The Theranos Story, ch. 57: was it Silicon Valley and Startup Culture bad practices pushed to the max?

October 4, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rock-1-crop-2.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]Theranos is now formally in California insolvency proceedings (note on their website). Creditors may have enough awarded to them to go down to the local pizzeria to buy a slice or two. Hard lessons indeed for creditors and shareholders. But aside from the drama yet to come in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny now Shady Balwani, a/k/a the Silicon Valley Trial of the Century, are there any further lessons to be learned?

For those of us who have not been closely following The Theranos Story, David Shaywitz’s kind-of-review of John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood coupled with a thought piece in Forbes is especially appealing. Even if you’ve been tracking it closely like your Editor, it’s a good read. He posits that in three key areas, Theranos exhibited Startup Culture and Silicon Valley Ethics (or lack thereof) at the very extreme in these areas:

  • Secrecy: extreme compartmentalization, siloing, stratification, and rigid definition of roles that prevent information sharing. No outsiders in, or peer-reviewed research out.
  • Promises, promises, promises: a rosy picture to the point of delusion that masks real flaws
  • I Want To Believe: for various personal reasons, investors, press, and supports need to believe

Secrecy can and should work for companies in keeping proprietary information and competitive advantage intact. All startup and early-stage companies have to paint a positive picture in the midst of pitched struggle. The glass is always half full not empty even when the bank account is, but when the old ‘fake it till you make it’ becomes too strong, papering over the truth is the thing and the institutional absence of tough self-scrutiny (or a professional kicker-of-holes) prevents companies from fixing obvious problems–you get a delusional organization like Theranos edging gradually, then very quickly, into outright fraud. Finally, Theranos’ supporters had their own reasons for wanting to believe the technology worked. 

He goes on to state that the fraud that Theranos perpetrated was not only financial and in harm to health, but also in the hope that change is possible in healthcare delivery, we can challenge the way it’s always been done and win, and that technology can be empowering.

Will we, as a result, in Mr. Shaywitz’s words, take the ‘hit to hope’ to heart and become ‘excessively chastened and overcautious”? This Editor tends to be on the overcautious side when it comes to technologies such as IoT and AI because the potential for hacking and bad use is proven despite the hype, but far less so in challenging incumbents–even it it resembles tilting at windmills till they buy you.   

Will l’affaire Theranos change the Silicon Valley and Startup Culture for the better? Here is my ‘hit to hope’–that this excessively aggressive, conformist, borderline irresponsible, and secretive culture could change. This Editor doubts it’s even entered their leaders’ ‘deep’ thoughts, despite this best-selling book.

A more typical review of ‘Bad Blood’ is by Eric Topol, MD (!) in Nature–who certainly borrowed ‘The Theranos Story’ from this series of articles!

The Theranos Story, ch. 51: how Holmes wasn’t Steve Jobs despite the turtlenecks–a compare and contrast

June 20, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/jacobs-well-texas-woe1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Did Elizabeth Holmes ‘misunderstand’ Steve Jobs’ methods or was there something more deliberate at work? This article by tech entrepreneur Derek Lidow in Forbes gives her the benefit of the doubt but is still damning. His points in summary are:

  • Holmes ran Theranos with zero knowledge of how to run an organization, and ran Theranos like a dictator. Hiring people with real expertise came late in the day, and most of them left once they realized her style. Jobs knew he couldn’t run a company, generally hired the right people to do so, and then let them run it.
  • Jobs teamed with a genius engineer named Steve Wozniak in Apple’s formative years, and the Woz guided Jobs as much as anyone at numerous critical stages. Woz was the balance to Jobs, the behind the scenes versus the on-stage. Holmes did not work with anyone in that way, which is atypical for startup founders. Her co-founder was unqualified, she didn’t listen to her staff as problems came up, and her board was a waste of titles and people who were either wholly capable in other fields or superannuated.
  • Holmes’ goal of mini-blood assays was impossible, and she was unlike other visionary founders to pivot to what was possible. Jobs tempered his vision by using methods and technologies which already existed to leverage Apple into what he envisioned. (Jobs also had his fair number of stumbles, such as the Newton tablet where the vision exceeded the available technology. It was also too advanced, violating the Raymond Loewy maxim of ‘most advanced yet acceptable’.)
  • Delighting the customer? Where Jobs excelled in this not only with end users but also with developer partners, Holmes failed and more. With deceptive blood testing, she hurt sick patients and doctors who depended on accuracy. The vision and her self-promotion were far more important. She wasn’t doing this for people–she was doing this for herself.
  • Holmes was over the top on compartmentalizing Theranos’ technical development, straight to failure. Teams on the same project didn’t share knowledge or fundamentally communicate with each other. This led to bad testing of only parts of the system, not the whole system. While Jobs kept a tight lock on exposing Apple developments until they were ready, department teams on a given project intensively shared information. 

Wearing the black turtleneck, being a young female, blond, and with enhanced blue pop-eyes akin to a Bug-Eyed Austin-Healey Sprite can get you noticed, but then you have to deliver the goods for that $900 million you raised. Holmes was inexperienced and psychologically ill-equipped to be a tech founder. This Editor also wondered if she (literally) garbed herself in Jobs’ exterior trappings to deceive and gull everyone from the mighty and rich to the ordinary and often sick. (And now she tells people she is a marytr akin to Saint Joan?)

The Theranos Effect, for which Holmes is responsible, will sadly continue to hurt not only early-stage healthcare innovators but also the few women among them. The Theranos Scandal: What Happens When You Misunderstand Steve Jobs