Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Mm, I am a pretty big fan of capitalism and innovation... but I still think that when we encounter cases of fraud (especially fraud that went undetected for years), we should update at least a little towards "the system doesn't work as well as we thought"

tbh, I assumed Theranos was an example of some dangerously gameable incentives in VC, at least in an environment flush w/ cash relative to the strength of the field... but someone pointed out that there actually wasn't much VC money in Theranos, & aside from DFJ mostly no-names

Agree Theranos doesn't reflect badly on Silicon Valley VC. I suspect it does reflect badly on other institutions, or parts of society (in the sense that the fact Holmes got away w/fraud for so long is a sign that *something* is working suboptimally), but too hard to say what rn

If a group of people know something is too bad to invest in themselves, but don't say anything and indeed defend the fraudster in public, that says something bad about them.

Agree, though their hands were somewhat tied. AFAICT, it’s not that Theranos looked “bad,” it just provided patchy evidence about its goings-on to potential $. You’re simply not going to knock a media savvy female founder who’s come to “shake up the old boys’ club” over that

I think the fundamental problem with Elizabeth Holmes was that she was a story SV *wanted to tell.* “Attractive young woman drops out of Stanford, takes over world with consumer product that disrupts dusty industry subject to severe cost disease” is a really really good story

They wanted a female Steve Jobs and so they got one. As I say, if you're offering big bucks for a platypus, sooner or later someone's going to glue a bill onto a weasel.