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How Theranos Misled Me

fortune.com

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Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#61

Post by frozenport »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #37

I did not know much about Theranos before the recent skeptical articles started to appear on newspapers regarding the falseness of their claims. The larger question is, how do you get to a $9B valuation without having rock solid technology or evidence to prove the effectiveness of their technology? I would assume that the VCs in SV are a pretty smart bunch. How on earth did this happen in the first place? If Theranos…

Wanna know how it works? Thats a secret.

The only people that can smell this kinda bullshit are technical experts. For example, there might not be enough white blood cells in such a small sample to do a meaningful assay. And perhaps there were a few people who didn't invest.

But on the other hand, their technology wasn't promising anything revolutionary. Nothing that couldn't be done by BD.

Hype+Boring Tech

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#63

Post by randycupertino »

poof131 wrote: post #59

What I really find upsetting, more than Silicon Valley wasting millions on hype, is the board of directors. Senior government and military officials are making bad decisions for their own pocket books post retirement. General Mattis squashed any internal criticism of Theranos in the military and then left to join the board.[1] This is happening repeatedly with crappy technology being forced down the throat of the mil…

And also, why does Theranos need such a sleazy board chock full of senators, military generals and other political players? They're a freaking biotech company without scientists and physicians on the board, wtf. The whole Theranos scam really reminds me of Palantir.

Government contractors masquerading as tech companies. So sketchy.

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#64

Post by bsaul »

randycupertino wrote: post #63
poof131 wrote: post #59

What I really find upsetting, more than Silicon Valley wasting millions on hype, is the board of directors. Senior government and military officials are making bad decisions for their own pocket books post retirement. General Mattis squashed any internal criticism of Theranos in the military and then left to join the board.[1] This is happening repeatedly with crappy technology being forced down the throat of the mil…

And also, why does Theranos need such a sleazy board chock full of senators, military generals and other political players? They're a freaking biotech company without scientists and physicians on the board, wtf. The whole Theranos scam really reminds me of Palantir. Government contractors masquerading as tech companies. So sketchy.

Palantir was a scam ??

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#65

Post by randycupertino »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #50
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #37

I did not know much about Theranos before the recent skeptical articles started to appear on newspapers regarding the falseness of their claims. The larger question is, how do you get to a $9B valuation without having rock solid technology or evidence to prove the effectiveness of their technology? I would assume that the VCs in SV are a pretty smart bunch. How on earth did this happen in the first place? If Theranos…

Have you seen Elizabeth Holmes' pedigree? Have you looked at who's on her board? In terms of pattern-matching, her speaking and body language match several uber-engineers I know. Top it off with a photogenic appearance. Slam dunk. We're animals with 1 square meter x 2 mm of sometimes-rational coiled up in our heads.

All because she put on Steve Jobs drag, affected a surfer dude accent and bleached her hair blonde? Here she is prior to her tech wunderkind makeover:

https://tribwxin.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/elizabeth-holme...

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#66

Post by randycupertino »

bsaul wrote: post #64
randycupertino wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also, why does Theranos need such a sleazy board chock full of senators, military generals and other political players? They're a freaking biotech company without scientists and physicians on the board, wtf. The whole Theranos scam really reminds me of Palantir. Government contractors masquerading as tech companies. So sketchy.

Palantir was a scam ??

They're incredibly shady.

$750k in lobbying helps

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00005517...

Their VC firm was the CIA:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125200842406984303

Cashing fat the .gov to "fight terrorism" doesn't help make US citizens any safer, but does the founder wealthy enough to buy castles & fly his Stanford undergrad floozy around the world on private jets. Nice work if you can get it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-stanford-unde...

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#67

Post by randycupertino »

danieltillett wrote: post #32
teraflop wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link appears to have been deleted, so here it is, via Google cache: ---- Letter to the Editor: Theranos Responds Brooke Buchanan is vice president of communications at Theranos Both the headline and much of the content of Roger Parloff’s December 17 story, “How Theranos Misled Me” are inaccurate and — ironically — misleading. Theranos was honest and transparent with Mr. Parloff, and the headline to Mr. Parloff’s…

Still nothing here about how many of these tests were actually reliable. I have a 100 fairies at the bottom of my garden who can tell me the result of any test without even drawing a drop of blood. Profit!

Heh... Akin to how the founder of the mormon church came up with the idea while getting high and sticking his face into a magic hat. Get loaded, stick your face in a hat, document your delusional visions & pander them upon the easily swayed ... voilà! You have created a $7 billion a year religion!

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#68

Post by venomsnake »

DanBC wrote: post #46

All the investors, and all the journalists had a simple option that none of them appear to have taken: have your own blood tests done by Theranos. When they start sticking something into a vein you then know it's more than a finger-stick. Still, this is a great article, and it clearly shows that Theranos were failing in their duty of candour.

> All the investors, and all the journalists had a simple option that none of them appear to have taken: have your own blood tests done by Theranos.

That sounds a lot like basic engineering approach and fact checking. We live in post reality society now.

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#69

Post by LoSboccacc »

tangled_zans wrote: post #48
ChuckMcM wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Fortune has been updating their json to attack ad blockers.

Clever. I don't get why people can't just label their ads with random letters though?

because people have a job of building a website with a side of maintaining ads visible, while ad blockers write filter for a job all day long - in other words, it's a uphill battle, takes loads of time to test against all ad blockers and the effort can be nullified in few minutes of any adblocker dev time. heck, they can even crowdsource rules.

Re: How Theranos Misled Me

#70

Post by Pyxl101 »

danieltillett wrote: post #34
dkbrk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely appears that they had some initial technology which looked promising but has failed to mature into a viable replacement for commercially available tests. What I'm wondering is how well Theranos' investors did their due dilligence. It's not completely incredible that a VC might fund a company based on its team and market position even if its core technology isn't a viable product of a long-term business,…

If I had to bet I would say Elizabeth had something promising at the beginning, but it just didn’t pan out and she got herself in very tight bind. It is fundamentally impossible to get results to the level of accuracy the FDA requires from a single fingerpick for most assays. It is not an issue of sensitivity, but that there is too much variability due tissue and capillary effects. The one thing we can all agree on i…

It seems possible that there wasn't much initial due diligence nor a working product at the beginning:

> Tim Draper, the venture capitalist, said Holmes, who was friends with his daughter growing up, is the first entrepreneur he knows who kept quiet about her business

From what I understand, Tim Draper, of DFJ Venture invested in Holmes when she was a Stanford student.

> DFJ, formerly known as Draper Fisher Jurvetson, became one of Theranos’ first investors. The firm doesn’t have a seat on the Theranos board, Jurvetson said. “We wrote a $500,000 check before anyone else, but she’s been somewhat independent and has been going at it all on her own, so I don’t have the answer to your question,” Jurvetson said when asked whether DFJ would invest again.

It seems most likely to me that this investment was based on her personality and/or personal connection, rather than due to a technology breakthrough she had made at the time. If she had something at the time, then it's taken 11 years to get where they are now, which is not having any publishable research demonstrating the results. My guess based on the situation is that she was charismatic and asked for money to go start solving the problem, from scratch, and people gave her money because of her charisma and because they judged the problem sufficiently tractable. It seems unlikely that she had more than an idea while still in university.

It looks like DFJ has not participated in the most recent investing rounds (?)

http://www.mercurynews.com/michelle-quinn/ci_26147649/quinn-...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/early-ther...

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