re: Elizabeth Holmes: A Sociopath Or Unrealistically Focused?

Read the book, listened to the podcast...manic behavior for sure. I’ve never heard what kind of test scores she had in HS or if she is genuinely high IQ, but they don’t just let anyone in to Stanford, so chances she has some capabilities. I think she believes or believed she could make the Edison testing system viable, and just convinced herself that force of Will was enough.

She did out and out lie, and it appears she believed that things were done that way at least in Silicon Valley (fake it till you make it) The corporate culture at Theranos was pretty darn malignant. She was pretty much a megalomaniac and surrounded herself with lackies.

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Actually, I think there is a little bit of both. She had this idea that she would do something that would change the world and save lives and once she figured out how she wanted to do it, she was so focused on making it happen that she didn't want to believe her idea wasn't possible.

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I don’t think she ever figured out how to do it.

She had an idea and was psychotically obsessed with it, but ah head no clue how to make her idea work. None at all.

I think she knew that and tried to hide it. That’s part of why she did what she did and I think also why she would never let her chemistry folks talk to her engineering folks. She knows it would t work but as long as she kept her teams in the dark they could never tell her.

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I wonder if she thought she needed to do that to complete with males?

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I used to know a chick who affected a deep voice very similar to Holmes'. She'd also worked for the DoD (mostly handing out ping-pong paddles at an Army base rec. center in West Germany, probably, but whatever...) so she peppered her speech with military jargon.

She'd say shite like "Keep going- Country Kitchen is about 4 clicks northeast of here now."

Who is this jabroni

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I think also why she would never let her chemistry folks talk to her engineering folks. She knows it would t work but as long as she kept her teams in the dark they could never tell her.

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That's a good point.

My thought was that she was going out to sell the product, thinking that her team would eventually develop her vision.

Was she going out selling it just to get the front money? Like when Theranos and Walgreens came to an agreement and Walgreens gave them money. If so and she knew her product was trash and would never be what she envisioned, it would only be a matter of time before it came to light.

But yeah, not allowing the chemist and engineers to collaborate wouldn't make sense if you are trying to develop a product like she wanted.

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