-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Vanity Fair: Elizabeth Holmes bought a puppy to help turn around Theranos but it pooped in the boardroom
- Thread starter Deleted member 15440
- Start date
Buried near the end of the article:
THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
Like father, like daughter.
THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
Like father, like daughter.
I know this is kind of sexist but I'm listening to The Dropout and just cannot get over the deep voice.
Since that article criminally gave us no pictures of Balto, I decided to pull up random husky pup pics.
"He's a wolf"
"Smol wolfy boi here"
"Awoooooooooo"
Lookit these cute babies. Awww.
Hope Balto's OK.
(Speaking of pups, I've always liked your name/avatar combo)
Thank you for this service.Since that article criminally gave us no pictures of Balto, I decided to pull up random husky pup pics.
"He's a wolf"
"Smol wolfy boi here"
"Awoooooooooo"
If you have interest in this story you HAVE to read the book, Bad Blood. Every chapter just kept getting crazier and crazier and it's a truly unbelievable story. She got her company to a 9 billion dollar valuation on outright fraud and was constantly lying/covering up, trying to Will her vision into existence.
Really great book.
Really great book.
Gotta love how her "mature, strong" fake voice makes her sound like a 12 year old boy.
And WOW at not caring that her dog was contaminating the labs. I know shit about blood tests but even I could've told you that was stupid.
I wonder who will play Erika Cheung and Tyler Shultz in the movie. They are the real MVP's. Whoever plays Tyler is probably a shoo in for an oscar nomination, especially when he gets confronted by grandpa Shultz and ultimately has his grandpa take her side. I can already see that drama playing out in screen.
Judging from her now-removed TED Talk, I'd say, no, she did not have S-tier charisma - she didn't even have D-tier charisma.
How was she able to pull if off?
She is White.
(And she's probably a psychopath too...)
Last edited:
I read Bad Blood. Does the podcast offer any additional insight?
I'd say it's more like an epilogue, in that you hear some specific stories and what some people actually sound like. Worth it for that reason.
It's more staggering that people with no scientific principles decided to throw their money at her.
Theranos is a good lesson in how fucking dumb investors really are.
Ya, and they took so much things "on credit" in terms of just being willing to go with it as long as they got a share and a promise. Maybe thats another intrinsic thing with business.
I'm looking forward to this HBO documentary as I'm very interested in how this mentalist conned all these people.
Good to know, will check it out.
She basically built a "cargo cult" based on the SV billionaires she looked up to. Batshit crazy indeed.
Thing is if you read up her story, she convinced tons of people to invest millions. Charisma doesn't necessarily mean you're some gregarious stand up comic. It's about influence and if you read about what her former teachers said about her, it rather scary. She was highly persuasive. Definitely sociopathic tendencies there.
The Dropout podcast mentioned ITT shows this very well too. She was scarily effective.
Right. She was definitely charismatic in that she was able to bullshit her way through almost anything and convince a bunch of smart people to trust what she was saying. When her machine would break down and not work while in the middle of a presentation with investors, her staff would panic, but she wouldn't miss a beat in explaining it away and managing to salvage the presentation of a broken device. It takes a certain amount of charisma and knowing how to work a room to pull that off, along with the cold sense of detachment from a pathological liar.
The book really delves deep into the influence and persuasion employed in meetings, boardrooms, and interactions with powerful people, especially older men. There is one chapter early into her running Theranos where the board agreed to remove her as CEO but she managed to stop the board coupe by talking her way out of it.
Few passages from the book:
The author of the book anticipated that someone might think she was only able to influence these men because they were sexually attracted to her but he cites an example of her even manipulating an out gay man into trusting her completely. It's easy to make fun of but her wide-eyed-unblinking stare made people feel like she was staring into their soul, and coupled with her unnatural voice, she had a presence about her that helped with her deception. And she was good about finding out what your passion was and playing up how partnering with her could help you achieve it.
That explains why she was able to keep the Safeway CEO in the palm of her hand even after she missed deadline after deadline to deliver a working device. She exploited his love of wellness and after they invested $100 million into building the theranos/wellness centers in their stores, they felt like they had to stick it out to avoid admitting it was a complete loss.
Last edited:
Everything about Theranos is Venture Capital investment, fake tech nonsense, and our bloated fake ass economy all rolled into one perfectly distilled image of madness. Literally everything involved was lies designed to make already wealthy people even more wealthy until someone caught on to the scam and they all collectively move to the next one.
I listened to the Dropout and while it was fine for the most part it really showed how some outlets still don't really grasp how to put a show together. The whole vibe was so "made for TV" that it was distracting from time to time. Wish the host would loosen up lol.
Also I have no idea what was going on with that characterization in the end around her former classmate and Elizabeth being a persistent track runner... felt out of place.
Also I have no idea what was going on with that characterization in the end around her former classmate and Elizabeth being a persistent track runner... felt out of place.
i'm watching The Inventor. This stuff must have been filmed before Theranos tanked, right? I mean her stuff.
Her voice is offputting. It's way too flat and deep compared to what you'd expect from looking at her. Like Sarah Huckabee Sanders voice but not on a mean looking person. Her eyes also freak me out.
Her voice is offputting. It's way too flat and deep compared to what you'd expect from looking at her. Like Sarah Huckabee Sanders voice but not on a mean looking person. Her eyes also freak me out.
Several people have insisted her voice was manufactured and not real and heard her real voice when she would occasionally slip up.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a26855364/elizabeth-holmes-deep-voice/
It has been said that the voice is an act. The guy from WSJ seemed to agree that it's most likely fake and there's a video somewhere of her from a conference call where she can be heard speaking normally for a brief few seconds before apparently switching back to it.
I'm still absolutely fucking stunned how negligent Walgreens was in this whole deal. I mean all the investors who were apparently perfectly fine with her just being like "Yeah the shit works trust me" I can maybe understand but Walgreens weren't just investors they were about to roll this out to their stores and nobody did any due diligence. Incredible. People must have lost their jobs for that shit-show.
One thing that struck me as interesting was the comment by the psychologist (was it from Duke?) who said he believes at some point Holmes justified this by telling herself, "I'm just doing what everyone else in Silicon Valley is doing", i.e., fake it 'till you make it. It doesn't actually justify anything but it does put it in perspective because the reality is that is exactly what some Silicon Valley companies do. She and Sunny must have thought they just needed to buy a little more time and if they finally, magically produced an Edison that was even close to doing what they claimed, people would mostly forget the failures prior to that.
Also lmao at their party because the FDA approved one, outdated test. And her dancing. And then "Can't Touch This" being the end credit song.
There's plenty of youtube clips where she does slip up and talks normally for a second or two.
The theory is that she believed it made her seem more credible and imposing. Since Silicon Valley is male dominated, the idea is that she wanted to sound more male to be taken seriously.
It makes sense in a way but I think her voice sounded incredibly fake.
I guess, but it doesn't sound male. it just sounds like she has a vocal chord problem.
Oh I agree. I think it sounds phony as hell. Borderline goofy to be perfectly frank.
What I isn't understand about the whole voice thing is no one interviewed from her past had anything to say about it in the documentary? At least as far as I got... I watched the first 2/3rds of it last night.
Agreed, give the dog to someone who isn't a sociopath and is willing to invest the time to adequately train it.
On topic, it amazes me how dumb rich people often are.