3 ms·
> Choosing these particular attributes was a brilliant calculation, banking on the prejudices of mostly white Silicon Valley. Venture capitalists had seen many
by MattGaiser 5y ago
> Choosing these particular attributes was a brilliant calculation, banking on the prejudices of mostly white Silicon Valley. Venture capitalists had seen many young white men peddling fantastic ideas, but Holmes created new excitement: her woman-ness just different enough, her whiteness just re-assuring enough to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars.
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-trial-investors-board/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-t...
Most investors seem to be outside SV. Same with the board.
- cratermoon 5y agoWell, yes, that's the point. Maybe the ruse wasn't good enough to fool the more sophisticated SV investors, who either didn't buy the "Stephanie Jobs" persona, didn't feel saavy enough to risk investing in medical technology, or just smelled the snake oil. But it was good enough to fool the less sophisticated ones and the non-SV orbit of investors. The ones dumb enough to buy the act and naive enough to accept being told "this is high-tech stuff, we have Smart People on it" and fall prey to pseudo-scientific song and dance. In other words, the VCs that were hoodwinked were precisely the ones who trusting enough to be sold by the prejudices but lacked the expertise to know where the dog-and-pony show ends and actual technical ability starts.