I think that Elizabeth Holmes is not real. It’s hard to tell at a distance. There’s enough evidence, an affected voice, style, and habits are only part of it. The greater part is the cliché childhood narrative, more than that however, is the long hours. From everything I’ve read there was never a functional product, no real founder-driven development cycle, and nothing, concrete that may have required long hours. Re-papering a tiger may take time, lots of time even, only none on the part of the founder from what I can tell.

I think the only reason the names Theranos and WeWork are mentioned in the same sentence is simply that each is an example of the enthusiastic parting the gullible wealthy from both their reason (however feeble) and their cash. On the outside, investors decided wealth made up for a lack of knowledge. Plenty of folks on the inside knew it wasn’t going to work, eventually, they acted. I’m not clear after one book that Elizabeth actually understood that her requirements; must be countertop, must work with a drop, must test everything, was the cause of failure. All the fraud, outright lies, toxicity, stemmed from that. She wanted to build a desktop computer without building ENIAC first. Simple.

I can’t get past the long hours though. If your not part of development, if your not a chemist, an engineer, a developer, an inventor or wrench turner, and by all accounts no kind of project manager, what do you get out of fourteen hour days except a chance to do coke at work and posture in front of the real workers? I think it was the chance to play the role, to be in a place, surrounded by things, that provided the sensation of being the founder of a unicorn. It wasn’t about going home and living in privilege, it was about staying at work and cultivating that glow of being the smartest, most successful person in the room.

It’s note worthy she got jail time. Over promising and under delivering is fine. Outright fraud and compliance failures are not. Still, I believe the crime for which she was sentenced was nothing more than making the wealthy look foolish. At the end of the day the naked emperor is still emperor, it’s the crowd of functionaries and advisors that won’t have a job tomorrow.