She's relatively young and attractive and perhaps possesses hidden talents. Like maybe the ability to charm the pants off (so to speak) of men - especially older, rich, powerful men who were in a position to help move her ambitions along. Also men who may have been somewhat blinded to obvious warning signs of potential trouble.
Doubtful. If this was common we would have more female startups funded. Just because she is attractive and raised money doesn’t mean she had to use sex to get there. She did go to a Ivy League school which brings a network and credibility in and of itself.
She didn't have to use sex, per se, but merely sex appeal. (It's kind of telling that you immediately went there.) Or maybe even the "You kind of remind me of my daughter/niece/young wife/etc" angle. Maybe even just the "youthful enthusiasm and vigor" angle, or the "female empowerment, breaking the glass ceiling" angle. I also understand that she liked to pass herself off as something of a female Steve Jobs, so there's that. Plus, female-led startups in Silicon Valley are pretty rare, so that in itself is an attention grabber.
I’d like to read the story about her. It seems like she was just a great self promoter. Being attractive does help, but that goes for both men and women. We tend to like attractive people, that’s why the big 4 consulting firms are full of young attractive kids recruited because they were jocks or cheerleaders.
My point is that if sex appeal was the core factor in her success, we would have significantly more female founders because almost all investors are men. It’s more likely to me that she was a amazing self promoter who didn’t let reality get in her way, similar to Steve Jobs.
Board members Henry Kissinger and William Perry unwittingly admitted they were dupes ten months prior to the first Carreyrou article in a Dec. 2014 article by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker: [1]
Kissinger, who is ninety-one, told me that Holmes “has a sort of ethereal quality—that is to say, she looks like nineteen. And you say to yourself, ‘How is she ever going to run this?’ ” She does so, he said, “by intellectual dominance; she knows the subject.”
Board members are clearly charmed by Holmes. She is a careful listener, and she is unnervingly serene; employees say that they can’t remember an instance when she raised her voice. “She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison,” Perry, who knew Jobs, said. “She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; she’s one with a big heart.”
