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The book Bad Blood is amazing and extremely gripping. The question, however, why Holmes did this is still open. The critical point to remember is that Holmes ne

The book Bad Blood is amazing and extremely gripping. The question, however, why Holmes did this is still open. The critical point to remember is that Holmes never sold her shares and in fact she kept accumulating more. She didn't need IQ of 150 to figure out that going live with erroneous medical devices would get her slammed with lawsuits from patients. If she just wanted to dup investors to become rich, she could have done it real easy by stepping aside, let someone inherit the mess and then selling her stack. In fact her board asked her to do just that before WSJ found out and she refused it. I have seen her plenty of talks/interviews and its super hard to believe she was working with malicious plan all along. Part of me wants to feel that her desire was genuine to some extent and she just hoped things would work out if she pulled lies and deception long enough to keep raising funds. She had lots of top tier advisors who have done exactly that to establish their own companies. I'm not defending her by any measure, she was classic bad manager with Balwani topping even her. There was a very little chance she could have actually ran talented team longer term - but this is precisely the part book conveniently leaves out.

TillE 8y ago
You start out with an idea you hope you can make work, you fudge a little and naively promise the moon, and soon enough (after a few big investments) you're in so deep there's no way out. Maybe you realize pretty quickly that the technology is a dud, but there's no exit without humiliation so you just keep digging. I don't think she's a sympathetic figure in any way, but it's easy to see how someone could wind up in that situation without having started out as a scammer.
- growlist 8y ago
  This makes sense to me, as I've asked myself was she bad or deluded? But perhaps instead she started out with the best intentions, only to be forced into gambling with ever greater stakes as each attempt at changing the world fell flat.
sametmax 8y ago
She probably believed in her project. You can't know if you are going to succeed when you try to achieve a revolutionary feat. But you have to act like you are sure you will. Imagine Jobs in an alternate universe, trying to get out the iPhone, but after years of failures and billions wasted, the world realize the product vision was unrealistic. Basically him being the same asshole, but hitting a wall many predicted. That would look the same as Theranos. The difference is that Job didn't fail. But he couldn't know that before trying and commit many people and resource to it. Imagine Elon failing as the Falcon X. Or worst, failing over and over until his company died because they lost control of one that went crashing into a school. Imagine Zuckerberg called out about all the privacy issues on FB before it actually made benefit. I would have died. When you try to achieve radical vision, you often either succeed as a hero or you fail as a vilain.
- cdancette 8y ago
  The difference is that Jobs wasn't putting people's life in danger as theranos did by releasing malfunctionning blood testing machines
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Elon, with self driving car, high capacity batteries and powerful rockets had the ability to put people's life in danger.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      has. And also people who are not his customers.
- mxwsn 8y ago
  While there is some unknowable risk, Theranos was in a completely different realm in terms of the mismatch between her technological aspirations and the feasibility of current technology. From the interview, Holmes appears to lack the knowledge and even the curiosity to understand the existing technology, making her company essentially a blind bet. This is enormously more irresponsible than the technological bets that FB, Apple, Uber, etc make.

TillE 8y ago

You start out with an idea you hope you can make work, you fudge a little and naively promise the moon, and soon enough (after a few big investments) you're in so deep there's no way out. Maybe you realize pretty quickly that the technology is a dud, but there's no exit without humiliation so you just keep digging. I don't think she's a sympathetic figure in any way, but it's easy to see how someone could wind up in that situation without having started out as a scammer.

growlist 8y ago
This makes sense to me, as I've asked myself was she bad or deluded? But perhaps instead she started out with the best intentions, only to be forced into gambling with ever greater stakes as each attempt at changing the world fell flat.

sametmax 8y ago

She probably believed in her project. You can't know if you are going to succeed when you try to achieve a revolutionary feat. But you have to act like you are sure you will. Imagine Jobs in an alternate universe, trying to get out the iPhone, but after years of failures and billions wasted, the world realize the product vision was unrealistic. Basically him being the same asshole, but hitting a wall many predicted. That would look the same as Theranos. The difference is that Job didn't fail. But he couldn't know that before trying and commit many people and resource to it. Imagine Elon failing as the Falcon X. Or worst, failing over and over until his company died because they lost control of one that went crashing into a school. Imagine Zuckerberg called out about all the privacy issues on FB before it actually made benefit. I would have died. When you try to achieve radical vision, you often either succeed as a hero or you fail as a vilain.

cdancette 8y ago
The difference is that Jobs wasn't putting people's life in danger as theranos did by releasing malfunctionning blood testing machines
- sametmax 8y ago
  Elon, with self driving car, high capacity batteries and powerful rockets had the ability to put people's life in danger.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    has. And also people who are not his customers.
mxwsn 8y ago
While there is some unknowable risk, Theranos was in a completely different realm in terms of the mismatch between her technological aspirations and the feasibility of current technology. From the interview, Holmes appears to lack the knowledge and even the curiosity to understand the existing technology, making her company essentially a blind bet. This is enormously more irresponsible than the technological bets that FB, Apple, Uber, etc make.