I am just so amazed Theranos was able to raise so much $$ on basically a wink and a smile without and due diligence by the investors. Everyone was distracted by the blonde blue eyed Stanford dropout in the Steve Jobs outfit! And now Theranos is blowing through investors $$ outsourcing their tests to UCSF because their tech has failed. Hope WSJ keeps kicking the tires on this.
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Let's also not underestimate the insanely powerful board of directors that was assembled.
You have a handful of US Senators, a couple of CEOs from megacompanies like Bechtel and Wells-Fargo, the ex-director of the CDC, and two ex-Secretaries of State including Henry Kissinger.
How many other 19 year-old college dropouts can put that board together?
Amazing. But I also have to wonder: why put that board of directors together? It smacks of gee-whiz marketing from the beginning.
Launching a new medical device is hard. You have multiple walls to scale including the FDA, the insurance companies, Medicare, and the providers themselves (hospitals, doctors, labs, storefronts, etc).
Having this group in place seemed to send the message of "don't worry, we'll just tunnel through those hurdles" when it came to all the red tape.
While I agree with the essence of your comment, there is no need (and no justification) to draw attention to Theranos's founder's looks. Investors are often swayed to invest unbelievable amounts of money in various convincing charmers (and Holmes is definitely impressive in that way) who sell them a dream -- see Shai Agassi at Better Place[1] and others. I see no reason to believe that Holmes's blonde hair and blue eyes played any role here, at least not any more than Agassi's square jaw. As I don't recall Agassi's jaw being mentioned as a contributing factor in the exorbitant investments he received, mentioning it in Holmes's case feels a little off.
[1]: http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pla...
> there is no need (and no justification) to draw attention to Theranos's founder's looks.
When there's a possibility that she dresses in a certain way in order to subconsciously convince people that she's a maverick visionary, or when she lacks that intent but it probably had that effect, I think it's justified (but not needed). And a defined masculine jaw would probably help you raise money, just like it helps you get dates.
Random depressing link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/05/new-study-fin...
> When there's a possibility that she dresses in a certain way in order to subconsciously convince people that she's a maverick visionary, or when she lacks that intent but it probably had that effect, I think it's justified (but not needed). And a defined masculine jaw would probably help you raise money, just like it helps you get dates.
Appearance no doubt helps. The notion that it is a significant enough factor to be worth mentioning here doesn't appear to be borne out in the allocation of VC funds.
> When there's a possibility that she dresses in a certain way
Obviously I wasn't referring to the clause about her attire.
> And a defined masculine jaw would probably help you raise money
Absolutely, but that was not my point. The point is that if the matter of appearance is commonly brought up when a woman is involved but rarely when a man is, then there's a problem. If the matter of Agassi's jaw had been brought up as a likely reason for his ability to fool (or not) investors as often as Holmes's natural physical appearance comes up, I wouldn't have said a thing.
I'm not objecting at all to the likely hypothesis (perhaps a well-supported theory by now) that physical appearance matters a lot in all sorts of circumstances, but to the tendency to bring up physical appearance as a significant cause for success only (or almost only) when discussing women, and when the actual amount information supporting this hypothesis in both cases (of men and women) is similarly nonexistent (and possibly similarly likely in both cases).
In this case, her gender and her looks are actually relevant, since most VCs are male, and it would be naive to assume that VCs are completely immune to the influence of a young, attractive woman.
> it would be naive to assume that VCs are completely immune to the influence of a young, attractive woman.
...and it would require completely ignoring the data to think that young, attractive women do well in front of VC's.
There's a real world out there where female founders are fighting to get in the door.
> ...and it would require completely ignoring the data
Can you show me this data, so that I can stop ignoring it?
This is a genuine request, I'm not trying to be snarky.
There is data on this everywhere. It'd be hard to miss if you looked at even a handful of funding rounds (though the industry is getting better at this). Clarity came up at the top of the Google search: http://blog.clarity.fm/why-women-founders-matter/
It shows 4-9% of VC funding goes to companies with female founders, roughly tracking the percentage of women at top VC firms.
People need evidence to accept this blatant reality of the tech scene, but making assertions about young, attractive women being blindly handed billions of dollars...
So what you're saying is that SV's well-documented sexism is (among many other things, also) may also be a significant contributing factor for reckless investment. But in this case, I don't see the problem. If in 9 cases out of 10 women get the short end of the stick due to sexism, that some of them are occasionally able to turn the tables and use it for their own advantage is nothing but a cause for celebration: "Ingenious Woman Turns Investors' Harmful Sexism Against Them". Social hacking at its best!
If women were only truly able to pull-off "a Holmes" (i.e., con male investors out of their money using their sexual charms), maybe that threat would finally get investors to start seeing sexism as a serious problem.
The only thing that's bugging me about your solution to sexism, is that according to that logic, women should be at a great advantage when raising money from VCs (unless you also claim that their natural lack of cunning offsets that advantage), yet in practice we see the exact opposite. So it's unclear to me how -- without any other information on investors' reasoning -- femininity could be at all mentioned as an advantage when fundraising, while data shows it to be otherwise.
> So what you're saying is that SV's well-documented sexism is (among many other things, also) may also be a significant contributing factor for reckless investment.
No, I'm not saying that at all, and my point was completely unrelated to sexism. You can be entirely un-sexist and still be subconsciously influenced by the attractiveness of the opposite sex (in case of heterosexuality; applies correspondingly to homosexual people). It's a natural bias which we should be aware of and recognize in ourselves, so that we can compensate for it.
My point was that the majority of SV's VCs are male (and presumably mostly heterosexual, like the rest of the population), so it is plausible that Holmes' gender and looks influenced VC decisions to a certain degree.
Wouldn't the outcome that they just start investing less in women due to (subconscious) group association be just as likely? After all, if you're getting investment through your belonging in a certain group, and then never deliver, you're muddying the waters for other members of your group, whether that be expats, women, young founders, old founders, etc.
Even though I'm all for using your weaknesses as strengths, getting back what's owed to you, etc, I'm seriously doubtful that "pullin'a 'olmes" is a cause for celebration. If anything, it tarnishes the image of female founders in the long term, and at best its short sighted revenge. There's a lot more good to be had if there were female founders publicly pulling a Zuckerberg or a Gates, and I'm sure there will be.
I was being sarcastic. Clearly the data show that not only do women not have a better chance at getting investment, they have a worse chance, in spite of their supposed irresistible charm and the fact that they are less likely to be swindlers. Which is why I find it funny that not only do looks get mentioned only when women are concerned, they are mentioned as an obvious advantage while women are empirically at a disadvantage when it comes to convincing investors.
If you read testimonials of female entrepreneurs online you will see that while investors' attraction towards them may manifest itself in several ways, increased chance of investment is generally not one of them.
> The point is that if the matter of appearance is commonly brought up when a woman is involved but rarely when a man is, then there's a problem.
Yes. And now it's a bit circular: here appearance was heavily commented on when theranos was starting and beginning to raise money; and so now when people write about Theranos they keep mentioning it.
> Everyone was distracted by the blonde blue eyed Stanford dropout in the Steve Jobs outfit!
Please. I'm sure Stanford has an even better looking blond blue eyed dropout every year. If that somehow could get you billions in investment, silicon valley would be filled with founders who looked like pharmaceutical reps.
Sucks for their investors, but I can think of more tragic things than some VCs getting taken for a ride.
What about the taxpayers they are robbing?
Hmm?
I think the blonde hair and blue eyes have more to do with the witch-hunt by the WSJ than they have had to do with the investors' inclination to invest. There are a million reasons besides failed tech for Theranos to conduct its business the way it is doing right now.
This WSJ article is full of hot air, and actually has nothing of substance to say. The hilarious phrases 'according to people familiar with the matter' and 'a person familiar with the matter' appear nine times in the article, when discussing outcomes that potentially 'could' happen if other things that haven't happened so far actually happened.
But thanks for putting into words what everybody is really thinking, but doesn't want to say out loud. It boggles my mind just how much people really want a pretty girl to fail in the tech business.
No one seriously cares what gender Holmes is. At worst her gender is a bit of a novelty, but hardly a USP.
However, they do care that she may be selling snake oil. When someone raises funding on the promise of Amazing Technology[tm], and then fails to deliver that technology in a way that satisfies the usual industry standards, it's a fair concern.
>"according to people familiar with the matter"
This is standard WSJ boilerplate when it uses anonymous sources. There's nothing "hilarious" about it. It's neither unusual nor unfamiliar.