<p>Elon Musk’s recent inappropriate tweet, with a lady showing her naked behind (representing Twitter) invitingly to a priest (representing Trump) brings corporate leadership standards to an all-time negative. Twitter leadership is for Musk what the US Presidency was to Trump -- a way to feed his ego. And Musk thinks he is building the future of civilisation and free speech!</p>.<p>Also, the recent FTX fiasco brings to light the lack of minimum governance in DeepTech organisations, where the investors cannot even pretend to understand the so-called new world being created. The FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been accused of creating a non-transparent Ponzi conglomerate and passing it off as a revolution. This is a world where technological merit is being evaluated based on billions of dollars raised from investors. This is the same world in which Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for claiming and selling a diagnostic product’s capabilities that were real only in her imagination.</p>.<p>DeepTech needs patient investment that takes years to provide returns, if at all. It is important for leaders to imagine a new future and build it against all odds. However, there are lines in the sand that the likes of Steve Jobs recognised, which separated dreams from scams. Those who built Silicon Valley in the past went close to the line, maybe even straddled it, but we never saw the kind of outright scamming being performed by tech companies now.</p>.<p>Part of the issue seems to be the overnight ‘successes’ in a Ponzi ecosystem -- with just dollars raised as the metric. The founders’ suave brazenness and hence the ability to raise hundreds of millions of dollars is a sure way of making money for many investors who are passing the parcel. It should hence not be a surprise when the music stops and the investors left holding the parcel at that time have an empty package in their hands.</p>.<p>It is telling that Elizabeth Holmes’ company, Theranos, had no biotech VC investors. Biotech investors would have had the expertise to differentiate hollow claims from reality. Elizabeth Holmes has been convicted and sentenced for ‘Wire Fraud’ – for misrepresenting her product’s capabilities to investors. And that is an example of a line crossed too far – it is one thing to say you are close to success that will revolutionise diagnostics; it is another to say you have already accomplished it. It is even worse to put out a product that does not work into the market and provide inaccurate diagnostics to unsuspecting patients. However, Holmes was not found guilty, on a technicality, on the charge of defrauding patients. Legal outcomes on FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are yet to play out. With Elon Musk, the issue is a lack of leadership, combined with an undue influence on the markets.</p>.<p>It is the strength of capitalism, private and public markets that they enable motivated and talented citizens to build great companies from scratch. These are also the people who are building the future of mankind for health, comfort, and sustainability of the planet. A few rogue actors should not change this in favour of more regulation. With courts and laws in place, there is already enough regulation to bring back sanity into the market. However, as investors, employees, and customers, we need to demand more from companies’ executive leaderships and their boards. A misogynist post in a public forum is not about free speech. It is about a lack of culture and governance!</p>.<p>(<em>Gopichand Katragadda, the former CTO of Tata Group and founder of AI company Myelin Foundry, is driven to peel off known facts to discover unknown layers.@Gkatragadda</em>)</p>
<p>Elon Musk’s recent inappropriate tweet, with a lady showing her naked behind (representing Twitter) invitingly to a priest (representing Trump) brings corporate leadership standards to an all-time negative. Twitter leadership is for Musk what the US Presidency was to Trump -- a way to feed his ego. And Musk thinks he is building the future of civilisation and free speech!</p>.<p>Also, the recent FTX fiasco brings to light the lack of minimum governance in DeepTech organisations, where the investors cannot even pretend to understand the so-called new world being created. The FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been accused of creating a non-transparent Ponzi conglomerate and passing it off as a revolution. This is a world where technological merit is being evaluated based on billions of dollars raised from investors. This is the same world in which Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for claiming and selling a diagnostic product’s capabilities that were real only in her imagination.</p>.<p>DeepTech needs patient investment that takes years to provide returns, if at all. It is important for leaders to imagine a new future and build it against all odds. However, there are lines in the sand that the likes of Steve Jobs recognised, which separated dreams from scams. Those who built Silicon Valley in the past went close to the line, maybe even straddled it, but we never saw the kind of outright scamming being performed by tech companies now.</p>.<p>Part of the issue seems to be the overnight ‘successes’ in a Ponzi ecosystem -- with just dollars raised as the metric. The founders’ suave brazenness and hence the ability to raise hundreds of millions of dollars is a sure way of making money for many investors who are passing the parcel. It should hence not be a surprise when the music stops and the investors left holding the parcel at that time have an empty package in their hands.</p>.<p>It is telling that Elizabeth Holmes’ company, Theranos, had no biotech VC investors. Biotech investors would have had the expertise to differentiate hollow claims from reality. Elizabeth Holmes has been convicted and sentenced for ‘Wire Fraud’ – for misrepresenting her product’s capabilities to investors. And that is an example of a line crossed too far – it is one thing to say you are close to success that will revolutionise diagnostics; it is another to say you have already accomplished it. It is even worse to put out a product that does not work into the market and provide inaccurate diagnostics to unsuspecting patients. However, Holmes was not found guilty, on a technicality, on the charge of defrauding patients. Legal outcomes on FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are yet to play out. With Elon Musk, the issue is a lack of leadership, combined with an undue influence on the markets.</p>.<p>It is the strength of capitalism, private and public markets that they enable motivated and talented citizens to build great companies from scratch. These are also the people who are building the future of mankind for health, comfort, and sustainability of the planet. A few rogue actors should not change this in favour of more regulation. With courts and laws in place, there is already enough regulation to bring back sanity into the market. However, as investors, employees, and customers, we need to demand more from companies’ executive leaderships and their boards. A misogynist post in a public forum is not about free speech. It is about a lack of culture and governance!</p>.<p>(<em>Gopichand Katragadda, the former CTO of Tata Group and founder of AI company Myelin Foundry, is driven to peel off known facts to discover unknown layers.@Gkatragadda</em>)</p>