Inside Elizabeth Holmes's Chilling Final Months at Theranos (vanityfair.com) 250
In the final months of Theranos, before the blood testing start-up was debunked and its founders charged with fraud, then-CEO Elizabeth Holmes brought a puppy, who she insisted was a wolf to others, with a penchant for peeing into the mix, according to Vanity Fair, which has detailed the chaos that ensued in the waning days of the startup, once valued at $9 billion. The 35-year-old Stanford University dropout has also met with filmmakers who she hopes would make a documentary about her "real story," the outlet reported. She also "desperately wants to write a book." An excerpt from the story: Holmes brushed it off when the scientists protested that the dog hair could contaminate samples. But there was another problem with Balto (name of the dog), too. He wasn't potty-trained. Accustomed to the undomesticated life, Balto frequently urinated and defecated at will throughout Theranos headquarters. While Holmes held board meetings, Balto could be found in the corner of the room relieving himself while a frenzied assistant was left to clean up the mess. [...]
By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel. Theranos was also still paying for her mansion in Los Altos, and her team of personal assistants and drivers, who would become regular dog walkers for Balto. But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company's main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as "1701," for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. 1701, according to two former executives, cost $1 million a month to rent. Holmes had also spent $100,000 on a single conference table. Elsewhere in the building, Holmes had asked for another circular conference room that the former employees said "looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove," replete with curved glass windows, and screens that would come out of the ceiling so everyone in the room could see a presentation without having to turn their heads.
By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel. Theranos was also still paying for her mansion in Los Altos, and her team of personal assistants and drivers, who would become regular dog walkers for Balto. But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company's main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as "1701," for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. 1701, according to two former executives, cost $1 million a month to rent. Holmes had also spent $100,000 on a single conference table. Elsewhere in the building, Holmes had asked for another circular conference room that the former employees said "looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove," replete with curved glass windows, and screens that would come out of the ceiling so everyone in the room could see a presentation without having to turn their heads.
I don't see a problem here... (Score:3)
1701 Page Mill Road... Star Trek Referrence... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:1701 Page Mill Road... Star Trek Referrence... (Score:4, Interesting)
Card. Leave. By door. Out.
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Also the hull number of Captain Kirk's starship. NCC-1701 ring a bell?
Re:What a joke (Score:5, Informative)
Can you imagine a fund in your 401K funding this frivolity, this literal SHIT SHOW - and yes I wrote shit because she would bring in her non-toilet trained dog and allow it to shit in the board room.Private jets. Insane spending on rent, office....I don't care who you are and how rich you could make my investors be, there have to be limits. This is beyond what is acceptable.Insanity.
If you're quite finished with your rant, Theranos was never publicly traded so no 401K fund would have bought it.
Political correctness caused the damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Due diligence and best practices were sacrificed at the alter of political correctness. People were so desperate to have a female CEO and founder of a large company that they disregarded established safeguards. People need to learn that best practices and due diligence are there for good reasons.
I'm not objecting to having woman starting and running a business (my wife has done this - I think it's a good thing). I'm objecting to people disregarding established standards in the name of political correctness. Let this be a lesson that narrative should never trump best practices.
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When I think Political Correctness, who doesn't think Henry Kissinger as part of the feel good package? After all, no company has ever failed big based on fraud when men were in charge.
Holmes is the daughter of an Enron executive. Need I say more?
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After all, no company has ever failed big based on fraud when men were in charge.
So your motto is "go with the women, they're just as bad as the men"? That's a helluva thing to use as a yardstick. If you're going to excuse bad behavior by women by saying they're no worse than the men, why bother making the distinction between genders at all anymore?
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So your motto is "go with the women, they're just as bad as the men"?
I believe in equality, women are just as capable as scamming investors out of capital as men have been.
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So your motto is "go with the women, they're just as bad as the men"?
I believe in equality, women are just as capable as scamming investors out of capital as men have been.
True. Reading the article, what she did was manage to convince people that the basis of success was not ability, but eccentricity. She also had an ability to schmooze people. That is not a genitals specific thing.
It is true, that she is quite physically attractive. This cannot be totally disregarded. https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
But probably a detail that is a telling thing is that her father was an executive at Enron. So she is no stranger to corruption in business.
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But probably a detail that is a telling thing is that her father was an executive at Enron. So she is no stranger to corruption in business.
My guess is that she is a disciple of the "fake it until to make it" school of success, in an extreme form. I think it is telling that she thought indefatigable chirpiness is a necessary ingredient to visionary success, especially when faced with bad news.
A number of Enron executives seem to believe that their shenanigans were merely technically illegal, and that if only their gambits had succeeded in keeping the stock price rising, all would have been forgiven.
I think that Holmes here thought a little fud
Re:Political correctness caused the damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Personal connections with people that should have known better and not believing a CEO for a so highly valued company could be lying were the main problems. If someone lost their money for backing a company with a female CEO I'd simply laugh at them - but that wasn't the case for the majority of backers. They backed an incredible technological advancement that could change medical diagnosis all over the world being faster, cheaper, safer. But it was all a gigantic lie.
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They backed an incredible technological advancement that could change medical diagnosis all over the world being faster, cheaper, safer
...without a shred of evidence to back up the claim. THAT was the real problem. Serves them right for losing their money.
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No no, "there was evidence", the problem was it was invented for that purpose, to fool investors and try to skate until the product could live up to the claims. It never made it. If it had worked the fraud might have been sweep-able.
sheesh. get an ADE 651. (Score:1)
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Re:Political correctness caused the damage (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Personal connections with people that should have known better and not believing a CEO for a so highly valued company could be lying were the main problems. If someone lost their money for backing a company with a female CEO I'd simply laugh at them - but that wasn't the case for the majority of backers. They backed an incredible technological advancement that could change medical diagnosis all over the world being faster, cheaper, safer. But it was all a gigantic lie.
Oh come now.
It was a huge factor - "she's young! She's a woman CEO in tech!" It was all over the place.
Re:Political correctness caused the damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a pretty young woman has always been a great marketing tactic. If people start invested in companies run by hideous 70 year old women, then it'll either be progress or political correctness.
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Not just that, she tried to look like a female Steve Jobs in public and to cultivate the notion that she WAS a female Steve Jobs...
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People were so desperate to have a female CEO...
Please. Those old fools made a bad investment because of her looks. This should be obvious to most men.
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How about this - the fraud and the investments themselves were gender neutral, but the underlying/contributing hype and the specific CEO's charm were gender centric.
Everybody happy?
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I think greed and optimism make a plausible explanation as well.
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I think greed and optimism make a plausible explanation as well.
Many factors are involved. Where we run into trouble is the large number of people who become angry and go into denial when the slightest suggestion is made that there is no sexual aspect involved.
She's an attractive woman with conman abilities. It would be pretty naive to think that she wouldn't use every tool at her disposal.
The major operating factor is indeed greed and avarice, and misplaced optimism. But her ability to make men stupid and the political incorrectness that would dare say that a wom
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People were so desperate to have a female CEO...
Please. Those old fools made a bad investment because of her looks. This should be obvious to most men.
She did have more than looks. She had a con man's ability to bullshit people and make up stuff. She is at least a sociopath, or just as likely a non-violent psychopath.
But make no mistake, men can become remarkably stupid around an attractive woman, so it would be very unlikely that she didn't use her sex as another tool in the toolbox.
And yes, there is political pressure to increase the number of women CEOs to a bit over half - at least. It would be naive to think otherwise.
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INCEL. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Mind you I have no idea what it means either, but I'm guessing it's "the person who repeatedly uses this term in posts is posting while sitting in his mother's basement with his underpants on his head".
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Due diligence and best practices were sacrificed at the alter of political correctness. People were so desperate to have a female CEO and founder of a large company that they disregarded established safeguards.
What the absolute fuck my friend?! Elizabeth Holmes' is a con-artist. They come in both male and female variety. Con-artist get away with a lot of shit because most sane people think other people, especially people in power, are equally sane. This episode isn't a marker of how PC has wronged us all, I mean good grief there's way, way, way better examples of that, but nah my friend this is just shitty people with power. Let's at the very least classify it correctly. Hell, if you want to toss a buzzy wo
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People were starting to raise concerns in 2014 and by 2015 concerns were becoming much more vocal. There was no rational reason to ignore these concerns especially when you are talking about billions in dollars of valuation.
While they had lawyers on call, I can't believe that was enough to dissuade sincere concerns when billions of dollars were at stake. Therefore an irrational reason must have driven this, and the only thing I've seen that is powerful enough to do that is political correctness. The fact th
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It might also be the investors thought the public would be desperate for a female CEO of such a company. If so they were trying to cash in on the general trend of the political correctness. Luckily that trend seems to have been trumped by the trend to return to common sense, at least in parts of the society.
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Why do Non-Player Characters care about Trump?
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Why do Non-Player Characters care about Trump?
It's their new buzzword to replace libtard. So when you see them saying NPC you can just replace it 1:1 with libtard to catch what they're trying to say. Clearly, it's the new "cool word" to use to own some group in the ever wonderful world of A vs B politics. [insert audible eye roll]
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And you don't think male CEOs have pulled crap like that?
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And you don't think male CEOs have pulled crap like that?
They surely have pulled crap like that.
The fun is when people go into denial that it is even possible for a woman to pull crap like that. In fact, a large number of people believe and claim that Elizabeth holmes is the victim in all of this. https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] I wonder what he thinks today? Anyhow, we have been force fed the concept that women are not only capable of being CEOs - of course they are - but that they are remarkably better than men. Even just being a mother makes you a better
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She let a dog walk around the office pissing and shitting. And everyone was too scared to say anything about it, because if they did, they would be fired for being sexist. That's the problem. She made her assistants walk and take care of the dog. And if that wasn't bad enough, the bitch was spending several million a month on private jets. And if that wasn't enough, the bitch was decking out her board room to look like a movie set, well because why not it's not her money she's blowing.
And if a lowly worker spoke up about said issues, sexist, you are fired.
I'm sorry you love playing the sexist card, but I've worked at companies where this nonsense happens (not necessarily with a dog, though) where the rank and file DOES NOT SPEAK UP, regardless of the gender of the CEO, because they are afraid of being fired, because you don't call out the CEO, because you have people way above your pay grade to do that.
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The issue was political correctness. Frankly it don't care if they are female, black or identify as an Apache attach helicopter. I very pointedly did not object to the fact that she is female. My issue is that people allowed the PC narrative to trump established best practices.
Theranos is a story I've been following for years. As you can see the concerns with their business practices go back years. Rational review never would have allowed Theranos to survive as it did.
https://www.darkintelligencegr... [darkintell...egroup.com]
http:/ [fortune.com]
This is so depressing. (Score:2)
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Foolish startups that have people throwing millions (or billions) of dollars at them while other good startups can't get the funding they need. I have a startup that has built a new kind of data management system. It is twice as fast as the big database management systems and does things thousands of times faster than file systems. It is the kind of thing that can radically change how data is managed on a global scale; yet I can't seem to attract even a few $100K from investors even though I have a working system with a few customers already. It's all 'who you know' instead of 'what you know'.
Perhaps it's because people are addicted to the phrase order of magnitude. 2x just isn't enough. If you had 10x then you'd be in. Citation: https://www.forbes.com/sites/g... [forbes.com]
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I was working directly in the medical diagnostics space and Theranos (and Calico) made it impossible to get grant funding for electrochemical bioassays for newly discovered targets despite the path to development being extremely straight forward and unlikely to fail (even from our own institution who had money allocated for this but never dolled it out), let alone get a nibble of interest from an outside investor. It's sad, because
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Old men fall for pitches by younger females. (Score:2)
Former SecDef Mattis was also taken in by Theranos.
If it's not YOUR PERSONAL specialty and you don't know as much or more about the subject than the people trying to sell you, leave it the fuck alone.
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Lying to investors and customers lengthened their runway. Not actually having a product is what ended it.
Oh come on... (Score:2)
Betsy "Let's arm teachers to protect schools from grizzly bears" DeVos also coughed up $100 mill for Balto to poop on.
It's the black turtleneck.
Steve Jobs discovered that people with more money than sense get easily hypnotized by black turtlenecks.
Stopped reading at WASP (Score:4, Insightful)
I stopped reading the article the moment they called her a WASP. As soon as they break out the racist terms, I know they are not going to unbiased.
Why is it ok to call a white person from an upper middle class background a WASP, but it's not ok to call a black person the nword or a person of jewish descent a Jew. Seriously WTF does her race or upbringing have to do with any of this?
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WTF? I know it was ok to do that in 2018. Who changed the rules and why wasn't anyone notifed?
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WTF? I know it was ok to do that in 2018. Who changed the rules and why wasn't anyone notifed?
I've got the feeling there's more to the grandparent poster's story. Because saying "Steve is Jewish" is fine and always has been fine.
But shouting "Give me my money back, you fucking JEW!" is not fine. If you call them out they act like they're the victim, making like you're not allowed to refer to a Jewish person as a Jew anymore.
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It was around 2016 when you could be labelled a terrorist by your tone and people started attacking fundamental rights as Free Speech. You didn't get the memo because this shit is subtle and everyone's having a generally hard to time coming to terms with the change.
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WASP means old-money. I mean, literally it doesn't. But it's used to connote a very specific type of person. If you didn't grow up with a trust fund or around people who did, you're not a WASP, regardless of your religion, ethnicity or ancestry.
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I'm not sure why it would be brought up, but WASP is hardly a pejorative.
It's too much of a colloquial to be used in serious journalism, however.
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or a person of jewish descent a Jew.
Huh? Jews never had any problem being called Jews. Not one of them. Not even israeli Haredim.
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WASP has been a common term for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant forever. Jeez. Get over yourself. As another commenter said, calling someone black who is black, or Hispanic is Hispanic isn't racist. The fact that she is an attractive WASP female is pertinent to the story. Comments like yours just make me feel so damn tired.
Re: Stopped reading at WASP (Score:5, Insightful)
Her race isn't relevant. But hack journalists drag race into everything because they don't know what else to write about.
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Have you considered getting a username, perhaps "faggot"? it appears in every AC comment you make.
Elizabeth Holmes should be in prison (Score:5, Informative)
She is an instrument of fraud. And she risked people's lives with piss poor testing.
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I think it was piss rich testing. The samples were contaminated. Or the word rich could refer to ridiculous extravagance.
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There was a theory, very popular among MBAs for a while, that a good manager could just manage without knowing anything about what the managees were doing. I think that led to a whole raft of problems, myself.
Re:Elizabeth Holmes should be in prison (Score:5, Insightful)
CEO != CTO. Learn the difference. CEO is a fundraiser. Expecting her to be the brains behind the technology belies ignorance of how corporations work on YOUR part.
One would hope the founder of a medical technology company would have a fundamental understanding of the technology and science behind their primary product, especially if they were touting it as a revolutionary breakthrough.
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It would have been a real breakthrough if it worked. It does work on some level, but not as advertised. She does understand how it works. She's not the reason it doesn't work. She's the reason it got so big without working.
It didn't work. There was no way they could do the amount of tests they claimed or intended with the amount of blood provided per sample.
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> The product did function on some level however below advertised promises.
Pardon my ignorance, I did not read anywhere that the product worked at ANY level.
Please tell me a single innovation that Theranos produced that could be scientifically verified.
I was under the impression that it was all hush-hush, smoke and mirrors.
> They were able to sell it to investors
Investors are not scientists. Did they manage to convince scientists that they had ANY breakthrough, even one.. lets completely ignore profi
She's a member of the ruling class (Score:2)
Warren Buffet nailed it. [washingtonpost.com] (apologies for the WaPo link, open it in incognito/private mode).
Re:She's a member of the ruling class (Score:5, Informative)
I forgot who but she's somebody's God daughter or something. As long as we continue to pretend our ruling class doesn't exist they're untouchable. Warren Buffet nailed it. [washingtonpost.com] (apologies for the WaPo link, open it in incognito/private mode).
Her father was a VP at Enron(!) then worked at government agencies and her mother was a Congressional staffer. Explains why almost all of her board members were former government officials (none of the board members had experience with biomedical technology-how that didn't raise red flags with investors I don't know; they were probably too busy seeing green)
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Her father was a VP at Enron(!)
Sounds like the fraud apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. She learned from "The smartest guys in the room."
Re:Elizabeth Holmes should be in prison (Score:5, Insightful)
People's lives were not actually at risk as a result of testing their product, that's false.
Receiving false or inaccurate results from a blood test could lead to people not getting necessary treatment or undergoing unnecessary treatment. If no one was physically harmed she was certainly paving the way to make it possible.
"Chilling" (Score:1)
What is chilling about this? Silicon valley culture is horse shit, everyone knows that by now. None of this surprises me.
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College Dropout (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I've learnt with some college dropouts is that they quit because they generally take shortcuts for most things in life. My ex team-lead was the same thing, crazy shortcuts/hacks he would do in his code because he couldn't be bothered to take the time to finish it properly.
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[Cough]Bill Gates. [Cough]Windows.
Mansion? (Score:5, Interesting)
The other stuff is the normal corporate stupidity of giving executives too many privileges. But this is fraud. It could be her mansion, and she was paying for it from her personal funds. Or it could be Theranos' mansion, and she was paying the company rent to live in it. But having the company pay for "her" house is fraud (it's not a legitimate business expense, so she's essentially stealing money from the shareholders), and probably tax evasion (company gets to write it off as a tax-free expense, she doesn't have to pay income taxes on the benefit received).
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I worked with a guy who our company was sending to visit a remote site. Company policy was to buy economy class airline tickets for employees' business travel. His response: "Get me a first class ticket or I'm not going. Don't like it? Then fire me." He flew first class. And guess what. It was a legitimate business expense.
When you deal with people at executive levels, they often have personal services contracts. And if part of that contract says you scoop up my dog's shit or you pick all the brown M&M
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It's just another form of compensation. If a company car is legal, so's this.
And as an added benefit, the company probably turned a profit due to appreciation.
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The AC parent only brought up gender to set up a strawman. Which means this is just terrible syntax and gerrymandering.
Sounds like an interesting place to work. (Score:2)
Really.
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Well at least one would have some real stories to tell. About crazy spending, peeing dogs, nice things, boss stereotypes, scams, gullible people, etc. Don't know what it was like for the common worker there. Maybe they still had Bob in the basement cubicle grunting about Jenkins to everyone who happens to come too close. But sounds interesting.
Why is that criminal still free? (Score:2)
Hyped wunderkind, complete fraud, and now she gets to walk away? That is not right.
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If it was Jim Carey in drag playing Holmes I'd go watch it.
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Learn to read. I do quite well understand how this works. I am just complaining about the situation.
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Yes, indeed. That is right on the mark.
When jackasses become 'successful' (Score:2)
actress hopped up on coke... (Score:1)
"One day in late December 2017, Holmes showed up at the Newark building and held an all-hands meeting. She appeared excited beyond restraint. Brimming with enthusiasm..."
Elizabeth Holmes, if that's even her real name, is not a real person. She's an actress put in place by the Theranos board to front this ponzi scheme of a company.
Her voice gives me the creeps (Score:2)
Every time I saw her speak I'd look to see if she had a visible adam's apple. /me shivers
There's a term "cash cow"... (Score:2)
Usually this refers to a successful product. Apparently at Theranos it applied to the CEO herself.
stupid sub (Score:2)
> and screens that would come out of the ceiling
This phrase betrays the commie motivation behind this vitriolic attack.
A belief in totems (Score:1)
It seems she might actually believe in the efficacy of totems.
Or maybe it's cargo cult behaviour.
The black turtle neck from Jobs? "Maybe if I wear this, I'll be as good as him."
The dog. The various little foibles.
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I offered them $100 for that table but they turned me down.
Their loss.
Re: Let this be a cautionary tale (Score:4, Funny)
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Note to VC's - never stick your dime in crazy.
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So how do you tell the difference between visionary and crazy? VCs will often invest in some crazy, because it doesn't take all that many visionaries in the pool to more than make up for the crazies.
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Visionary IS crazy. A visionary sees things that aren't really there. Venture capitalists are essentially lost in the desert and running out of water, and when they see some heat addled brain wander by they say "which way should we walk?" 9 times out of 10 the crazy guy points to a bad direction to go, but that one time it just happens by chance to be correct. The VCs walk out of the desert, just barely, and proclaim the peyote imbibing loon a visionary.
The only difference between Theranos and the typica
Re:Clearly a right-wing plot to discredit feminism (Score:4, Funny)
No need to lie when the truth is so bad.
Re: Clearly a right-wing plot to discredit feminis (Score:2)
There was no CEO before her; she founded the company. What retard nodded this shit up?
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"peeing into the mix" - peeing into the mix of WHAT? such a weirdly worded phrase - sounds like a bootleg GG Alli recording...
I imagine there's a comma missing. This would be better:
Elizabeth Holmes brought a puppy, who she insisted was a wolf to others, with a penchant for peeing, into the mix, ...