4 Low-Key Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success Every Founder Should Know
You can be focused on achieving an end goal with team support but don't forget you also want to affect meaningful change
By | David Newns | www.entrepreneur.com
Every entrepreneur has a fine line to tread. Between passionately believing in the product or service they expect will disrupt markets and understanding the art of the possible.
But ending up on the wrong side of that line can prove devastating, as Elizabeth Holmes found out. The much-feted world’s youngest self-made female billionaire was the founder of Theranos, a company valued at $9 billion at its peak in 2014.
The promise was that the firm’s Edison test would revolutionize disease diagnosis by detecting conditions, such as cancer and diabetes, with only a few drops of blood from a simple finger prick. But the company collapsed in 2018 after the technology was found not to work. Holmes was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. At the start of this year, she was convicted on four such counts and is due to be sentenced at the end of September.
Learning important lessons
Like all salutary tales though, there are important, constructive lessons to be learned here.
1. Have a strong, disruptive vision
The first is just how vital it is to have a strong, disruptive vision — and the communication skills and passion to win employees and stakeholders over to that vision. But being truthful and transparent is imperative as well. Not least because being less than frank will inevitably catch up with you in the end.