Less than one decade ago, Elizabeth Holmes was the darling of Silicon Valley. After dropping out of Stanford University, she launched a startup called Theranos, which claimed to have mastered the extraordinarily complex biochemistry problem of testing for a variety of diseases from a single drop of blood. Only after she secured a $9 billion valuation for her company and deceived the nation’s most important power brokers, from James Mattis to Hillary Clinton, was her venture revealed to be utterly fraudulent. She is now on her way to federal prison.
Around the same time, fintech entrepreneur Dan Price made headlines for giving himself a massive pay cut to ensure that no employee at his company would ever earn less than $70,000, a move that The New York Times called a “swashbuckling blow against income inequality.” More recently, however, the Gravity Payments executive resigned his post amid charges of fourth-degree assault, fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation, and reckless driving. The purportedly big-hearted executive allegedly cornered a woman in his Tesla, attempting to kiss her and grabbing her throat when she declined his overtures.
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