Time to stop "Fake it till you make it" culture
Last night, I watched The Inventor, an HBO documentary about Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. It’s a version of the story that was so brilliantly reported by John Carreyrou in his book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
In the retelling, the documentary invokes Thomas Edison, who used a series of lies and half-truths after making a claim that he had solved the incandescent light bulb problem. It would be four years before he could deliver a working bulb, but he faked it till he made it.
Carreyrou, who is interviewed in the film, makes the point that Holmes was part of that same “fake it till you make it” ethos, which has become a part of Silicon Valley folklore. It’s a story I have been told so many times by so many founders. In most cases, the faking was required to buy time to finesse a product. Other times, it was in order to raise money or to get a company sold to a large buyer.
But that kind of thinking has no place in modern technology ecosystem. The opportunities that many of our more successful young companies are targeting have life-altering impacts on real people. Whether it is the algorithms that dictate autonomous vehicles or facial recognition systems, a small error can make all the difference. Dodgy decisions could literally mean death.
Theranos, Nurx, and UBiomeare wake-up calls that should remind us why everyone in the ecosystem has to adopt a more conscious and empathetic approach to developing their technology. I am worried that, if we don’t, then the world at large will continue to lose trust in technology companies — a dangerous trend that has already begunwith Facebook.
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Managing Partner at RE/MAX Saskatoon
5yThat documentary was shocking! FOMO... I don’t feel like any lessons were learned
Inner Leadership + Team Coherence | Founder @ Brain Spa | Co-Founder @ 100 Days | Former diplomat, TED speaker, embodied mindfulness expert, yoga teacher and mom
5yI really appreciate the call out on "fake it 'till you make it" thinking. I agree it's a critical time to get this right. And, because of this, I'd like to see a more nuanced assessment of where this kind of thinking leads to disaster. What is the line between telling a story of a new reality that is in the making <and> telling a story of a new reality that never becomes (or doesn't become in the way that was first imagined)? To use a specific example: ... can we agree on the tipping point in Theranos' journey from reality in the making <to> outright lie?
Digital Marketing, User Experience Design (UX) and Project Management Professional| Member of the digital nomad movement| Dual citizen U.S. and Spain\E.U.
5yTheranos as well as others are an alarming trend that our society is moving into a realm of lies and scams which are readily accepted and followed. Holmes is nothing more than a well developed conwoman as are many other individuals like her.