Antoine Papiernik discusses Theranos in lively France Culture podcast

France Culture's Tiphaine de Rocquigny, host of Entendez-vous l'eco?, a daily podcast on business and economics, recently wrapped up a fascinating three-part series on women who won the confidence of investors through deceit, leaving them with little or nothing in the end.

Rocquigny invited Antoine Papiernik, Sofinnova Partners' chairman and managing partner, and Olivier Alexandre, a sociologist with the Center for Internet and Society at France's CNRS, to discuss the Theranos case on the final episode of Les Grandes Arnaqueuses.

The arnaqueuse in question was Elizabeth Holmes, who was behind Theranos, the Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize blood testing with technology that could test for dozens of conditions with just a drop of blood.

To make a long story short, the Theranos machines did not work as described, and the company tried to hide that fact, in part by using competitors' machines to fake trials of its own gear. Holmes was found guilty in January of four counts of criminal fraud against investors, though she was acquitted on four counts related to patients. She is to be sentenced in September.

One of the central questions in the discussion was whether the Theranos case could be construed as an indictment of the "fake it till you make it" culture in Silicon Valley.

Olivier Alexandre was fascinated by Holmes's immersion in her storytelling, how she went so far as to dress and act like Steve Jobs and deepen her voice in an effort to be more convincing. He pointed out that she "activated" her network of family and friends to snag investors like Tim Draper, the Stanford chemical engineering professor Channing Robertson and Oracle's Larry Ellison.

Papiernik said there may have been a "fundamental element" of people really wanting a young, ambitious woman to succeed in a very male environment. But he pointed out that "no specialist investors in the [life sciences] domain were seduced by her story," because she did not have the data to back it up.

He added that John Carreyrou, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose reporting in 2015 arguably brought Theranos down, in his book "mentions interviews he had with VCs who had met Elizabeth Holmes and asked her to explain her technology — and none of them took the bait."

Are you fascinated by the Theranos saga? Can't wait until the movie comes out? The lively conversation and excerpts from Holmes's public appearances make this a podcast episode (in French) well worth listening to.