Elizabeth Holmes became a ‘symbol carrying all these hopes and aspirations’: Margaret O’Mara
Margaret O’Mara, Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor for the Department of History at University of Washington, sat down with Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan to discuss the rise and fall of the tech company Theranos and what made it a compelling investment to some as the trial for former CEO Elizabeth Holmes is set to begin on Tuesday.
Video Transcript
MARGARET O'MARA: This is at a moment when Silicon Valley and the world seems to be in love with Stanford and Harvard dropouts and the potential for these very young people to start companies that could potentially change the world. Mark Zuckerberg, of course, is the ultimate poster child for this. Facebook is ascendant. This is before, you know, when Facebook could-- you know, was hosting town hall meetings for President Obama when the mood around tech and the exuberance about its possibilities was really running at an all-time high.
ALEXIS KEENAN: So how does Holmes' lineage really fit into the Valley's startup culture? Is she similar to some of those people that you just mentioned, her peers, or is she distinctly different?
MARGARET O'MARA: She's-- it's yes, and. She's both a product of Silicon Valley and reflection of Silicon Valley's culture. Again, it's a place with a long history of very young, untested founders who are shepherded along by investors and mentors from an older tech generation. But at the same time, she's different. And in one really important way, one big, big difference that I think is really important to reckoning with the Theranos phenomenon, and Elizabeth Holmes in particular, is she's a woman.
And almost every single one of these stories of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are they're men, most of them white men. She's not only coming-- coming-- starting this company at a moment when youth, the Stanford pedigree, all those things are being celebrated and valued, but also right at the moment when Silicon Valley is beginning to reckon with the intense gender disparity that has characterized it from the very beginning. Here comes this young woman, blonde, in a black turtleneck, ala Steve Jobs, who seems to be exhibiting these characteristics.
But it's a woman, so there's-- there's this-- you know, in a way, it becomes-- she becomes the symbol kind of carrying all of these hopes and aspirations and this history along with her.
ALEXIS KEENAN: Are there any other parties that bear any level of responsibility for the downfall of Theranos? And if so, which of those parties, in your mind, should the jury hear about?
MARGARET O'MARA: So, no company is the product of one person. That's-- I mean, one of the Silicon Valley myths is we-- you know, it over-indexes the importance of people like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, or these individuals who, of course, their brilliance, their leadership is responsible for a good deal of, you know, the success of their companies. But they don't do it alone.
You have other senior leadership that are sharing responsibility. They're also steering the company's direction. You have a board. I mean, that's why these companies have boards of advisors. You have investors. And particularly in the cases of tech companies and Silicon Valley companies that have very young, untested founders, the role of these mentors, investors, these guides in kind of showing that person, the entrepreneur, the ropes, showing them how it's done, encouraging them, encouraging them on a certain path. It's really important.
So I'm going to be looking to hear more about who did what when, who knew what when. And, you know, Elizabeth Holmes certainly was the face of this company. She was the leadership of this company. She embraced that role. She pushed that direction. But she was not-- you know, there were a lot of other people involved in this scandal.
ALEXIS KEENAN: So what questions do you still have today about Theranos and Holmes that you hope the trial will answer?
MARGARET O'MARA: You know, look, we've had some really extraordinary reporting delving into the Theranos story, and so a lot of answers post hoc have been uncovered. But I think I'd like to see some broader understanding of accountability and responsibility and how this runaway train left the station. You know, how we get from a Stanford undergraduate who's being encouraged by a couple of professors to only a few years later this-- you know, this enormous company that is just supposed to be-- you know, that has all of this, you know, incredibly high valuation, that is hiring out all these people, that is occupying this palatial campus right at the center of the action on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto in the Stanford Research Park.
Let's face it, the adults around her, the older, the wiser people, the people with experience in business and in finance and in other realms of leadership, you know, how did the irrational exuberance of Silicon Valley in the 20-teens help create Theranos? And then also, how much did people know that this was not what it seemed, and when did they know it?
