Do you have a black turtleneck ? Stanford stamp ?

You may have heard of the Theranos company spiral down. Its star founder is Elizabeth Holmes. I don’t have prima facie knowledge of this case, but I found a good introduction in an Oct. 2016 Vanity Fair exclusive,  How Elizabeth Holmes House of Cards came down, by Nick Bilton.

” Holmes preferred that the temperature be maintained in the mid-60s, which facilitated her preferred daily uniform of a black turtleneck with a puffy black vest—a homogeneity that she had borrowed from her idol, the late Steve Jobs.”

What do I tell you every time ? You either control your environment or you don’t.

If you watch the Jim Cramer interview with Holmes from back in 2015, you’ll see that Holmes is more alpha than Cramer.

” Cramer generously began the interview by asking Holmes what had happened. Holmes, who talks slowly and deliberately, and blinks with alarming irregularity, replied with a variation of a line from Jobs. **In Silicon Valley, you’re either a Jobster or you’re a toaster** “This is what happens when you work to change things,” she said, her long blond hair tousled, her smile amplified by red lipstick. “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then, all of a sudden, you change the world.” When Cramer asked Holmes for a terse true-or-false answer about an accusation in the article, she replied with a meandering 198-word retort.” -Nick Bolton

What I am interested is to find out how investors gave money to a 19-year old college dropout (15 years ago is when Holmes started out). She got her first angel money at 19 !
One WSJ investigative journalist, John Carreyou, brought Theranos down.

“the leaders of Theranos stood before their employees and surveyed the room. Then a chant erupted. “Fuck you . . .,” employees began yelling in unison, “Carreyrou.” It began to grow louder still. “Fuck you, Carreyrou!” Soon men and women in lab coats, and programmers in T-shirts and jeans, joined in. They were chanting with fervor: “Fuck you, Carreyrou!,” they cried out. “Fuck you, Carreyrou! Fuck. You. Carrey-rou!”

“I assumed that I’m going to have to talk to at least 200 people before I found one who was going to believe in me, so I really didn’t care if people were turning me down because I knew I found someone who did.”-EH

Those videos are 6 years apart (2009 to 2014). She has a deeper voice than most people, whether at age 25 or 31. “Her voice sounds like the voice Mulan tried to use to pass herself off as a man when she joined the army in her father’s place.”-Youtube comment

“I think the minute that you have a backup plan you’ve admitted that you have not succeed.”-EH

What kind of language do you use ?

 “We do routine, specialty, and esoteric tests. What we’ve done is take those, and develop the chemistry and analytic systems that made it possible to run them on a microsystem.” -From Fortune’s The Big Lesson Silicon Valley Can Learn From the Theranos Scandal -Marina Polinova, March 15, 2018

What do you do if you have unhappy investors ?

Well, offer them shares if they don’t sue.