The general scam of unrealistic promises then under-delivering is such a well worn trope that while gender surely played a part in it (as it is a big part of social perceptions in general) I hesitate to blame it here. I think for anyone who has been in tech for a while it doesn't take an imagination to picture a man doing pretty much the same thing

I just read this article about a Stephen Hawking biography that talks about how "Hawking’s overweening ambition and self-promotion, his repeated failure to acknowledge the work of others, his sexism and controlling behaviour were largely ignored because of his disability" so identity perception by the public does in fact contribute to how people think about their achievements.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/07/hawking-by-gra...

This is also a big reason for e.g. the Wirecard fiasco in Germany: Everyone, especially the politicians, really wanted a fin tech blue chip out of dot-de and wanted desperately to believe.

That said, Holmes being a woman is also why we're discussing this documentary and why everyone is almost gleefully interested in her downfall. If a man had done this one it'd have all blown over long ago.

It sure did. And it backfired in a way that could make future female innovators guilty by association. I can see investors asking themselves "That girl looks sharp, but is she another Elizabeth Holmes?"

My memory is from when I was an advisor for Google Ventures. Theranos had come by looking for funding but wouldn't talk with GV except with an NDA (and VC will usually not sign NDAs). That made GV suspicious so they sent an employee to get tested by the device and noticed the test results came from a competitor's machine.

They wisely decided she was full of shit, and didn't invest.

Of all the ways Theranos was a scam, the gender thing was pretty much the last. She was wealthy, stacked the board with all the wrong sorts of people but the right sorts of people for corrupt contracts.

Reminiscent of what happened with Jason Arday[0].

[0] https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/08/04/the-bizarre-tale-o...

Yes, 100%

Certain people were so desperate for the female Steve Jobs, that when a woman came along literally cosplaying Jobs, they jumped without asking any questions.

Yes, my daughter and I still will randomly say "worlds youngest self-made female billionaire" to each other and laugh when we hear someone use a phase that is only true because of an excessive number of qualifiers.

At the time women were (and still are) underdogs in STEM, so it's no surprise your professor would want to highlight that. For all the rest of were aware, she really was a successful health-tech founder

Weird to put together "female and young": females are discriminated against, but it is older people, not younger ones, that are discriminated too. This ain't Japan, were seniority is king. This is America, where you are in decline after 30.

Have you ever wondered the same about other scams? Who else do you think was shaped "correctly"? Also, isn't affinity fraud most types of fraud?

I remember the endless glazing of Sam Bankman-Fried being pretty similar. Pretty sure they engineered it that way. Sell the idea of success. Trump did the exact same thing.

Yeah, the same for POTUS. scams are best lead by people who both wNt to believe and hangerons that want to profit on the grift. In isolation, its typically just a cult. Throw in capitalism and suddenly, theres real stakes around the belief.

She cosplayed Steve Jobs with the sweater, had obviously studied the west coast CEO bullshit trope stuff, and everything and used her earnest attractive nature to dupe a bunch of well known old men to endorse her.

Being female was a part of the grift but not the most notable. Many male grifters do the same thing without the girl power thing.

Being female is key for the sympathy play after the fact, and this little exercise to fish for a pardon from POTUS with a documentary. She went from Steve Jobs Girlboss to exploited victim, boo hoo.

It's like reading the title of the post and skipping reading the actual post. She embodied a popular identity, offered a popularly STEMmy business plan, and the rest was skipped.

Word to wise entrepreneurs.

[dead]

Somewhat relevant from The Economist.

> Woke 1 was about identity. Woke 2 is about class

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/09/03/woke-1-wa...

It's a wider take on [Goodhart's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law):

- young female founders running successful businesses appear to be exceptionally skilled because they have been fighting against the current for their entire life. And the future of that company is double-boosted: They have an exceptionally good founder at the helm, and that founder is going to get even more free media coverage than they normally would.

- ... therefore if I see a young female founder, say no more, I will extrapolate from historic facts and conclude that the company is highly likely to be successful.

- ... and Goodhart's Law kicks in. Whether it is because those with intent to defraud realize what they need to do / they were always around but are now no longer filtered out, or it's simply because the Constanza-liars (they believe their own lies) are not being reality checked anymore doesn't matter: The measurement tool 'is a young female founder' has lost all its predictive power.

- even worse, if the relevant parts of society (the editors of financial newspapers, the bigwigs at investment corps) don't sniff the change in the wind fast enough, we get a new oversimplified yardstick: Someone is going to conclude 'might as well treat every young female founder as a fraud, because statistically they probably are!'

I think your innate sense here is the right answer: The original sin here is treating the identity of the founder as the only significant aspect. Not a heck of a lot of inquiry and skepticism about the promise of Theranos was required to start unravelling that whole mess.

Or the other way: The reason the scam was caught was because people were looking for flaws. Society gives a lot of grace to male scammers.