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Start free trial →Start Here · Policy · November 2026
The interviewer raised the startup argument that founders have to bend the rules and tell the best story to change healthcare. The Theranos whistleblower separates ambitious vision from fabricated contracts and a product that doesn't work.
…but let's. Keep pushing forward where there's still the opportunity to do a lot of good. And where you have these one or two outliers of people who are in it for themselves, that there's a whole community of people who are really mobilizing to help other people. So I suppose that's my hope.
…your product or your business if you're not showing them some kind of results. But you're also not going to keep going. You won't get to keep iterating and learning and growing and doing something better if that money isn't flowing in. So you have to bend the rules. You have to tell the best story.
I think you can tell a story of what's possible, but there's still a line to be drawn into saying, hey, I have revenue generating contracts that I don't actually have, right? Hey, I have a product that doesn't work, but I'm still going to test on patients, right? And I think entrepreneurs specifically need to understand like where do they draw those boundaries. A vision is a beautiful thing. The possibilities of where we can go in the world, those are beautiful things. But I think when we deal with the Theranos case, it's very different than, hey, I'm going to treat you like a lab rat and test on you with this thing that doesn't work. And even though you're instilling your trust in me, I'm going to abuse that trust and give you wrong results. So I can see that argument and I understand where people are going, but I think you have to put that argument in an appropriate context and not necessarily leverage that in a way to license bad behavior.
Erika Cheung, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, Rebecca.
A representative for Elizabeth Homes tells us the company her partner, Billy Evans, discussed in the film called Hey Manthus is quote, a totally him project. She has had zero involvement and that Elizabeth will be working on her ideas separately. This episode was produced by me and Taylor Dunn. It…