In a January 4 opinion piece for the New York Times, Bethany McLean had this to say about the outcome of the Elizabeth Holmes trial: “A jury’s verdict is black-and-white, but the real story is rarely so simple. We think of visionaries and fraudsters as polar opposites. In reality… many of today’s great entrepreneurs have some characteristics of both.”
The day before, on January 3, a Palo Alto jury found the Theranos founder and former CEO guilty on four of 11 charges. A lot of the media has chosen the easy out — presenting the verdicts as either just comeuppance for a “delusional sociopath” or a referendum on Silicon Valley. I don’t buy either. Life’s not easy, and launching successful businesses is almost always messy.