'They All Wanted To Believe' . . .“It was an incredibly alluring narrative that everyone wanted to believe.”

Here's a tale more than twice-told -- “People are more sensitive to scams now – in some ways, there is a pre-Theranos Silicon Valley era and post-Theranos era,” said John Carreyrou, a journalist who has been covering Theranos for six years and now hosts a podcast on the trial. “But in many ways the boom has continued unabated. I’m not convinced there has been a true reckoning, yet.”

‘Selling a promise’: what Silicon Valley learned from the fall of Theranos

The company’s collapse has changed the startup environment, but some say the industry still hasn’t faced a ‘true reckoning’

Madeleine Albright, Elizabeth Holmes, and Jack Ma attend a 2015 Clinton Global Initiative event in New York. Photograph: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

Kari Paul

Mon 30 Aug 2021 01.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 30 Aug 2021 01.02 EDT

Insert "A charismatic young leader, billions of dollars in valuations and a technology that promised to change the world but failed to deliver: the meteoric rise and fantastic fall of the medical tech startup Theranos has been seen by many as an indictment of the hype-train attitude of Silicon Valley. . .

Changing times

When Holmes was rising to power, tech companies were still seen as innovators that were largely benefiting society, said O’Mara. Bolstered by organizers’ use of technology platforms in events like the Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street, there was an overarching narrative that Silicon Valley was connecting the world and promoting democracy.

“This was a time when companies could say they were making the world a better place and most people believed them,” O’Mara said.

Startups from an array of industries were able to hop on Silicon Valley’s hype train, adopting its ethos of “move fast and break things”. Theranos was primarily a medical device company, while WeWork – another industry darling – was at its core real estate firm selling office space.

A decade later, the startup environment has decidedly changed. Revelations like the Cambridge Analytica scandal have eroded trust in big tech. Legislators and the public are increasingly questioning the monopoly power some major tech companies hold. Social platforms were largely blamed for the rise of Donald Trump and his stunning victory in the 2016 election.

“That’s when the whole conversation around social media and more broadly the tech sector started turning sideways,” O’Mara said. “There started to be more skepticism about what exactly these companies were promising.”

. . .“Healthy skepticism has evolved into complete mistrust,”

. . .The outcome of the case will be huge for startup culture, Carreyrou, the journalist, said. “There has long been a culture of faking it until you make it in Silicon Valley, and Holmes is a product of that culture,” he said.

“To reform that – to change Silicon Valley – it is going to take a conviction.”

 

TAKE THE TIME TO READ THE DETAILS > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/30/elizabeth-holmes-trial-theranos-silicon-valley