A veritable soap opera - Silicon Valley-style

A FEW years ago when I was covering events in Washington, DC, I didn't get on time to the opening of a symposium on the relationship between the federal government and the technology industry, and entered the conference hall in the middle of a session addressed by one of the participants.

For a second or two, I thought that I had arrived just as the conference was being entertained by a stand-up comedian: On the stage stood a young woman with bleached blonde hair, tightly pulled back in a bun, wearing a black turtleneck, heavy eyeliner and very red lipstick, speaking very slowly, sounding congested and in a very deep baritone.

Hey, I said to myself, someone is trying to do a spoof of Steve Jobs, playing the role of the female twin of Apple's founder. I didn't understand much of what she said, which was a mishmash of techno mumbo-jumbo and Wall Street-speak. Which I suppose was the point, I thought. She was trying to make fun of your Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who by definition would be trying to look and sound like the legendary Jobs.

But before I had a chance to start laughing I noticed that the attention of the audience - that included top government officials, lawmakers and business executives - seemed to be captivated by the pretty young woman, as though she had the power to command the whole place.

When she concluded her talk, everyone stood up and applauded with a few "Bravos!", including an elderly Dr Henry Kissinger whom I noticed was sitting a few rows in front of me.

"Don't you know who she is," responded a friend when I asked him to identify the speaker, as though I had failed to recognise the president of the United States, or even worse, Kim Kardashian. "You're not on Instagram?"

First and only encounter

That was my first and only encounter with Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the medical technology startup, Theranos, who has been accused of defrauding wealthy investors and cheating sick patients, that included in addition to Dr Kissinger, other public luminaries like the late secretary of state George Shultz and former secretary of defence Jim Mattis, who sat on the board of her company and starred in her marketing campaigns.

They and the members of a spellbound media hailed her as a visionary - forget Steve Jobs, think Marie Curie! - whose ideas would change the world of medicine. You would not have to spend anymore time in a doctor's office going through excruciating blood tests to diagnose your ailment. Holmes and her company devised a way in which a tiny drop of blood would figure out your medical problem.

These days, the audience Holmes is facing and whom she has to woo are the members of a jury and a few spectators gathered in a courtroom in San Jose, California. A federal grand jury indicted her and Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, the former chief executive officer of Theranos, on several counts of wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers. If convicted, Holmes could face up to 20 years in federal prison as well having to pay millions in fines.

During the trial, US versus Holmes, et al, that started in August, and in which she took the stand, Holmes's persona went through a major transformation: She discarded her signature turtleneck, replacing it with blouses and dresses. She wore less makeup, and while her hair is still bleached-blonde, it is wavier and styled into curls.

In her previous look she seemed in control and projecting confidence. After all, since Jobs didn't have to wear a tie and a suit to look like a boss, neither did she have to wear a blouse and a skirt just because she is a woman. With her simple attire and deep voice, she was the perfect Silicon Valley androgynous hotshot.

But now that she is facing a jury of her peers, she doesn't look like the first coming of the female Steve Jobs. She enters the court holding hands with her mother and boyfriend, dressed in attractive but not necessarily trendy business attire, usually a skirt suit, and with low heels.

She is feminine but not too sexy, like a nice lady you would see walking on a crowded street or a mall, but would forget after a minute or two. The former girl wonder with a touch of gravitas has turned into the girl next door.

After the government called 29 witnesses, including former Theranos employees, who accused her of knowingly committing fraud on a large scale, Holmes testified for 7 days. At times smiling, confident and relaxed, but most of the time describing herself as an innocent victim of domineering and evil men, starting with being raped during her studies at Stanford University which was the reason, she said, she dropped out from the school and decided to launch a startup. Not bad grades!

But sobbing occasionally, much of her testimony sounded like a tale of the #metoo era. She accused "Sunny" Balwani - her former boyfriend and partner, 19 years her senior - of bullying and abusing her during their 14-year relationship. He supposedly was responsible for manipulating her, or as she put it, "he impacted everything about who I was, and I don't fully understand it".

Holmes alleges that Balwani, the dominant partner in her business relationship, misled her about the problems facing the company, although she never provided any evidence that he told her to lie to investors, business partners and the media.

Hoodwinked

We now know that Holmes succeeded in fooling members of America's business and political elites and the media in marketing herself as a successful high-tech entrepreneur as she started a medical device company without any major experience in the business world and with almost no background in science, medicine, or technology.

Some critics argue that the story of her rise and fall is an example of the culture in Silicon Valley that allows a company to win media and public attention and gain access to capital through public relations (PR) gimmicks, or as they say there, you "can fake it until you make it". Or in many cases, fail to make it.

Yet in the case of Holmes there was an added element of the elites and the media hoping to demonstrate that in a business that is dominated by Alpha Males, a talented young woman could rise to the top. In the eyes of Dr Kissinger and other powerful older men, she represented the granddaughter who was going to make it.

It is therefore ironic that Holmes is now making the case that the reason she had failed miserably in her business career, not to mention committing fraud, was because she was an innocent and weak woman who was controlled by a powerful evil man, although all the evidence indicated that she was in control and responsible for what happened.

The question now is whether in this age of Instagram when people are manipulated by distorted images and narratives as opposed to facts determining outcomes, the members of the jury in San Jose will buy into Holmes' defence when the trial ends in a few weeks. Contrary to Abe Lincoln's maxim, perhaps you actually can fool people all the time.