Embed from Getty Images
On May 30, Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison to start serving her 11 year sentence. Even though it’s a minimum-security prison, she’ll be subjected to constant surveillance and monitoring. Which is the kind of treatment she gave her employees, as it turns out. Business Insider [via Yahoo] used this opportunity to report some details about Theranos office culture from journalist John Carrreyrou’s book Bad Blood. Carreyrou’s the one whose reporting for the Wall Street Journal blew the story wide open, and Bad Blood was published back in 2018. I’m sure it surprises no one that Elizabeth used many tactics to keep her employees working late, including ordering dinners every night that arrived after 8PM, so that employees couldn’t leave until 10 PM.

Being monitored constantly is something Elizabeth Holmes will have to get used to after finally beginning her 11-year sentence on May 30.

According to John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” the Theranos founder was obsessed with monitoring how many hours her employees were putting in, and would find ways to keep them working late.

One of these approaches involved getting dinner delivered to the Theranos office every night. However, Holmes timed the delivery between 8 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., meaning staff often weren’t leaving work until 10 p.m., according to the book.

Ordering communal dinners was reportedly one of several unusual tactics Holmes, who tried to model herself on Steve Jobs, would use to both inspire and intimidate Theranos employees.

According to the book, Holmes’ assistants would track the arrival and departure time of workers each day, while IT staff would monitor the software being on employees’ computers. She also had her team add employees on Facebook and tell Holmes what they were posting, Carreyrou wrote.

The surveillance state Holmes appeared to run at Theranos may not be too far removed from her new life at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.

According to The Journal and an inmate handbook for the Bryan camp, she will be woken at 6 a.m. daily, and face five headcounts a day.

[From Business Insider via Yahoo]

Ah, how the turn tables. (I know that’s not the expression, but it is my favorite malapropism.) The controlling boss is now subject to even more intense surveillance than what her employees experienced. I wish I could say that Holmes’s downfall changed Silicon Valley for the better. The failures of businesses like Theranos and WeWork have definitely made investors more cautious. Then the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank changed the mood even more. I lived in the Bay Area for seven years, I saw how billions of dollars just flying around changed the whole region. It all happened so quickly that it felt surreal to be there. Now San Francisco–which used to be a vibrant, fun place–is a hollowed-out shell of itself, plagued with homelessness and drug addiction. Meanwhile, the ones who made good sit at rooftop lounges drinking $21 rosemary Palomas. It’s dystopian. But the company culture issues at Bay Area startups probably still remain. The tactics of control the article describes Elizabeth using–ordering dinners to get people to stay longer, tracking how long people are logged in, following them on social media–none of that seems that abnormal to me? I guess I’ve come to expect that level of surveillance from an employer, at least in white-collar office jobs. I’m a young-ish millennial so maybe that’s why. I’d be curious to know if any of you have experienced that kind of surveillance at a startup.

Something that does make me sad is that female founders still get a really tiny amount of venture capital funding–about two percent of VC money goes to women-owned startups as of March 2023. If they do get funding, they still have to work harder to be taken seriously or to get more money raised down the line. I think Elizabeth Holmes has made it harder for other female founders to get funding because she was such a fraud and a trickster, and we all know how primed people are to believe the worst about women. I don’t have any stats to back that up, it’s just my hunch. And it’s also even more difficult for women of color to get funding. Black-owned businesses account for two percent of all VC funding, and Black women founders get less than one percent. Anyway, I wonder what will become of Elizabeth’s hair while she’s inside. Will it return to the straw-like staticky mess of her glory days?

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images