She really believes she can do all the things. Her fraud was not a scam, it was just covering failures and fake it till you make it without discernment or introspection (doing it in a field where you really need to stop faking it sooner)

> just covering failures and fake it till you make it without discernment or introspection (doing it in a field where you really need to stop faking it sooner)

In a word: scamming.

Even her voice is fake.

Guess we'll have to keep sending people to prison until y'all get that your 'fake it till you make it' is in fact fraud, which most people understand as a kind of scam.

It's not fraud if you tell your investors (and when you have customers, your customers) how you're faking it.

"fake it till you make it" generally means "your product is egregiously incomplete for X reason(s)" and in many cases, the investors know this and willing to take the risk. It's on the investors to do due diligence and assess whether or not the risk is up to their level of appetite.

I do believe that holmes was doing this for the much of her run with Theranos. That is normal startup behavior, and not really unethical, and certainly not illegal, though it can be spectacularly misguided, as we saw. At the point where she started hiding what she was doing, it became "fake it till you make it" that is ALSO fraud.

So no. For chrissakes, Don't generally send people who "fake it till they make it" to prison.

Nah, I think you take it too far. In that world everybody will need to take a too cynical view and vet everything and everybody. That's dog eat dog. Ultimately Holmes cheated faking test results. That's not faking it it. It is fake. Put another way: how many times N can you BS people until you conclude for some N>0 that the person is BS? That N isn't high.

BSing things is not faking things, though. for example: you can "bullshit around" and claim that you're working on getting your falcon 9 second stage reusable, and it's totally okay if you don't deliver.

Telling the truth is not faking it.

She knowingly made false and fraudulent claims about what she was doing, how she was doing it. She knowingly gave false medical test results to people causing significant harm (not something that she has been penalized for). She destroyed the lives of anyone who reported negatively about her or theranos.

You can claim all you like that she thought she could do what she claimed that she was doing.

But that doesn't matter.

She knew for a fact that they were not doing what she was claiming, and she knowingly lied about that.

She is a fraudster. She is a criminal. That amount people bend over to support her - and other similar "founders" - is bizarre.

It does not matter if they thought what they was saying was possible, if they know for a fact that that is not what they are doing.

You're misreading my tone.

Im literally not disputing that she was a fraudster. And I'm not defending Holmes. All scams are frauds, not all frauds are scams. Being a scamster is a form of psychopathy that evinces a knowing willingness to hurt people in the name of self interest. Arguably my claim is scarier. Fraudsters like Holmes are scary because they don't think they are doing anything wrong. The fake it till you make it narrative even gives the perception of a long leash to commit pecadillos on the long road to success, in the context of the "make the world better" narrative of SV. There are more people out there like her, and it's harder to restrain them because they think they are doing something good and to boot they appear (maybe even are, if slightly) less psychopathic at a first glance.

Correct. When things are really stuck on stupid, there's usually two or three dynamics in play:

- lack of openness or fear of blowback from push back on the norms that squelches honesty.

- people in charge who are deluded

- people who use the norms to advance their own agenda usually without ever being explicit about it and purposely turn a blind eye to nonsense

Trump is an example. Nixon and the republican senate (ultimately) is a counter example.

I was pretty dismayed how NYT framed her as this "life turnaround, devoted mother" facade when in reality she put lives in danger by promising a fancy scam.

I generally don't care about the investors she duped, they should've performed their due diligence and they didn't. What Theranos proved is that 'investors' will back your company if you wear a fancy turtleneck, and speak to prospects like Jobs did.

Ridiculous all around, the real victims got nothing. Just another reminder that the law only works for those who can afford it.

To me the NYT piece read as “lol here’s the current scam of Holmes”. I guess my lens is rather harsh though :)

I think we can both agree she's utilizing the oldest scam known to man. I recently heard someone coin her as the 'tyler durden girlboss', gave me a chuckle.

Guess this is the first time the reporter has encountered someone with antisocial personality disorder.

> “Elizabeth is a very, very charismatic person. When she speaks to you, she makes you feel like you are the most important person in her world in that moment. She almost has this reality distortion field around her that people can just get sucked into.”

> “I still dream about being able to contribute in that space,” Holmes tells her. “I still feel the same calling to it as I always did and I still think the need is there.”

> “I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person. She’s gentle and charismatic, in a quiet way. My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling me (and I quote), ‘Amy Chozick, you got rolled!'”

Characteristics of Narcissistic personality disorder, not APD. I actually believe that she's genuine in her intentions-- she's just completely fucking clueless and surrounded by enablers (self-selected, of course-- never challenge these people or you'll get cut out of their next big thing). Her "success" feeds her own grandiosity so she reaches for more. It's like watching a child star trying to adapt to aging out of what made them famous in the first place.

Prisons are full of APDs. They don't bother with pageantry, they just knife you in the gut, steal your shit, leave you for dead, and never think about you again.

I think she is probably both.

Anyway, Mrs. Holmes will herself be imprisoned soon, so I guess she'll be the odd one out if her diagnosis is just NPD.

It's really astonishing that she seems to be getting away with it (again). I sincerely hope that's not the case.

How is she getting away with it? She will serve 11 years in federal prison for her crimes.

I mean if she can keep delaying her sentence she won't be serving 11 years ...

Ask yourself, if I did what she did would I be in prison right now or maybe in the future?

Of course not, because that would also mean you had been scammed millions you could spend on lawyers to defend yourself :D

Better question: if you went around shoplifting stores for a week, were arrested, got bail, and then were caught buying a one way ticket to a non-extradition country would you still be out on bail? even before being found guilty.

She's not in jail, and that's after she was already busted trying to flee the country while out on bail, yet the refusal to put her behind bars despite having been found guilty while she tries to reduce her jail time is an absurd indication of the corruption of justice allowed by being rich. She can appeal for a sentence reduction from behind bars, just like everyone else who isn't rich.

Meanwhile people who haven't caused people to die, who haven't caused major harm to others, and who haven't been convicted of anything at all are in jail because they can't afford bail.

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