Theranos and its 31-year old founder, Elizabeth Holmes, have been awarded nearly every accolade imaginable. The company has raised over $400 million at a staggering $9-billion-dollar valuation and received commendations from TIME Magazine and the White House.
VIDEO: http://www.forbes.com/video/4559957762001/
Most entrepreneurs dream of that type of hype. Unfortunately, hype is a double-edged sword. People are quick to raise you up and equally quick to knock you down. Hype can quickly and subtly affect an individual’s perception of reality, often creating a strong temptation to believe what’s being said more than what’s being done. A balance can be struck, however, between hearing the hype and resisting it’s allure.
We all face the temptation to exaggerate
The temptation to present one’s business in a different, potentially better light can be strong. After all, creating something from nothing can be a herculean effort and most entrepreneurs will do whatever it takes to help that process along, even if it means stretching the truth from time to time.
Early on at BodeTree, I used to joke about how often we encountered “truthiness” in the marketplace. “Truthiness” referred to making statements that were accurate in spirit, if not in fact. Often, we’d hear people squirm when describing the number of customers they have, or what their technology could do. I struggled with the temptation to overstate technical ability during the first few years. Our development team was moving so quickly that sometimes it was easy to describe features that were in process as being already available. The trouble was that whenever I ended up overcommitting on the product development front, I ended up creating unnecessary stress and anxiety as we rushed to live up to what was promised. At the end of the day, any near-term benefits I gained from presenting my product as something it wasn’t ended up being outmatched by the stress that always accompanies “truthiness.”