“People will say all the time that something is ‘soft-circled’ when you just had a nice conversation with them,” Lee said. “Is that misrepresentation? I would argue 15% of founders are doing that every single day. … It is not easy to tell when you’re right up against this line.”
Meanwhile, startup founders who happen to be women working in health tech still are coping with comparisons to Holmes, both implicit and explicit, and the verdict is unlikely to change that. Andy Coravos, the CEO and co-founder of health-tech startup HumanFirst, said she’s all for strict due diligence from investors, especially when it involves patient care, but wants to see it directed at all founders, not just women. “Companies should be held to a high bar and that bar should be universally applied,” she said.
If people see a female founder and think of Holmes, that’s a reflection of how few women found startups, said Deena Shakir, a partner at Lux Capital, which invests in health and science startups. Holmes shouldn’t be seen as a representative for any particular type of founder, she said: “Are we going to now say that all Stanford founders or all Stanford dropouts exhibit this behavior?”
—With assistance from Priya Anand.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.