What’s Up? (July 3-9)
A Verdict on Theranos and Silicon Valley Culture
For many tech start-ups, the era of seemingly endless optimism and immunity — from scrutiny, skepticism and, most of all, serious legal consequences — began to fray when an exposé on the blood-testing company Theranos was published in 2015 that raised questions about the effectiveness of the company’s technology. On Thursday, a jury found Ramesh Balwani, Theranos’s No. 2 executive, guilty of 12 counts of fraud, delivering another potent warning to Silicon Valley. Prosecutors’ evidence against Mr. Balwani showed that he had been deeply involved in almost every aspect of the company and had knowingly misled investors and customers. The verdict was more severe than that of Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and chief executive, who in January was convicted of four counts of fraud. It also arrives amid other troubling signs in the start-up world: Tech…
