Please Don't Cast Any Heroes for Theranos
Will
Elizabeth Holmes be portrayed as some kind of heroic failure in the upcoming
movie about her scam-ridden startup? It would be so Hollywood to do so-- and so
wrong. We need to teach entrepreneurs better lessons.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
Before
the Hollywood myth-making machine cranks into high gear and--in the latest
example of tech/financial porn--Jennifer Lawrence helps transform the crooked
Theranos troll Elizabeth Holmes into some lip-glossed go-getter whose wonderful
dreams sadly got waylaid by a slimy Svengali or an evil cabal of manipulative
VCs, we need to get real. We need to take a few minutes to recall just how low
and sleazy a story this was and still is. We need to remember how many sick and
suffering patients were victimized by this immoral and greedy pseudo-scientist
and ersatz entrepreneur and her aggressive host of enablers. We need to learn
the almost Biblical lessons (before the movie bursts on the scene) and
intelligently apply them as we try to put this sad saga behind us.
Unfortunately,
whatever we do, an embarrassingly large number of prospective entrepreneurs and
wannabes will be more influenced by the flash and jazz of the flick than by the
facts and the injustices and injuries of this flagrant fraud.
My
greatest fear, given that no movie ever makes a bundle with an ending that's
either open-ended or a depressing downer, is that teams of well-paid and
pathetically untalented scriptwriters will try to contort this already
painfully truer-than-fiction saga into some kind of watered-down and confused
morality tale. Or, worse yet, into some lament about a poor and tortured
soul whose well-meaning attempts at empowerment (and, incidentally, at saving
the world) went slightly astray and more's the pity.
I have
no problem with heroic failure. I just can't abide attempts to rewrite history
and justify what was - almost from Day One - a consistent and intentional plan
to manipulate a willing media always looking for a new "star, " as
well as deceive and ultimately embarrass hundreds of compliant and oblivious
medical professionals. And, ultimately, to enrich a small group of criminals, not to
mention making it harder than ever for honest inventors and start-up
entrepreneurs to overcome the enormous obstacles that make innovation in
medicine so very difficult, time-consuming and costly.
In any
event, it's important to talk about a couple of important distinctions that I
expect to see cropping up both as regards Theranos, but more critically, with
regard to the very next round of similar situations, which are always just
around the corner. Not dwelling on yesterday's wins or losses is a key start-up
success factor, but promptly forgetting the sins of the past or thinking that
we're too smart to fall for them is a guarantee of more pain to come. These
handy excuses and convenient justifications for bad behavior fall into what I
could call the gross rationalization category. As the adrenaline mounts and the
excitement builds, so, in too many cases, does the arrogance and the growing
belief that for whatever precious reason, crucial cause or momentous mission,
the ordinary rules just don't apply.
Here
are a few of my favorites:
(1) Exceptional
People Deserve Special Concessions
We hear
this all the time and there's no reason to expect that the hero worship and
clamor will cease any time soon. Because it's a staple of the media's fixation
with looks, luxe and the resultant laissez faire attitude that
almost anything goes as long as you do it with style and don't get caught doing
anything déclassé. No one has erred more gravely and yet recovered more fully
than Kanye, whose complete redemption following his MTV mic grab from poor
Taylor Swift has probably amazed even Yeezus himself. But, it's in the
"tech" space, if you can call WeWork, for example, a technology
story, where the wonders and the overreaching never end. Adam Neumann moved
swiftly into the momentary "bad boy" vacuum left by Uber's Travis
Kalanick and grabbed hundreds of millions of dollars right before the
"soon-to-maybe-never-be" WeWork IPO. And, like the licking dog, he
did it because he could and because no one in the company had the guts or the
ability to tell him not to. These things don't really happen entirely on their
own-- they happen because we encourage them and tolerate them far too long and
far too often.
(2) Parsing
the Pieces is Pitiful
As
astonishing as it seems, we're already hearing that the Theranos scandal
was especially bad and unforgivable because it involved
medical technology and impacted real human beings. The unstated corollary seems
to be that, if this were just a bunch of flat-out falsehoods and fake test results
about some other kind of technology or a different business model, then that
behavior might have been relatively okay because - after all - everyone in the
Valley lies about almost everything. "Fake it 'til you make it" is
just a part of the accepted and crooked code of behavior; if you're duped, it's
mostly shame on you. This seems to me to be a lot like trying to pick up the
clean end of a shit stick. In the real world, these things are pretty black and
white, and the truth isn't a sometime thing.
(3) Defending
the Indefensible is Delusional
But the
worst set of excuses, exceptions and explanations are those which suggest that
ahead of every enterprising entrepreneur awaits a series of virtually
irresistible snares, sinkholes and seductions intent on pulling even the best
of them down the slippery slope into fraud and outright criminality - all in
the name of building a great business. Cutting corners, telling half-truths,
forgetting a few awkward details or unseemly results is how you do business in
the start-up world. How could you really expect them - in the midst of such an
important and game-changing crusade - to take the time to follow the rules and
do the right things?
Watching
Elizabeth Holmes on stage late in the game--when the jig was largely up--
blatantly lie to fawning interviewers isn't a study in someone missing a few
dotted I's and crossed t's. Hers was a coolly calculated and consistent
long-term plan to fool everyone for as long as possible and in every way
possible. The more anyone tries to explain it away, the more we just encourage
new inventive attempts to find questionable and quasi-legal shortcuts, fix or
evade the rules and pull off other scams.
We're
seeing kids' lungs destroyed and people starting to die from vaping, and the
scumbags pushing and promoting these products, primarily to kids, are claiming
in full page ads in the New York Times that the medical
problems are due to black market knockoffs and other inferior products. Surely
it couldn't be their disgusting, nicotine-addiction devices. They're running
another version of the Theranos race and they'll keep it up until someone has
the guts to cry "foul" and shut them down.
And
let's not forget to put the moronic mothers and path-paving dads who bribed their kids' ways into college into
this category as well. You already hear chatter all day long about how
well-meaning these affluent parents are and how they simply lost control and
fell into the clutches of evil and venal men. After all, how bad could they be
if they're regularly on TV? Let's give them two weeks of reflection time (with
a little sunbathing tossed in) in a spa-like detention center and call it a
day. After all, they meant well. Right?
PUBLISHED ON: SEP 17, 2019