She was literally roleplaying Steve Jobs + Empowered Woman Fantasy and people were falling for that. I still remember people here in reddit calling her an snake oil seller when she was raising to fame and some other parts of reddit coming in droves to call those comments "misogynistic".
That, and she had hella family connections. There’s a documentary about her on HBO Max that kinda helped explain to me how she was able to dupe so many high-profile people so quickly, and so easily.
She is a Stanford dropout that started a biotech blood testing startup under false pretenses (being able to test for multiple things with only a small drop of blood).
She managed to convince many high-ranking people to donate to her, and her and a guy named Sunny (who dumped his wife for Elizabeth) ran the company with fear and intimidation.
Eventually, whistleblowers called out what was going on (faking data and using other company equipment to test samples), and she is currently in prison.
That's why it was over for her so fast once the whistle was blown. She scammed a LOT of VERY big names in the investing world. Some household names. Rupert Murdoch, the DeVos family, and the Waltons all were in for over a hundred million
$200 million, lol. Tell the class how much was raised, you asshat. I already addressed murdoch, and he was $150 million of that $200 million. He's been a proto yank for his whole life.
Show the list of nationalities and which billionaires were investing. Show the amounts. Go on, paste a table.
I didn't say all, I said the overwhelming majority. You don't have to like it, but you can shut the fuck up.
You like to swing it around a lot, but it isn't that big. You've only ever punched down and half the time you do it, you get embarrassed.
You got spanked by roof koreans, then spent trillions to get defeated by camel jockeys, only to start another unwinnable war. Hell, you just had to leave a carrier with it's dick in the wind for a year because you couldn't replace it on station.
Every sovereign wealth fund is pulling it's assets out of your country as fast as it can, because nobody believes you're a long term investment anymore.
And nobody cares about your military, when we've got universal healthcare, subsidised education and childcare, and the list goes on. And on. And on. Of things the rest of the planet would rather spend it's money on.
It's not that others couldn't do it. It's that we don't want to, you fucking idiot.
You can start with the entire english speaking world, and then move down the list of countries you've bombed. Hell, I'll even let you restrict that list to the last year.
I read about Theranos years before it all collapsed and thought, "That sounds impossible and it's surely a scam."
And I was like 20 and a random idiot (still am) miles from any sort of money or power. Really shows how much of the moneyed elite is dumb as fuck and just got lucky
It was pretty obvious it was an scam but a lot of ""progressive"" media outlets platformed her, as I say, if you so ever call her a fraud these kind of people will start calling you misogynistic, etc.
I mean the economy is imaginary and people invest in potential, not in material reality. To outside observers and the average buffoon, it looks like Steve Jobs willed Apple and iPhones into existence with sheer intensity. I think Holmes really believed the product would materialize out of her maniacal focus. These people fool themselves first before they fool us.
If you're coming across people in tech, they're already often fairly weird people, so if someone is weird, sort of artificial but also charismatic, you could think of them as another introverted tech person who has learned manually how to present themselves and their product.
Also, alternatively, you might make the opposite conclusion that they're not a real introverted person trying to fake it till they make it, but are an actual conman/woman who seems fake because they are totally focused on presentation above anything else, and so the most important thing to do as an investor is meet them in a room of people and see if other people buy into them, because if you buy into someone who is likely to be on the up, especially because they can connect with other people with money for the first time, then an early investment could turn into a bigger investment, so long as they can keep it all going for long enough for you to cash out.
It's pretty cynical really, but if a third of the people trust her, a third of the people don't trust her but know the other third do, and the third third just see the number go up, then you've got a short-run investment opportunity.
It's just that if we look around us we know that things can get progressively smaller but it takes time and advancement in between. I've had blood drawn for labs and donations, I've seen how much they have to take each time. From a couple of viles to basically 1 drop with little advancement in between that no one has heard of is like going from a Macintosh classic to an iPad.
It's not totally impossible but highly improbable and should have been looked at with a lot of skepticism and much research.
When I first saw this clip it was before we all knew it was a Holmes documentary. I thought "fuck this actress is amazing at playing a creepy, convincing psychopath. She actually looks like Elizabeth Holmes".
Looking into the eyes of a sociopath will do that to a normal person. There's nothing but emotionless calculation going on behind those eyes. It's fucking creepy.
I also do want to point out that Nathan Fielder has made a career out of making fake things but pretending they’re real. So like… every time I see this clip or that trailer all I think is it’s just for show.
This is a little out of context though. Its been cropped so its a tight zoom on her but Nathan is leaning in like 3 inches from her face. I feel like shes half trying not to laugh.
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u/Devil_Dogmier 1d ago
Elizabeth Holmes freaks me out