So Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty. Just over a week ago, a jury found convicted the former CEO of failed blood-test company Theranos on four of 11 counts brought by the US government, three of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to defraud investors. Holmes was found not guilty of four other charges and the jury could not reach a decision on three more.
After a four-month trial, the verdicts appear to set boundaries on how far you can go in faking it until you make it. Moreover, while Holmes introduced allegations of abuse by her former partner (and fellow C-level Theranos exec) Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, an apparently sympathetic jury decided they were largely irrelevant to the actual charges.
What might surprise you on that last point is how much of Silicon Valley’s ‘me too’ community was relieved. They saw Holmes’ and her lawyers’ use of a so-called Svengali Defence as a distraction from rectifying tech’s now undeniable and much broader problems...