4 ms·
No, it does not encourage this behavior. And that’s why Elizabeth Holmes sucks. SV thrives on trust, not on deceipt. There’s a big difference between a found
by khazhoux 4y ago
No, it does not encourage this behavior. And that’s why Elizabeth Holmes sucks.
SV thrives on trust, not on deceipt. There’s a big difference between a founder saying “I’m going to change the world!”, which is optimism mixed with naïveté, versus a founder saying “my technology works!” when they know it does not.
- walrus01 4y agoI mean this in the nicest way possible, but are you old enough to have been around for the "dotcom 1.0" boom money, VC funding, startups and irrational exuberance of investment in anything tech related from 1995-2000? It's always been like this.
- khazhoux 4y agoYyup, I’ve been here a long time. I’m not saying there hasn’t been fraud, but the SV Way is not to outright lie about the core technology, as EH did. Dotcom 1.0 was full of hucksters and it rightly crashed. The hasn’t been the norm in this newer era of YC, A16Z, First Round, etc. Integrity is valued and expected.
- voisin 4y ago> The hasn’t been the norm in this newer era of YC, A16Z, First Round, etc. Integrity is valued and expected. And yet Sequoia was an investor and huge proponent of FTX.
- khazhoux 4y agoI may need to recalibrate in light of FTX. Did Sequoia know what was really happening?
- voisin 4y agoIf the bluest of blue chip VCs didn’t know, is that better or worse?
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoI think when/if SBF comes to trial we'll be able to tell how corrupt the culture is. If he walks without at least a double digit sentence, that's going to Raise Some Questions.
- potatolicious 4y agoI think there's a big gap between the idealized notion of the "SV Way" and how it has been practiced in actuality. Like, how can we say Holmes is an outlier when we had literally all of crypto? Sure we're all (rightfully!) ragging on the FTX thing, but the sheer amount of fraud in the space generally was mind-boggling and treated as a matter of course! If anything the last several years has convinced me that the VC emperors truly have no clothes - the level of diligence done throughout the gig economy hype cycle, and then followed by the crypto hype cycle, is frankly embarrassing. We spent the past several years at least dealing with a non-stop train of hucksters!
- jen20 4y agoOne read of the “jepsen” articles completely disproves this for database startups, most of whom have fundamentally lied about their core technology. I’m sure there are further examples should anyone care to do that level of digging.
- voisin 4y agoI concur with your assessment. There is a very strong “fake it till you make it” mentality. Run fast and break things (FB), ignore the rules and regulations (AirBNB, Uber), etc. she wasn’t really doing anything that most other startups don’t do all the time, she just did it more “successfully”.
- imgabe 4y agoThe key part of the “fake it til you make it” strategy, and this is what Holmes missed, is that you do eventually have to make it.
- lotu 4y agoMost startups don't eventually make it, they fail, we just only remember the ones that succeeded.
- walrus01 4y agoThe key part of "fake it til you make it" is significantly less harmful if you're making some novel software product or tech hardware gadget (like all the bankrupt attempts at new handheld gaming consoles) versus a medical diagnostics apparatus.
- mbesto 4y ago> SV thrives on trust, not on deceipt. Depends highly on the who the deception is against.