Integrity matters - A silicon valley 700M startup fraud and CitiCorp HQ building
Coincidentally I learnt two very different while highly relevant stories this week, the key thing connected these two true stories is Integrity.
1st Story — Theranos, the silicon valley born blood-testing unicorn company started by then-19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, who was positioned as the “female” Steve Jobs before the fraud was found out.
“Business figures, government officials, and international magnates invested more than $700 million in an ambitious company promising to revolutionize blood testing — Theranos. ” While ended up a big fraud, disclosed by John Carreyrou working for WSJ.
“Carreyrou uncover one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. Theranos had no working technology. It had lied about the efficacy of its product, and in so doing, deceived its investors and partners. If not caught, the company would have put hundreds of thousands of patients at risk of misdiagnosis.” — From https://thesixfifty.com/meet-the-investigative-journalist-who-pulled-back-the-curtain-on-elizabeth-holmes-and-silicon-600b2030dc66
I do remember the first time I knew about Elizabeth Holmes was the dual interview done by Bill Clinton with Jack Ma. The big difference between her and Jack was Jack already had his biz model and technology proved working, while Elizabeth’s Theranos was built on top of a illusion — she never had a single machine can do what she sold to everyone as one-drop blood can test 200+ different types of diagnostics.
Highly recommend watch the above HBO documentary, well retold all the key events and key characters of this century scandal, maybe the worst so far in Silicon Valley.
While this is a story still developing, the trial is not done yet, to learn more about the future, here you are.
2nd Story — Citicorp HQ skyscraper building in Manhattan, NY. It’s an iconic existence since it was built in 1978 till now with 59 stories and esp. the very unique and futuristic design of the base which composed with 4 super columns positioned in the middle of each sides of the building, instead of at the corners.
William LeMessurier was the structural engineer designed and calculated every aspects of the structure. While he missed one calculation — the strength against the corner wind, which was found by a undergraduate student studying in Princeton, Diane Hartley. She called and reported this to Citicorp and office of William.
The really amazing thing happened next, William did NOT ignore the issue even it was reported by a student, he carefully recalculated it and agreed with the conclusion that the building could fall with wind speed above certain level which definitely could happen in the future. He immediately designed the solution to strengthen the structure and worked with the city, client and get it fixed in 3 months. Since then the story has been used as a textbook type of story in the sense of engineering ethics and integrity.
With his action, hundreds of thousands of people have been saved.
So integrity does matters for both your personal and organizational success! Meanwhile it’s a very important skill for you to be able to spot who is the Elizabeth Holmes around you.
