Elizabeth Holmes: A Girl on the Wrong Side of Americana

Few weeks ago, we published an article on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes in ASQ Delaware’s Quarterly Journal, A Century of Quality. I got a lot of 'feedback' on that, believe me.

My co-editor who was on a sabbatical made the most interesting comment – “If Theranos was a software company instead of a medical device company, it may have all worked. She followed the Silicon Valley playbook to the T for the first few years, at least.”

Over-promising for PR and to raise funds is a very common practice in Silicon Valley start up scene. Apparently, the Hulu series, Dropout, has a scene where Larry Ellison boasts to Elizabeth Holmes on his yacht that his software wasn’t ready when he was raising funds initially. He tells her to get the money through any means necessary.

She took it to heart.

After all, fake it till you make it- is classic Americana.

Get the money, throw it at engineering and design, get a prototype. Repeat and repeat, until you get the product you want.

Unfortunately, Ms. Holmes was too good at raising money and too poor at getting the engineering to work.

She played the role of Steve Jobs, her childhood icon, but never found her Steve Wozniak. Jobs without Wozniak may not have been in jail like Ms. Holmes is expected to be, but, would not be a household name today either.

Ian Gibbons was supposed to be her Wozniak. It didn't work. She couldn't make it work. Its not entirely unimaginable that a 19-year-old female did not properly press the buttons of a 57 year old bearded British guy.

The media portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes as the cold hearted lying fake blonde blue eyed b*tch who stole everyone’s money, in my opinion – is wrong.

I don’t disagree that she was short on empathy, duplicitous, machiavellian, wily, shrewd, disingenuous, scheming, calculating and crafty. Sit in a San Francisco VC meeting for a minute and you will see a great exhibition of all these characteristics.

However, these exact terms have been applied to men in a positive light but when applied to women become very negative.

Elizabeth Holmes' personality quirks which go against an expected demure and bubbly personality of a woman (in a man’s head) are considered an abnormality. While similar quirks in males are considered unique or idiosyncrasies .

What she may be guilty of is being way over her head, taking her Steve Jobs fantasy too seriously and not stimulating the engineering teams properly. None of them are unpardonable.

See some comments here :

In the early days, they had "no idea what we are doing," and characterizing their original efforts as "completely clueless," ….. the company was founded in 2003 based on assumptions which "turned out to be staggeringly dumb." ..early model "was completely unsafe," it "broke down all the time," and it "didn't really work."

Sounds like Theranos?

The above is from article does not talk about Theraos but Tesla which struggled tremendously for the first 5 years. The quotations are from Elon Musk. (https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a29378/elon-musk-admits-to-shareholders-that-the-tesla-roadster-was-a-disaster/)

Way I see it, Ms. Holmes was unlucky. ?A few twists of fate would have made her a billionaire.

Her public condemnation though, has much more to do with her being a woman who dared play the game on the bad side of town – in Americana.

Ms. Holmes was found guilty of wire fraud. She is a a criminal, no way around that. However, it is important to note that Theranos or the decisions of Ms. Holmes did not kill anyone (she made a lot of very rich and very powerful people very unhappy) unlike the decisions of Boeing CEO David Muilenburg who incidentally in the aftermath of Boeing crashes received $62.2 million in stock and pension awards.

Welcome to Americana.

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