“There’s nothing quite like Elizabeth Holmes’ case because there’s nothing quite like Silicon Valley,” says Danny Cevallos, a criminal lawyer who appears on MSNBC and NBC News.
One of the things about it is that it’s not really Silicon Valley. None of the traditional VC companies invested. An awful lot of people who wanted to be thought of as solid SV VCs did. It was much more a grift playing on the second and third tier than it was about SV itself….
Crypsis.
Elizabeth Holmes cleverly cultivated the appearance of being a Silicon Valley autistic overlord in waiting, with Steve Jobs polonecks, buzzword bingo, the gospel according to TED talks, etc. etc.
Plus, she has tits. Which is a huge, bigly plus in baffling the thirsty old men who joined her board because wammin in tech is Important, and gaining lots of free media exposure she wouldn’t have got if she was a boring male nerd called Bill or Rajesh.
She was unlucky to draw the attention of John Carreyrou, the vast majority of media operatives are no longer interested in investigationary journalism, they’re interested in the Narrative. Racism production is up 300% this quarter, comrades.
But also self-ID. Elizabeth identifies as a genius entrepreneur in the same way Carrie identifies as a woman. So of course she is one.
Such an unusual case!
A con artist with a magic box. That’s unusual?
The magic bomb detector fraud was around the same time. Same principle. Guy got ten years, maybe it should have been more.
Steve has it about right. The classic (non-criminal) version in Britain is Martha Lane Fox, who was the photogenic front for Lastminute.com, but of course couldn’t make it work. So based on her failure there she becomes government advisor on picking tech winners and appearing on the telly.