Jottings - Slice of life - 279 ( The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes - the poster girl of the Silicon Valley)
Jottings - Slice of life - 279 ( The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes - the poster girl of the Silicon Valley) “Some in clandestine companies combine, Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line: With air and empty names beguile the town, And raise new credits first, then dry 'em down: Divide the empty nothing into shares, To set the town together by the ears” Daniel Defoe - “London” The meteoric rise and ignominious fall of young Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder, CEO of Theranos, and a billionaire by the age of thirty-one is nothing short of a fairy tale, with the only twist that from the very beginning the fairy herself was flawed, never clean of intent or truthful of purpose. In his widely read book, “The extraordinary popular delusions and madness of the crowds” written nearly two centuries ago, in 1841, the Scottish writer Charles Mackay records many cases of what he calls “moral epidemics” — an irrational attachment to a crazy idea that starts off as a trickle