Was Theranos a Sign of Larger Problems in Silicon Valley's Startup Culture? (bbc.com) 93
Were Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos symptomatic of something larger? The BBC's North America tech reporter writes that in Silicon Valley, many believe that the story, "far from being an aberration — speaks of systemic problems with start-up culture."
In Silicon Valley, hyping up your product — over-promising — isn't unusual, and Ms Holmes was clearly very good at it... She projected an unfaltering confidence that the technology would change the world. "It's baked in to the culture" said Margaret O'Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. "If you are a young start-up in development — with a barely existent product — a certain amount of swagger and hustle is expected and encouraged" she said.
Particularly at an early stage, when a start-up is in its infancy, investors are often looking at people and ideas rather than substantive technology anyway. General wisdom holds that the technology will come with the right concept — and the right people to make it work. Ms Holmes was brilliant at selling that dream, exercising a very Silicon Valley practice: 'fake it until you make it'. Her problem was she couldn't make it work.
Her lawyers have argued that Ms Holmes was merely a businesswoman who failed, but was not a fraudster. The problem in Silicon Valley is that the line between fraud and merely playing into the faking it culture is very thin. "Theranos was an early warning of a cultural shift in Silicon Valley that has allowed promoters and scoundrels to prosper," said tech venture capitalist Roger McNamee, who is critical of big tech and did not invest in Theranos. He believes that a culture of secrets and lies in Silicon Valley, a culture that allowed Theranos' tech to go un-analysed, is "absolutely endemic"....
Secrecy is important for these companies to succeed — but that culture of secrecy can also be used as a smoke screen, particularly when even employees and investors don't understand or aren't given access to the technology itself.
The reporter points out that like Theranos, "There are many Silicon Valley companies I've reported on that will not fully explain how their tech actually works. They claim to have 'proprietary' systems that cannot yet be revealed or peer-reviewed.
"The system is based on trust, yet it is fundamentally at odds with a culture of 'faking it' and creates the perfect environment for Thernanos-type scandals, where claims that aren't true are left unchallenged."
Particularly at an early stage, when a start-up is in its infancy, investors are often looking at people and ideas rather than substantive technology anyway. General wisdom holds that the technology will come with the right concept — and the right people to make it work. Ms Holmes was brilliant at selling that dream, exercising a very Silicon Valley practice: 'fake it until you make it'. Her problem was she couldn't make it work.
Her lawyers have argued that Ms Holmes was merely a businesswoman who failed, but was not a fraudster. The problem in Silicon Valley is that the line between fraud and merely playing into the faking it culture is very thin. "Theranos was an early warning of a cultural shift in Silicon Valley that has allowed promoters and scoundrels to prosper," said tech venture capitalist Roger McNamee, who is critical of big tech and did not invest in Theranos. He believes that a culture of secrets and lies in Silicon Valley, a culture that allowed Theranos' tech to go un-analysed, is "absolutely endemic"....
Secrecy is important for these companies to succeed — but that culture of secrecy can also be used as a smoke screen, particularly when even employees and investors don't understand or aren't given access to the technology itself.
The reporter points out that like Theranos, "There are many Silicon Valley companies I've reported on that will not fully explain how their tech actually works. They claim to have 'proprietary' systems that cannot yet be revealed or peer-reviewed.
"The system is based on trust, yet it is fundamentally at odds with a culture of 'faking it' and creates the perfect environment for Thernanos-type scandals, where claims that aren't true are left unchallenged."
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The most correct comment to the article.
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It's also the third exception to Betterage's law in a row on Slashdot.
Is this a sign that the quality of journalism is improving?
Re:Silicon Valley has a lot of problems... (Score:4, Insightful)
"When the inventor of mRNA vaccines is telling people about risks of the COVID-19 vaccine, but YouTube deletes those videos [fearunmasked.com], you won't know something is seriously wrong."
Yes, what went wrong is: the people who edited those videos made it SEEM that he was saying something that he wasn't. He requested they be taken down, because he saw that they were misrepresenting his actual views on the subject. He wanted it made clear: he firmly believes you should go get the vaccine.
Here is his statement on the whole thing:
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
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Is this a sign that the quality of journalism is improving?
That's a question which definitely isn't an exception to Betteridge's law.
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No (Score:2)
It was always fake it till you make it, and the 2000 bust taught us that. Theranos was the long tail of "throw money at it until it grows". The technology existed at the time, it just wasn't in house. You could have, if knowledgeable, invested in a number of other companies with similar tech.
Theranos could absolutely have worked, if they had faked it until they made it. They just didn't swerve into the lane.
Was Theranos a Sign of Larger Problems in Silicon Valley's Startup Culture?
No, it was how busines
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The technology existed at the time, it just wasn't in house.
The technology doesn't exist today. If you need blood tests, they take a lot of blood, not a few drops (which is what Theranos was promising).
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Theranos' lie was that they were going to be able to make it a completely automated process, instead of one that requires professional phlebotomist or nurse or something to collect.
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That's bullshit. Women are being questioned every day still. Sounds like you've got an agenda you're pushing. She wasn't questioned because she was a CEO, and at a startup, and people wanted to make money without pesky questions.
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No, it could not have worked. The promises were too magical. Sure, we could have a machine do a lot of tests automatically, but 1small drop of blood for a 240 tests? Nope. Good enough to put in a drug store without doctor consultations? Nope. Sure, one drop of blood for each test, that's why doctors get a vial when you get blood work done.
Sure, some people don't like needles, but sheesh, with that logic you'd never go to the doctor or dentist.
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Your reasoning is a silly as Theranos'.
"We can do it because {irrelevant handwaving}!"
"It's impossible because {irrelevant handwaving}!"
There are actual reasons why Theranos' approach would never have worked, none of which you listed.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah .. a sepsis diagnosis can be from as low as 1 bacteria (or even less) per mL of blood (1 bacteria in at least 20 drops of blood). That means you can miss certain dangerous blood-borne infections if you don't check at least 20 drops of blood. Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Well theoretically, you can in fact do 240 or more "tests" on one sample. The problem is that in some cases the disease indicator agent may not be present within a mere drop of blood -- you need at least an mL for detecting certain types of infections for example.
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Right. Or more.
Even PCR, which technically is exquisitely sensitive (single copy nucleic acid detection) still relies on larger copies for reliable detection and even more for quantitation. You may not have those copies in as little as a single ml, for certain types of analytes, whether we talking about infections agents, or shedded byproducts of human cells.
Theranos had a lot of people on the outside scratching their heads ("they claim they can do WHAT"). Of coursee, initial skepticism doesn't always me
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
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"many believe that the story, "far from being an aberration — speaks of systemic problems with start-up culture."
and think they have been imbued with Nobellian wisdom and made a major insight.
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Outright lying to an investor is fraud. However if you're smart you can mislead an investor while avoiding any statement that *legally counts as a lie*.
Lawyers are actually trained to spot a "non-responsive" answer -- an answer which leaves a false impression while not actually being contrary to fact. There are many ways to give a non-responsive answer. You can filibuster so the examiner loses his train of thought. You can frame your response so that if you look closely it's actually answering a differe
Unicorns (Score:2)
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What, like Twitter?
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What's corrupted startup culture are behemoths like Apple, Google, Facebook and others with massive cash piles and the ability to casually buy up startup technology.
Ostensibly this is done to enhance their own products, but really its done mostly to bury technology which threatens their business models or key products. I think originally these start-ups would be bought with a legitimate interest in promoting their products or integrating their technologies. But as more and more innovations just got bought
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Theranos seems too much of a long con with too much visibility and thus too many potential consequences.
Bigger lies are easier to swallow. If she made it past gatekeepers with a straight face, decision makers might just assume the tech had already been vetted by someone else and go straight to competing to invest.
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But it seems like all you're doing is raising the stakes from not being able to develop the technology if you keep taking money.
It's one thing if Holmes starts Theranos, gets a round of funding based on misleading information, and then says Â\_(ãf)_/Â we have too many technical barriers, this won't work. She'd almost surely get to keep whatever loot she paid herself and probably walk away with her credibility intact.
But each time she gets funding and misleads the people financing her without
Doesn't seem new to me (Score:3)
If you're willing to accept investing on nothing but promises then you're going to be suckered.
C'est la vie (Score:4, Informative)
Money men not having the technical chops to understand whether they're being sold pixie dust is not unique to Silicon Valley. Many East Coast investors are aware of this and employ former industry insiders to sniff out fraudulent sales pitches.
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Exactly. The investors had someone pointing out the BS and they sidelined him on a demand from Theranos.
The whole thing reeked of fraud from the beginning but that is how con games work. Get the sucker believing and they will do the work to fleece themselves.
Theranos execs need to be prosecuted but the "victims" practically begged to be ripped off.
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Money men not having the technical chops to understand whether they're being sold pixie dust
The very technology you are using to make this post was at one time considered pure magic and funded by R&D without any guarantee of it ever working.
You're effectively advocating for all R&D to be abandoned. The whole Theranos situation was stupid, money was poured into it for way too long after it was uncovered to be nothing more than a fraud, but your advocation of not investing something you don't understand in detail is equally stupid, just in the opposite direction.
Re: C'est la vie (Score:2)
The device I'm posting on *was* pixie dust in 1992 when the Newton came out. And it failed. And you'd have been a fool to put serious money back then into a promise of fully connected devices in everyone's pocket in a few years.
The device I'm posting on was *not* pixie dust in the mid 2010s when it was designed and factories were retooled at some cost to produce it in anticipation of many millions to be sold in short order.
There's a very bright line between ambitious but attainable on one end and predicated
Re:How the heck can yo uknow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the company starts using its competitors products to fake its own supposedly operational equipment, and not just supplementary either, you can be very sure it's all a scam.
Re: How the heck can yo uknow? (Score:1)
She's a pretty white female and new mother. And has the most persuasive attorneys money can buy. She probably will be convicted but not of all charges and her ultimate punishment will be a slap on the wrist.
Pretty? (Score:1)
She's a scary white female, as plenty of her employees attested to over the years.
Re:How the heck can yo uknow? (Score:5, Informative)
There's no conceivable way for any of us to know whether this person is guilty or innocent.
Stop making excuses. She never said how her system worked except in the broadest possible terms. She never described the process or methods used in this supposed test. When requested by the FDA and others to show her work, she refused. She knew her tests didn't work and even rigged demonstrations [go.com].
Unbeknownst to the company’s investors and the public, Theranos was touting its “revolutionary technology” while using blood-testing machines from third-party manufacturers -- the same machines as its competitors -- for much of its testing.
According to a Holmes' COO and partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani's 2017 SEC deposition, obtained by ABC News and featured on “The Dropout” podcast, Theranos first started buying machines from third-party manufacturers like Siemens in 2010 -- a few years before they launched their Wellness Centers inside of Walgreens.
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That's the most bizarre thing. For software, we're all used to the complete fakers running the show, they think software can do anything and we just look the other way. But for a medical device, you would HOPE the founder understood something even minor about medicine, maybe even high school level. But she knew nothing, except for taking a class in entrepreneurship. Maybe we need to be investigating that BS class at Stanford?
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There's no conceivable way for any of us to know whether this person is guilty or innocent.
It seems pretty clear she was running a scam.
Re:How the heck can yo uknow? (Score:4, Insightful)
How can she be innocent, unless she's got a doppelganger? Even if she believed in the tech, then she'd still be no better than L. Ron Hubbard then. Even if you believe you're close to the tech, if you fake the demos to get more funding then you're guilty of fraud, period.
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A case this large, public, and sensationalized cannoy result in a trial which will acquit an innocent person.
OJ Simpson would disagree with you. Look out!
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A case this large, public, and sensationalized cannoy result in a trial which will acquit an innocent person.
Again: I have no idea of her innocence or guilt. Under the circumstances she's going down and we will never know for sure.
OJ Simpson?
Money wins, and she has well paid lawyers. So don't count her out, regardless of her guilt or innocence.
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OJ Simpson walked because the prosecution built a case on a glove found at a suspiciously long time after the murder by a white supremacist long, was worn by the perpetrator.
The problem was the glove didn't come anywhere near fitting OJ Simpson and for a conviction in the state of California it has to be "beyond reasonable doubt".
There was due to the glove not fitting and many many other issues reasonable doubt it was OJ Simpson and the only option in law was acquittal.
In the UK most of the prosecutions evi
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The court can decide if the executives of the company knew about the lying. And if not, they can decide that they are liable for being so stupid to not realize they were lying.
It's one thing ... (Score:3)
Re:It's one thing ... (Score:4, Informative)
It was worse than that. Their lab caused immediate jeopardy to patients. [theverge.com]
I don't really think so (Score:2)
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It really wasn't in use and had never been approved by the FDA. The machines that it had were still technically "demos".
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"hmm... these guys don't seem completely on the level, I'll pass"
This was me and Moviepass...as a customer. I could have used VC money to watch a lot of free movies, but I was too worried that I was going to be the victim to part with any money.
Question in The Headline? (Score:2)
Why even ask it? It's one of the surest signs of lazy reporting / editing.
I think the more appropriate question is why so many investors were unable to tell the difference between smoke and mirrors and actual IP.
The reporter should have started there. But I suppose there's little interest in yet another fool, money, easily parted piece.
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The answer is usually no, however I think in this case is yes but not just in silicon valley but everywhere.
We as a society are just creating bigger and bigger lies, and its acceptable. We just accept the lie, and just say well that's the way it is, it will never change. The problem is that a society that you cannot trust people is a very inefficient society, everything has to be checked independently.
I now find myself question everything any ad says, looking to any slight thing that it omits and assuming t
Startup culture is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
It took me a few years to realize this after working at multiple startups that it's all bullshit.
* Your stock options will be worth a lot when we go public - company never goes public, or fires you before you can start getting stock options.
* The extra hours you put in are investing in yourself - We're too cheap to pay OT so we pay you salary with the expectations of 50+ hours a week
* We believe in an inclusive culture - We will coddle anyone who cries to avoid a lawsuit
* We're different, our working hours are from 10am to 7pm - Don't bother applying if you have a family
* We have onsite free food and snacks - You cannot leave, not even for lunch.
* We have unlimited PTO - but we track it
* We're a unicorn/rocketship - We use buzzwords
I don't know which company burned me out, I guess all of them. Maybe it was the software company that used Tata and Infosys so the CTO could import his whole family and put them in management positions, maybe it was the game company who's CEO who was called "A bigger Diva than Mariah Carey", Maybe it was the multitudes of companies I worked at in the 90's through the 2000's, all with the same bullshit, all of the same lies.
I feel like this should be taught in college. "How to spot a bullshit company". I work for the government now. I'm grateful that I have a set schedule, OT is optional and rare, I get all the federal holidays. Sure you get the same ego's and nonsense you do in the public sector, but it's less, a lot less because people know that firing is rare, we're all in this jail cell together so we better get along.
If you're 20 something looking for a career in Silicon Valley, take it from a 30 year veteran like me. It's all bullshit. All these companies care about is making a buck, and they don't care who they have to step on to get there. The only ones that get rich are the C level execs with preferred stocks and the shareholders, even then it's a crapshoot. That one CTO I was talking about earlier? He got rich enough to buy a few condominiums that he rents out. Big whoop. It's a zero sum game for them now too.
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"We have unlimited PTO"
It doesn't accrue and if the workload is such you CAN'T take time off... So when you, burned out and over worked you quit, you don't get the unused time on your final check.
They dare not track it... If they do, the tracking WILL be become evidence and the unpaid PTO becomes the same HUGE debt liability on their books as if it had accrued.
Unlimited PTO is an indicator they don't have proper staffing and know it.
Also: When this is stopped the company folds. (Score:3)
We have onsite free food and snacks - You cannot leave, not even for lunch.
A variant (actually, the original form) was bringing in dinner during the buildup as the company develops from proof-of-concept to shipping, going public, ramping up, etc. Sometimes for sprints, sometimes as policy.
At some point new management starts looking around for ways to save money. Unforutnately (for the company) they sometimes see the expense of the free dinners and decide to cut them off to save a few bucks. This is a ter
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Your options are about to become worthless and any stock you've got will tank soon. So get a new job while you're still working at a company that appears to be successful and up-and-coming, rather than laid off from a company that is starting to tank.
Also: If possible (i.e. they've gone public), dump your stock and exercise-and-sell on your vested options, before it tanks.
Doot, doot, doot. Come on, take the money and run. (It's what the C-suite clique will be doing soon. Why shouldn't you?)
Re:Startup culture is a lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Take it from a 40+ year old veteran: it's not all bullshit and mirrors, but a lot of it is. Be smart, and you too can win.
Do you want stock/options? Yes!
Do you want those options to have an expiration window upon your exit (whether on good or bad terms), where you have to pony up a bucket of your own cash to "buy out" your options? NO!
It's literally your money. DO NOT accept "stock options" that aren't real. Fictitious dreams of "going to IPO one day and then you can sell out big" are just that: dreams. Don't accept fictitious, funny-money carrots. If your stock/option has no buyer, then it has no value. Period.
If the company you work for is already publicly listed, you MUST DEMAND stock allocation as part of your compensation. It's called "living wage + your future". Your living wage is cash, your future is RSU grants. Make sure you can live on the cash without selling the stock, after that the stock you get becomes a real incentive toward making sure your company doesn't suck, without risking your daily livelihood.
If the company you work for is NOT listed, then you MUST DEMAND fully tradable future options or shares on a platform/marketplace where you can actively exchange them with others for real cash. If you have no available buyer, your funny-money is worth zero dollars. Don't find yourself in that situation.
In all cases, the value of your RSU options/shares should be about equal to your cash living wage, or better, as of the time of the offer/contract (ie, you are theoretically making 2x your cash income, just 1/2 of that is funny-money). If your RSUs are options, then those options must vest into real private stock ownership (still fully tradable on the same platform/marketplace) at a reasonable timeframe (most common is a 4 year window, ~25% per year). Again, DO NOW let your options have some fucked up "buyout within 30 days of separation or forfeit" clause -- those are sadly very common, and they are really shitty deals from shitty companies.
Cmon guys! This isn't really all that hard. It's called making businesses put their money where their mouth's are! If they believe the business has a solid design and is going to moon no matter what, then they won't care if their employees get fat along the way as well. In fact, it's way more fun for everyone involved when you all get rich as fuck together!
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Can't moderate you up, since I have already posted in this thread.
Agreed 100% with what you are saying. And like I said in my other post, employees have to do their own research and not just join any random startup blindly.
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Oddly, I just turned 40 and I've found this kind of realization so important in so many parts of life.
Is a large portion of life bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of the government bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of religion bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of culture bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of work bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of relationships bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of friendships bullshit? Yes.
Is a large portion of family bullshit? Yes.
Okay, now that we've established that and I'm n
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I just have to add this story because it literally happened this weekend. :)
I swear the age of 40 is magical
A good friend of mine disappeared for a while. It was a slow deterioration of bad life circumstances after bad life circumstances. He ended up living in his van. So we couldn't even try and help him.
Finally, I manged to meet up with him and we drank and just talked about life. His biggest problem is not that he lives in his van. That's what we were all worried about. His biggest problem was he just co
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I have worked at and with multiple startups. Everyone in it is fully aware that it's not a normal job and everyone is there hoping that they can retire / have FU money / do anything they want / start their own startup after a few of years.
Problem for employess is figuring out which startup has a better chance of becoming big and hit the IPO stage. As long as you don't join startups which you think have stupid ideas, and you are comfortable with taking a risk for a few years, go ahead. Not to mention, you ha
It's the men thinking below the waist (Score:1, Flamebait)
The problem is more men thinking below the waist. Theranos had a long list of board members that were people you had heard of - influential people successful in their field. Former Generals, Admirals, Ambassadors, US government ministers, even a couple of medical people (management medics, though, not practicing doctors).
All of them men, all of them somewhat older, all of them easily (it would seem) dazzled and persuaded by a confident and very attractive woman telling them very persuasive things, and very
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Regardless you are old or young, if someone approaches you to be a director in a company, with X money every month or year and just have to turn up occasionally for a meeting, assuming you are satisfied that it's not illegal / the company is not doing anything illegal, will you start asking questions?
Or will you just do the minimum and get your pot of gold?
Especially if the company asking you has some big name / big money backing?
You will assume the people backing her have done their homework. And it will b
Not just Silicone Valley (Score:3)
This is the culture of the entire financial industry. Nothing has changed since the last few crashes over the centuries, even the players are the same. I mean, really, how far back does Wells Fargo go? Business is business, nothing new under the sun.
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This needs an "Insightful" mod if I ever saw it.
He's right -- the financial sector is responsible for something like 30% of the very unfairly distributed GDP. Prior to the Elite cancer that started in the 1980's that figure was something like 3%, and manufacturing i.e, JOBS for normal people , made up the bulk of the economy. Like Warren Buffet said, the Elites have been waging war against the lower classes for decades, and they are winning. Looking at the corruption and fraud speaks volumes more about them
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Prior to the Elite cancer that started in the 1980's
:-) Well, you're kind of off by about a century. While the 1980s saw the slippery slope turn into a cliff, things really got started during/after Reconstruction..
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Yeah, it could be debated (and I thought about it, but just to keep things simple...)
Historically the upper crust has been screwing everyone else since time began. When they run out of others to screw over, they either have the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, or the turn on each other.
Tl;dr -- Lord of the Flies is *not* an instruction manual. But some people seem to think it is. That is the problem.
Abductive Junction (Score:1)
The fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes begins this week, and it promises to be an enjoyable bit of theater for those interested in the workings of the Cloud People. Holmes founded a company called Theranos when she was just 19-years-old. She had dropped out of Stanford and promised to deliver miracle drug testing equipment. She attracted the support of all the beautiful people, who saw her as the living example of everything the Cloud People believed about the world.
In reality, the company had nothing to offer
Yes, there is a problem in venture capital sector. (Score:3)
So if someone cracks the signaling system to pass the smell test in a few early encounters, they can go pretty high before crashing and burning.
If anything it's a problem with investors (Score:2, Interesting)
If anything it's a problem with investors, not with startups. Investors are being blinded by buzzwords and snake oil. They need better bullshit detectors.
Depends on the type of startup and technology (Score:2)
OTOH, imagine a startup selling flying cars that is says can drive like normal cars, but take off v
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If your plan for both problems is "fake it til you make it", things will go to shit very quickly.
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Anyone buying a car based on the promise of full-self-driving with a future software upgrade has been conned.
Andy Grove Fallacy (Score:2)
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
Absolutely (Score:2)
Anyone who's worked in SV knows this and it's not really a secret outside of SV either.
For good reason. (Score:4, Interesting)
And for good reason: IP protection for a startup by anything but secrecy is ineffective. So they have to try to keep it from leaking and race to be one of the no-more-than-three companies that "make it through the window".
Exposing enough to potential investors to get investments and not have them use the knowledge to pick another player (and maybe leak your IP to them) instead is a balancing act. The investors know this. It's on THEM to watch out for their own interests, finding out enough to be reasonably confident the pitch is real and the team can follow through. This is what "due diligence" IS.
Of course that creates a situation ripe for con men (or women) to run a scam. The people best able to protect the investors are the investors themselves, but in the case of clear, deliberate, fraud the courts are an appropriate remedy. The penalties need to be draconian enough that the expectation (profit from scam - (likelyhood of conviction * cost of conviction )) is negative, or the risk is just a cost of running scams as a business model.
It's endemic (Score:2)
It's part of the culture:
http://fortune.com/silicon-val... [fortune.com]
Prosecutors are letting it slide:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
Nope! (Score:2)
There have been charlatans in business since as long as there is recorded history. This particular situation isn't new. "A fool and his money are soon parted." Never forget that, as it is literally the capitalist investment mantra.
To all you fools who dumped your cash into vaporware: "Sorry, not sorry. That's the game. Thanks for playing. Better do your due diligence next time. Hope you learned from your expensive mistake."
The only things that matter in silicon valley star (Score:3)
The only two things that matter in silicon valley startup culture are:
1. Who else is investing. Big names on the investor list have a huge influence on who invests.
2. How much money is being invested. The bigger the investments, the more others are likely to invest larger sums.
All you need are big names and big dollar signs.
How many good ideas never made it? (Score:2)
I'm more interested in how many good ideas didn't get funding because they didn't have someone with a +10 Charisma rating to blow smoke up the asses of investors.
So bad (Score:2)
It's so bad in silicon valley, that the greatest world-changing inventions of all time have come from there in just a few decades. Better fix that, or more good things might happen.
Common Silicon Valley red flag phrases (Score:2)
Changing the world.
Saving lives.
Revolutionizing X.
When I hear them I run the other direction because 99% of the time it is pure hubris.
But those catchphrases are catnip to a VC.
How is this even a question? (Score:1)
It was the same with most of "the gig economy". The valley has long si