Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes: Willful Blindness or Fraud?

Thesis: How does a 19-year-old Stanford drop-out with an interesting medical concept and a charming story be crowned Silicon Valley's first female unicorn and creates a company valued at $9 billion?
Introduction of presenters and overview of what we are going to present. (A).

I. Willful blindness is seeing only those things we want to see while consciously avoiding those things we don't want to see, at our own peril and at the peril of others. (A)

A. The reasons we don't allow ourselves to see what we should see are psychological, social and structural.
i. Psychological (fears, blind spots, brain overload)
ii. Social (unconscious biases, comfort zones, conformity)
iii. Structural (hierarchical, authoritative, justification)

B. The legal system views willful blindness as an attempt to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting oneself in a position to be ignorant of the facts.
i. Historical legal view
ii. Willful blindness vs Fraud
iii. Current legal view

C. The dangers of willful blindness include economic loss, impaired reputations, public humiliation, civil/criminal liability, illness and even death.
i. Cults
ii. Health Care
iii. Business, Banking & Investing

D. Recognizing willful blindness goes hand-in-hand with establishing steps to remove it.
i. Transparency
ii. Self-Awareness (willful awareness)
iii. Skepticism
iv. Ethical Leadership

II. Background and History (B)

A. Background of Elizabeth Holmes
i. Background & Family
ii. Personal Traits
iii. First Female Steve Jobs
a. Reminiscent of Steve Jobs (black turtlenecks)
b. Both have life changing innovative ideas.
c. They are both college dropouts
d. They have/had a very hands on management approach and very secretive
e. Their companies are their lives
f. Similarly recognized by the media
B. Brief history of Silicon Valley
i. Silicon Valley economy
ii. Definition of unicorn mania concept
iii. Tech Unicorn - Startup company valued over 1 Billion

III. Company Foundation(C)

A. Promising Medical breakthrough
i. Promising medical breakthrough or ambiguous medical breakthrough
ii. Blood testing technology had potential to revolutionize the medical field
a. Quick and convenient
b. Shift some trust from doctors to patients (giving patients some control over their diagnosis.
c. Inexpensive
d. Saves lives
e. Access to third world countries
f. Can test anything from cholesterol to cancer
iii. If this had worked it would have worked well, would have been a big success, hence the promise

B. Near perfect Packaging - Silicon Valley and Enablers
i. Different rules that apply to Silicon Valley Companies
ii. Washington Post "we need to allow entrepreneurs to take risk and break some rules so that they can do their magic thus invent life changing things."
iii. However they should not break the ethical rules - Theranos/Ms Holmes did
iv. New technologies and regulatory loopholes
v. Silicon valley is a free zone and enablers (powerful authoritative figures) do not understand what is going on - generation gap- hence they become enablers. A smart (maybe not so smart) 19 year old talking to people in their 50s

C. Layers of optimism (Lies)
i. Ms. Holmes state of mind
a. How much she buys into her mission and idea
b. Her own willful blindness / escalation of commitment theory
c. She can't see her own failures so she digs in her own heels
ii. Enablers and World's optimism
a. Society wants to move forward and in light of a promising innovation people will jump on the bandwagon.

IV. Enablers(D)

A. Board of Directors
i. A dozen white elderly men with no background in healthcare or technology
ii. Different description from Therano's spokesman and actual BOD background and poor governance

B. Parent Support and connection
i. Parents in public service
ii. Her Tuition money and parents' retirement funds
iii. Holmes's father's friend

C. Partners/Investors/Media
i. The First and direct to customer retail partner - Walgreens
a. Hoped to follow to growth of the hottest unicorns when announcing partnership with Theranos in more than 8000 stores in 2013
b. Walgreen halt any expansion of Theranos wellness center and stopped testing after federal regulators warned and refused to send collect samples to California lab.
ii. Distance itself from this blindness and threaten to end the relationship
iii. Walgreens cautiously getting out of this blindness but tie to contracts and damage to its own reputation.

D. Pump and dump venture capitalists
i. Top 10% VC generate 10 times greater than average in Silicon Valley and life science investors almost had at least PhD or MD degree
ii. Google Venture turned down Therano twice because of "so much hand-waving" and need to validate its diagnostic technology
iii. No strong peer reviewed publication and lack of experience in health care
iv. Tim Draper, first million Venture Capitalist known MS Holmes since her childhood
v. Holmes's father's friend introduced Don Lucas who invested in Oracle later on

E. Free advertising when Holmes face is all over media's covers
i. Next Female Steve Jobs; Beautiful and perfect white tech woman
ii. Shots in black and white with her hair up, black turtleneck favored,
iii. After False positives, media began using the worst Holmes phone they could ever find
iv. Subject of a US Criminal Probe title with anger tone

F. White House
v. Speak on panels with Bill Clinton; Ted talks; named as global ambassador
vi. Joe Biden appear at Theranos facilities and press conference with Ms. Holmes about future of personal healthcare
vii. Voluntarily stepped down from the Obama administration's entrepreneurial PAGE program

V. Current Status of Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes(E)

A. After Wall Street Journal published the deeply critical piece of Theranos, Theranos has experienced a rapid fall from grace - withserious scrutiny (and some damaging allegations) coming from the media, the government and the company's business partners.

B. Regulators
i. The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) released inspection reports that are critical of Theranos' device classification, internal recordkeeping and lab protocols.
ii. The CMS (Centers for Medical and Medicaid Services Certification) released a report which detailed a numbers of deficiencies with Theranos procedures and testing results.
iii. Theranos is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors and SEC
iv. The CMS also revoked the license of its blood-testing facility and banned Elizabeth for owning and operating the lab for two years.

C. Partners/Investors/Media
i. Google Ventures stopped investing in Theranos.
ii. Walgreen terminated the partnership with Theranos.
iii. Theranos‘s potential $350 million deal with Safeway fizzled out.
iv. Forbes downgraded Theranos from $9 billion to $800 million and alleged Elizabeth for nothing.

D. Layoffs & Lawsuits
i. Theranos fired 340 employees and shut down its clinical lab while changing its focus to minilab.
ii. Theranos was sued by Partner Fund Management, which was one of the biggest investor of Theranos.
iii. Theranos faces at least eight lawsuits filed in federal courts in California and Arizona by patients who claim that faulty blood tests led to heart attacks or other issues.

Summary of what we presented.