THE NEW YORK TIMES:
In Silicon Valley’s world of make-believe, the philosophy of “fake it until you make it” finally gets its comeuppance.
For a decade, Ms. Holmes fooled savvy investors, hundreds of smart employees, an all-star board and a media eager to anoint a new star. | Jenny Hueston
SAN FRANCISCO — Near the end of
Elizabeth Holmes’s criminal trial, her lawyers submitted into evidence her punishing self-improvement plan.
“4 a.m. Rise and thank God,”
the handwritten memo began.Exercise, meditation, prayer, breakfast (whey and, as she spelled it, “bannanna”) followed. By 6:45 a.m., a time when slackers were still fumbling for the alarm clock, she was at the office of Theranos, the blood-testing company she founded in 2003.
Ms. Holmes had many rules at Theranos: “I am never a minute late. I show no excitement. ALL ABOUT BUSINESS. I am not impulsive. I know the outcome of every encounter. I do not hesitate. I constantly make decisions and change them as needed. I speak rarely. I call bullshit immediately.”
It worked. Ms. Holmes’s resolve was so forceful, and fit so neatly into the Silicon Valley cliché of achieving the impossible by refusing to admit it was impossible, that it inspired belief right up to the moment on Monday when a jury officially convicted her of four counts of fraud.
The verdict signaled the end of an era. In Silicon Valley, where the line between talk and achievement is often vague, there is finally a limit to faking it.
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David Streitfeld | Monday, January 3, 2022
Leer en español :
El auge y la caída de Elizabeth Holmes : El caso de la fundadora de Theranos podría cambiar el estatus de culto que tienen algunos emprendedores tecnológicos a los que no se les cuestionan sus ambiciosos proyectos ni se les exige que rindan cuentas. »
