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Sounds like she drank too much of the "drop out of college and disrupt the valley" kool aid.

maxxxxx 8y ago
She certainly is not a good person but a lot of blame should be put on the VCs and board members. They could have figured things out if they had bothered to look.
- dralley 8y ago
  That's true, but Elizabeth owned more than 90% of the voting shares in the company. The board was basically a formality because they had no power to make decisions whatsoever.
  - gwern 8y ago
    But that's also a big part of the board's fault here! They aided and abetted that. I'm reading through _Bad Blood_ (coincidentally, before the indictment was announced), and one of Carreyou's running themes is how Holmes acquired all those shares: she wasn't the Theranos founder, she was a co-founder, in essence. The other guy (Shaunak Roy) left early on. The board approved selling his stake to her at a heavily discounted price which made one of the directors unhappy and he tried to buy a fraction as he was contractually allowed to do, so they told to resign and threatened to sue him. She also tried to get a block of stock alloted to a nonprofit foundation (controlled by her, of course). Then, as employees turned over, they would regularly seek pretext to clawback all their options or shares in any way they could, like when they fired the financial officer for getting upset about faked demos, and discovered after firing him that he happened to have browsed some porn on his work laptop, which provided the necessary excuse. At one point in March 2008, the board actually decided to fire her, but she spent two hours talking them out of it. Some point after that, they passed the even horizon... That Holmes ended up with so much voting control was no accident.
    - dreamcompiler 8y ago
      > which made one of the directors unhappy and he tried to buy a fraction as he was contractually allowed to do Point of interest: That director was Avie Tevanian, who designed Mach, NextStep, and OSX. Holmes wanted him on the board because of his connection to Jobs. He resigned from the Theranos board over this incident. (Carreyrou's book discusses this.)
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    Then they should have resigned. Either you do your job or you should go. We shouldn't make excuses for highly paid people.

She certainly is not a good person but a lot of blame should be put on the VCs and board members. They could have figured things out if they had bothered to look.

dralley 8y ago
That's true, but Elizabeth owned more than 90% of the voting shares in the company. The board was basically a formality because they had no power to make decisions whatsoever.
- gwern 8y ago
  But that's also a big part of the board's fault here! They aided and abetted that. I'm reading through _Bad Blood_ (coincidentally, before the indictment was announced), and one of Carreyou's running themes is how Holmes acquired all those shares: she wasn't the Theranos founder, she was a co-founder, in essence. The other guy (Shaunak Roy) left early on. The board approved selling his stake to her at a heavily discounted price which made one of the directors unhappy and he tried to buy a fraction as he was contractually allowed to do, so they told to resign and threatened to sue him. She also tried to get a block of stock alloted to a nonprofit foundation (controlled by her, of course). Then, as employees turned over, they would regularly seek pretext to clawback all their options or shares in any way they could, like when they fired the financial officer for getting upset about faked demos, and discovered after firing him that he happened to have browsed some porn on his work laptop, which provided the necessary excuse. At one point in March 2008, the board actually decided to fire her, but she spent two hours talking them out of it. Some point after that, they passed the even horizon... That Holmes ended up with so much voting control was no accident.
  - dreamcompiler 8y ago
    > which made one of the directors unhappy and he tried to buy a fraction as he was contractually allowed to do Point of interest: That director was Avie Tevanian, who designed Mach, NextStep, and OSX. Holmes wanted him on the board because of his connection to Jobs. He resigned from the Theranos board over this incident. (Carreyrou's book discusses this.)
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Then they should have resigned. Either you do your job or you should go. We shouldn't make excuses for highly paid people.