Side note: the Gold Rush idiom of "seeing the elephant" had spread nationally by the 1860s; Civil War soldiers on both sides used the phrase to mean they had di

Side note: the Gold Rush idiom of "seeing the elephant" had spread nationally by the 1860s; Civil War soldiers on both sides used the phrase to mean they had direct combat experience. A veteran who had been shot at and lived would be said to have "seen the elephant." > What blew my mind watching the Theranos doc was that Holmes would have had an easier time of it by just doing the hard work of actually solving the problems in her way. This assumes the problems are actually solvable, though, which becomes less likely the grander the vision gets. And when you're chasing the types of investors Theranos was, there's little incentive for you to keep your vision moored to reality; these investors are all looking for Big Hits, so the more anchored your pitch is to nitty-gritty things like what is actually possible, the less appealing it will be to them.