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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.
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.
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'.
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.
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
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.
Note to VC's - never stick your dime in crazy.
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.
"peeing into the mix" - peeing into the mix of WHAT? such a weirdly worded phrase - sounds like a bootleg GG Alli recording...
I imagine there's a comma missing. This would be better:
Elizabeth Holmes brought a puppy, who she insisted was a wolf to others, with a penchant for peeing, into the mix, ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
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/
So how do you tell the difference between visionary and crazy? VCs will often invest in some crazy, because it doesn't take all that many visionaries in the pool to more than make up for the crazies.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Have you considered getting a username, perhaps "faggot"? it appears in every AC comment you make.
"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
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.
If you're quite finished with your rant, Theranos was never publicly traded so no 401K fund would have bought it.
Visionary IS crazy. A visionary sees things that aren't really there. Venture capitalists are essentially lost in the desert and running out of water, and when they see some heat addled brain wander by they say "which way should we walk?" 9 times out of 10 the crazy guy points to a bad direction to go, but that one time it just happens by chance to be correct. The VCs walk out of the desert, just barely, and proclaim the peyote imbibing loon a visionary.
The only difference between Theranos and the typical dot-com startup was the degree of insanity.
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.
> 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.
I offered them $100 for that table but they turned me down.
Their loss.
No sig today...
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.