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Inside Elizabeth Holmes's Chilling Final Months at Theranos (vanityfair.com)
In the final months of Theranos, before the blood testing start-up was debunked and its founders charged with fraud, then-CEO Elizabeth Holmes brought a puppy, who she insisted was a wolf to others, with a penchant for peeing into the mix, according to Vanity Fair, which has detailed the chaos that ensued in the waning days of the startup, once valued at $9 billion. The 35-year-old Stanford University dropout has also met with filmmakers who she hopes would make a documentary about her "real story," the outlet reported. She also "desperately wants to write a book." An excerpt from the story: Holmes brushed it off when the scientists protested that the dog hair could contaminate samples. But there was another problem with Balto (name of the dog), too. He wasn't potty-trained. Accustomed to the undomesticated life, Balto frequently urinated and defecated at will throughout Theranos headquarters. While Holmes held board meetings, Balto could be found in the corner of the room relieving himself while a frenzied assistant was left to clean up the mess. [...]
By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel. Theranos was also still paying for her mansion in Los Altos, and her team of personal assistants and drivers, who would become regular dog walkers for Balto. But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company's main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as "1701," for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. 1701, according to two former executives, cost $1 million a month to rent. Holmes had also spent $100,000 on a single conference table. Elsewhere in the building, Holmes had asked for another circular conference room that the former employees said "looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove," replete with curved glass windows, and screens that would come out of the ceiling so everyone in the room could see a presentation without having to turn their heads.
By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel. Theranos was also still paying for her mansion in Los Altos, and her team of personal assistants and drivers, who would become regular dog walkers for Balto. But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company's main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as "1701," for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. 1701, according to two former executives, cost $1 million a month to rent. Holmes had also spent $100,000 on a single conference table. Elsewhere in the building, Holmes had asked for another circular conference room that the former employees said "looked like the war room from Dr. Strangelove," replete with curved glass windows, and screens that would come out of the ceiling so everyone in the room could see a presentation without having to turn their heads.
I mean, this is my boss right now!
next you're going to tell me that sharks with frickin laser beams on their fricken heads is a bad investment.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
What a coincidence! Wil Wheaton's house number in The Big Bang Theory was 1701.
Can you imagine a fund in your 401K funding this frivolity, this literal SHIT SHOW - and yes I wrote shit because she would bring in her non-toilet trained dog and allow it to shit in the board room.
Private jets. Insane spending on rent, office....
I don't care who you are and how rich you could make my investors be, there have to be limits. This is beyond what is acceptable.
Insanity.
Due diligence and best practices were sacrificed at the alter of political correctness. People were so desperate to have a female CEO and founder of a large company that they disregarded established safeguards. People need to learn that best practices and due diligence are there for good reasons.
I'm not objecting to having woman starting and running a business (my wife has done this - I think it's a good thing). I'm objecting to people disregarding established standards in the name of political correctness. Let this be a lesson that narrative should never trump best practices.
Foolish startups that have people throwing millions (or billions) of dollars at them while other good startups can't get the funding they need. I have a startup that has built a new kind of data management system. It is twice as fast as the big database management systems and does things thousands of times faster than file systems. It is the kind of thing that can radically change how data is managed on a global scale; yet I can't seem to attract even a few $100K from investors even though I have a working system with a few customers already. It's all 'who you know' instead of 'what you know'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesh_Balwani - "onyxruby" what's your excuse for your blathering illiteracy?
Former SecDef Mattis was also taken in by Theranos.
If it's not YOUR PERSONAL specialty and you don't know as much or more about the subject than the people trying to sell you, leave it the fuck alone.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I stopped reading the article the moment they called her a WASP. As soon as they break out the racist terms, I know they are not going to unbiased.
Why is it ok to call a white person from an upper middle class background a WASP, but it's not ok to call a black person the nword or a person of jewish descent a Jew. Seriously WTF does her race or upbringing have to do with any of this?
She is an instrument of fraud. And she risked people's lives with piss poor testing.
Corporatism != Free Market
What is chilling about this? Silicon valley culture is horse shit, everyone knows that by now. None of this surprises me.
"peeing into the mix" - peeing into the mix of WHAT? such a weirdly worded phrase - sounds like a bootleg GG Alli recording...
Betsy "Let's arm teachers to protect schools from grizzly bears" DeVos also coughed up $100 mill for Balto to poop on.
It's the black turtleneck.
Steve Jobs discovered that people with more money than sense get easily hypnotized by black turtlenecks.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This cunt is a psycopath
One thing I've learnt with some college dropouts is that they quit because they generally take shortcuts for most things in life. My ex team-lead was the same thing, crazy shortcuts/hacks he would do in his code because he couldn't be bothered to take the time to finish it properly.
That's V Pee!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The other stuff is the normal corporate stupidity of giving executives too many privileges. But this is fraud. It could be her mansion, and she was paying for it from her personal funds. Or it could be Theranos' mansion, and she was paying the company rent to live in it. But having the company pay for "her" house is fraud (it's not a legitimate business expense, so she's essentially stealing money from the shareholders), and probably tax evasion (company gets to write it off as a tax-free expense, she doesn't have to pay income taxes on the benefit received).
> Misogynistic male pigs can't stand to see women succeed, so they make up lies about them.
No need to lie when the truth is so bad.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Really.
Hyped wunderkind, complete fraud, and now she gets to walk away? That is not right.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Oddly enough this same article appeared in an alternate universe, but in the Wall Street Journal instead of Vanity Fair, and where Theranos somehow magically succeeded.
It's a glowing article showing the odd eccentricities of this brilliant young CEO. The "Wof" is just a funny eccentricity, and she's of course joking about it but plays it like she isn't. Potty training isn't mentioned. Instead of downgrading to First Class, the company upgrades her to personally buying a private Jet.
The point being, the same crazy assholes that get painted as the criminals they are when they fail... get painted as incredible geniuses when they succeed. If you don't believe me, see Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison.
Obviously, she was just putting together a resume for an eventual cabinet post.
Phebe Novakovic? Cathy Engelbert? Marillyn Hewson?
Who? Never heard of any of these people...
n/t
She's increasingly looking like some kind of failed Steve Jobs clone. Some of his charm and bravado, all of his asshole douchebaggery, and none of his vision or attention to detail. She got so wrapped up in her delusions that she fooled herself into ignoring the trainwreck she created and the lives she ruined in the process. She's a walking catastrophe and should be locked up before she can turn anything else to sh*t.
I forgot who but she's somebody's God daughter or something. As long as we continue to pretend our ruling class doesn't exist they're untouchable.
Warren Buffet nailed it. (apologies for the WaPo link, open it in incognito/private mode).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"But there were few places she had wasted so much money as the design and monthly cost of the company's main headquarters, which employees simply referred to as "1701," for its street address along Page Mill Road in Palo Alto."
HOLMS: Computer. This is founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, requesting security access. Computer. Destruct Sequence One, code one, one-A.
Would that be NCC
PRES: Computer. This is Pres. and COO, . Destruct sequence two, code one one-A, two-B.
BOARD: Computer. This is the Board Of Directors. Destruct sequence three, code one-B, two-B, three.
COMPUTER VOICE: Destruct sequence completed and engaged. Awaiting final code for one-minute countdown.
HOLMS: Code zero, zero, zero, ...destruct zero.
COMPUTER VOICE: Destruct Sequence is activated.
(-NOT Start Trek The search for Spock)
https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-has-the-Enterprise-been-destroyed-in-Star-Trek
She is a fraud and should be left to history as the reject she is.
We've known from since the time of Royal Rife that to build real Star Trek tricorders, you need to resonantly stimulate and sense the characteristic frequency of the testing material. This mucking around with nano blood samples is still messy biology. Also once you can determine the resonant frequency, it's a simple matter to destructively overdrive pathogens to blast them to bits. This has been settled super-science since the late 1920's.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This would make for a very good and interesting book, provided, of course, that she's not the author (and if she were, all proceeds should go to those who were scammed by her). The book could start with a bit her background, how she got the idea for Theranos, raised funding, got it going, through its deminse up until after the trial ended. Ideally going into how she got away with it. A prologue could talk about how she rubs elbows with high profile politicians to raise money for another endeavour (that's what I recall, anyway, it's been a while since I followed this).
I'm particularly curious as to when she turned to the dark side. Did she always have a scheming mind that has displayed itself from infancy? Did the money and fame get to her head and she decided to "fake it till you make it"? Was there a mastermind behind all this who controlled her?
Also, I'm really wondering what the hell her parents and family think about this....
Citation needed.
Have you considered getting a username, perhaps "faggot"? it appears in every AC comment you make.
Denoting she was a woman CEO was all over the place, so what? What difference does it make if a woman CEO or male CEO commits fraud? You're just an INCEL crybaby threatened by women, that's all. Tissue?
I recently read a story about her and to my dismay she will start a new company soon. People have short memories and I'm sure there will be enough suckers to allow her to rise again.
She reminds me of Trumposka.
Poor Piss testing
either/or I suppose
Connections in all the right places, wolf pup saved from the wild peeing in our pool, where are the reality TV cameras? Mansion? The Kardashians are going to have to up their A- game.
"One day in late December 2017, Holmes showed up at the Newark building and held an all-hands meeting. She appeared excited beyond restraint. Brimming with enthusiasm..."
Elizabeth Holmes, if that's even her real name, is not a real person. She's an actress put in place by the Theranos board to front this ponzi scheme of a company.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Every time I saw her speak I'd look to see if she had a visible adam's apple. /me shivers
Old Yeller the both of 'em
There was no CEO before her; she founded the company. What retard nodded this shit up?
Usually this refers to a successful product. Apparently at Theranos it applied to the CEO herself.
Cant you take a joke you liberal snowflake.
Lite
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, HP, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Xerox, etc, etc.
White and Asian men. Literally every single one. Created, built, invented. Empires.
Not a single one created by women, black people, trans queer folk, or any of your other misfit retard squad.
You are welcome.
So, what did you make, pathetic little man? Which one is your empire? What are your achievements that make you proud, or at least rich?
Yeah, nothing. I thought so.
that what media maketh, media taketh. I remember when Theranos was hot even here, on, and, like for other vaporware manufacturers, questioning them brought downmods.
Theranos would not have happened at all if the "tech media" circus wasn't a sensationalist, hype-it-up-all-you-can, eyeball-counts-driven fakery written by incompetent dimwits whose job is only to produce hyperbolic "content" with bombastic headlines.
you mad, WASP boy?
> and screens that would come out of the ceiling
This phrase betrays the commie motivation behind this vitriolic attack.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And managed to teleport millions with her; leaves them the dog in wolf's clothing
I offered them $100 for that table but they turned me down.
Their loss.
No sig today...
Jokes are for chumps. Petty humor is for the unsophisticated and uncouth. You don't have much laughing left, as we automate the low-end jobs that you depend on, condemning your whole class of deplorables to extinction. Humanity will be better off without the intellectually inferior.
Literally made up names. Who are they?
Remember Golgafrincham from Hichicker guide to the galaxy.
Only extremists lack a sense of humor, and are unable to laugh at themselves.
Is your name Ahmed or Muhammad, by chance?
Other than a $24 million dollar start up that I sold, then retired at 36?
Nothing I guess.
What about Betty Sue Rottencrotch?
It seems she might actually believe in the efficacy of totems.
Or maybe it's cargo cult behaviour.
The black turtle neck from Jobs? "Maybe if I wear this, I'll be as good as him."
The dog. The various little foibles.
Self-Respect Uber Alles mentality that's lead that and following generations to think confidence and competence are the same thing.
Soros-funded Corporate Progressive nazi trolls sure do resemble the old school Nazis with whom Soros collaborated.