By now, if you’ve been following the whole Theranos story; Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty on four counts of fraud. Because of a hung jury, it’s possible she could be retried on a few other chargers, but who knows what will happen as of this writing. I can’t even guess how she will be sentenced. I’m sure her attorneys will wiggle that down to a slap.

I didn’t want to pile on and sound like another virtue signaler, talking about her guilty verdict, but I did want to write about how this hit me personally. I know a few other entrepreneurs who feel the same way.

Silicon Valley has always been two classes of people. It’s those inside, and everyone else on the outside, many with outstanding minds and capabilities. It seems like a certain profile finds funding with minimal due diligence, with talentless people offered jobs in some of the most coveted companies, while others can’t get funding or senior roles regardless of the merit of their skills and ideas. They don’t have the connections to get their plan the audience it deserves or that right interview with real consideration.

I’ve met entrepreneurs who came from some of the best schools in the country who had zero talent, and no true ambition. They were the clubby types, well connected, and polished, but frankly, often kind of dumb if you spent any time hashing through their plans. They would get to the front of the line with next to no due diligence and get the nod for that first round of funding. My reaction was always the same…, “What?” Elizabeth Holmes was the stereotype.

Don’t believe me? Try raising money by dressing like Steve Jobs, faking your voice, and never blinking, and see how far you get in a meeting.

These VC insiders would often have an easy time on a raise while others wouldn’t get so much as a first meeting, even when the plan was compelling. It was especially evident during the Dotcom era when so many were raising millions on the thinnest of plans. Often these operators would blow through massive amounts of money, completely unchecked and nobody would ask a single hard question when they failed. You’d see the splashy offices, high salaries, big expensive exterior signs, then nothing. Gone. I had a modest office next to one that was easily raising a hundred dollars to every dollar I raised, had the splashy offices, high profile team, then gone. Poof! Nobody asked a hard question, and they all went on to the next thing.

I’ve frequently referred to CB Insights Startup Failure Post-mortums in prior writings. Take a gander at the stated reasons for the failures and ask if you think some of those investors may have been mislead. It’s no surprise that Katerra is on the list if you saw how they operated. Yet, I’ll bet very few of these will ever result in a fraud trial, even though if you dig around, I’ll be some were on par with Theranos and overstated early numbers.

I give a pass to those honest startups that failed for unknown reasons or were beat by competition. That remains the majority, however there is still plenty of fraud within the inside crowd and it’s been known about for years. But the problem remain, Silicon Valley will still give a pass to those in the club, even when they are fraudsters. We all kind of smiled when Elizabeth Holmes was charged because it was one for the little people, the outsiders who work hard to advance their business and play by the rules while she was held to a different standard entirely, until then.

In my readings about the trial, the VCs have been quiet through all of the court proceedings. It didn’t go unnoticed with me. My hope is that they stop protecting their own and begin to hold insiders just as accountable as outsiders and conduct proper due diligence. Had they done so, none of this would have ever happened in the first place.