221–230 of 557 posts
Meanwhile the crooks that caused the financial meltdown have not been charged with anything.
Bene vixit, qui bene latuit— "He lives well who conceals himself well."
Is Holmes still rich after this? I can't tell just how much of her wealth she's being forced to return in form of shares.
>Is Holmes still rich after this? But why it matters at all? Penalty should be proportional to the deed, not to the person's finances.
Theranos and Holmes have agreed to settle the fraud charges levied against them. Holmes agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty, be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years, return the remaining 18.9 million shares that she obtained during the fraud, and relinquish her voting control of Theranos by converting her super-majority Theranos Class B Common shares to Class A Common shares. Du…
This will wipe her out, and likely kill her career. Remember, this is just the SEC. The pain they inflict is commensurate to investor pain. The government still should go after them for endangering people’s lives. There should be long jail terms for that.
But the SEC won't, because that's not what they do. And this is, I think, as it should be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is Holmes still rich after this? But why it matters at all? Penalty should be proportional to the deed, not to the person's finances.
As a curious aside: In some scandanavian countries, the penalties are directly tied to wealth (e.g. the $103,000 speeding ticket [1]). The idea is to make the punishment proportional to each individual so that wealth cannot simply grant you a free pass to violate "minor" laws. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
Ok, this is the money line in that press release for me: “The charges against Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani make clear that there is no exemption from the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws simply because a company is non-public, development-stage, or the subject of exuberant media attention.” For all those entrepreneurs are trying to "fake it until you make it" be aware that the SEC considers your…
It's worth nothing that one of Theranos's VC funders, Tim Draper, did defend Holmes despite the fraud allegations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973102 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/theranos-investor-cl...
"Venture capitalist Tim Draper, an old family friend of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who led an early $1 million investment into the company (split between two investment firms).."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's extremely interesting, thanks for sharing. Think about the decision that he had to make in 2016. He had to choose between admiting his mistake and doubling down. The downside of admitting his mistake is that he's guaranteed to get negative points; the upside is that it will minimise futures downsides. By dubling down, he's guaranteed to reduce his negative points in 2016 but exposes himself to magnified upside…
Those kind of decisions are made on a purely emotional, reactive basis without going through the rational game theory analysis you laid out. Most wealthy investors are no more rational than the rest of us.
Draper has no doubt had many chances in his life to provide negative but true and positive but false comments on his investments. If society punishes negative but true comments he's damn well going to notice and make fewer of them. If society further fails to punish positive but false comments about his investments, he's not going to invest the mental resources that would be required to avoid them.
A little experience substitutes for a lot of strategy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For all those entrepreneurs are trying to "fake it until you make it" be aware that the SEC considers your strategy both fraudulent and they feel they have the jurisdiction to prosecute you. Holmes was, in many ways, embodying that HN mentality, acting on the basis: - that an entire industry has been doing it wrong - that it can be fixed by a low-bureaucracy, Angel-funded startup - that once you have enough success…
Please don't copy and paste content into Hacker News, regardless of how good you think your past comments were. The threads here are for conversation, not reciting from the record. There is no "HN mentality", just a large statistical cloud that people see what what they want in. Most of that cloud has been the opposite of what you're suggesting. Commenters here have been not just skeptical but cynical and outraged by…
Would you mind giving some guidance on what I should have done in the situation? I was doing the best I could against the constraints. The situation was that someone made point X, to which I have point Y as a reply. Both X and Y, in some form, have been posted numerous times.
Should I:
1) Not reply?
2) Reply, but make sure to reword Y each time?
3) Link to a previous version of Y?
4) Copy-paste a previous Y but not admit to it so it's not clear I did anything wrong?
I chose 5) copy-paste the best previous version of Y and be transparent that I"m doing so, and why I thought the circumstances merited it. You think that's the wrong choice. 4) and 3) don't seem much better based on what you've said.
I'm guessing you want 2), but IMO that's even worse because it disconnects the discussion from previous ones and forces us to retread the same ground more clumsily.
>There is no "HN mentality", just a large statistical cloud that people see what what they want in. Most of that cloud has been the opposite of what you're suggesting. Commenters here have been not just skeptical but cynical and outraged by Theranos for years,
That's kind of my point. The typical comment is outraged at Theranos. But the typical comment is also endorsing the very kind of behavior that avoids and ignores those very same warning signs. "Well sure, I consistently said over the years to 'never listen to the haters'. But I didn't mean when they were right, of course!"
"HN [most often] tells everyone that no one knows what they're doing either" is not revisionism. Revisionism would be claiming outrage that someone would press ahead when they didn't know what they were doing.
Ok, this is the money line in that press release for me: “The charges against Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani make clear that there is no exemption from the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws simply because a company is non-public, development-stage, or the subject of exuberant media attention.” For all those entrepreneurs are trying to "fake it until you make it" be aware that the SEC considers your…
It's worth nothing that one of Theranos's VC funders, Tim Draper, did defend Holmes despite the fraud allegations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973102 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/theranos-investor-cl...
There's often a thin line between "startup founder" and "confidence man".
There is a material difference between lying and the type of framing and optimism that successful founders typically engage in.
The line just isn't particularly thin. Elizabeth Holmes didn't have a minor accident. She deliberately engaged in serious fraud.