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Fake It Till You… Meh – Scratch That

Fake It Till You… Meh – Scratch That

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Image by Elisa from Pixabay

Fake it till you make it has been the credo of the tech industry since the very earliest days of the industry. Make big promises and bold statements and no matter that the product may end up as shovelware of vaporware, founders were inventing the future and no matter that investors who bought into the hype were expecting big payoffs that often didn’t happen. You pay your money, you take your chances. So it goes.

Erin Griffin wrote an excellent piece in The New York Times recently entitled The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley and it’s must-read. “Faking it is over. That’s the feeling in Silicon Valley…Not only has funding dried up for cash-burning startups over the past year, but now, fraud is also in the air, as investors scrutinize startup claims more closely and a tech downturn reveals who has been taking the industry’s “fake it till you make it” ethos too far… the chorus of charges, convictions and sentences have created a feeling that the startup world’s fast and loose fakery actually has consequences.”

Gee, who’d have thought? Considering that California was basically founded on the Gold Rush, and the tech space was essentially the state’s second Gold Rush, didn’t investors realize that during that first Gold Rush, many were taken in by Fool’s Gold? History does have a way of repeating itself, and if it worked the first time… Read More...

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

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If your reaction to the above was ‘who cares?,’ do not pass go, do not collect $200. How can we so quickly forget one of the seminal unicorns of Web 2.0.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four of the 11 counts of fraud brought against her (three of the charges were dismissed and the jury was deadlocked on the other four, so it may not be over yet), and while she may serve (a reportedly fairly negligible amount of) jailtime, did this send chills through Silicon Valley, which at this point has become a generic term, like ‘Band-Aid’ and ‘google,’ considering that Report: Californians Leaving for Texas So Rapidly, U-Haul Ran Out of Trucks?

Will this verdict be a wake-up call? The Elizabeth Holmes verdict: Silicon Valley’s reckoning or a single bad apple? Will the guilty verdict change “fake it ’till you make it” culture?, the Mercury News asked. “Experts say the guilty verdict and the potential prison sentence it carries are sure to send a chill down the spines of entrepreneurs and investors — especially in the health care field — and prompt them to tread carefully. But it may not be the major reckoning that some have been clamoring for in Silicon Valley, where criminal charges remain rare and money continues to flow.” Read More...

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

Fake It Til You Make It – To the Witness Stand.

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We are all aware that fake it til you make it is one of the premier mantras of the tech industry. At this point, we should also keep in mind that you can fake it for just so long – Adam Neumann’s WeWork being a notable case in point – and careful what you fake: in the case of Theranos and the company’s founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, it led to 11 counts of fraud that are being litigated as we speak.

As the Mercury News reported, “Holmes is charged with allegedly bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and defrauding patients with false claims that the company’s machines could conduct a full range of tests using just a few drops of blood.”

Here’s a cautionary tale for you: despite the fact that Holmes followed the Silicon Valley playbook – attend an Ivy League school (Stanford dropout); be mediagenic (the tech might have been flawed, but in every photo of Holmes that the media proffered, she looked perfect); get a LOT of press (aka due diligence for clueless investors). Bonus points: dress in a manner that recalls a tech icon – in this case, Steve Jobs (easy one: black turtlenecks. Done!). Read More...

The Great Tech Lies: Do They Hold Up?

The Great Tech Lies: Do They Hold Up?

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When the tech industry was first establishing itself, it was something completely new to the planet, like, for example, the Industrial Age before it. Various mantras hit the zeitgeist: fake it til you make it; move fast and break things; fail fast. There are byproducts of these practices: the disregard for ethics, morality and responsibility or as we’ve said many times before, the only way to cover up a crime is to commit an even bigger crime.

 

The Elizabeth Holmes trial is on and it turns out that the Stanford dropout sidelined the real scientists at Theranos “By leaving them off email threads,” The Verge reported. Then attempted to blame them for Theranos’s failures. “A lot of new emails were introduced, showing Holmes was aware of the company’s problems, and was even actively trying to manage the situation. Several times in those emails, (former Theranos lab director Adam) Rosendorff tried to get Theranos labs to run FDA-approved tests instead of the ones Theranos developed. But maybe even more telling were the emails that Rosendorff was excluded from…“The company was more about PR and fundraising than patient care,” he said. Read More...

Fake It Til You Make It 2.0

Fake It Til You Make It 2.0

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More and more we’re seeing founders without so much as a plan to profitability raise outrageous amounts of venture capital based mostly on, from what we can tell, hubris, being mediagenic and what may arguably be either a Napoleonic complex, a touch of bipolar syndrome, or some combination of the two.

There seems to be a clear pathway to success in technology without having to be bothered with showing profits or even having a viable or clearly defined product, but given the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos), Travis Kalanick (Uber), and most lately Adam Neumann (WeWork), that pathway hasn’t been clearly defined, or refined. But we have been paying attention, and we believe we have come up with 12 basic rules for success in technology – even with little or simple tech required: Read More...