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Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

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Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#551

Post by tripzilch »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #180
abalone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fake it til you make it" generally refers to acting like you believe in yourself even if you're filled with self-doubt. Not actual fraud.

As with anything there is the way in which something is offered and the way in which it is consumed. I have encountered many people who have internalized "fake it" to mean "pretend that you are hitting all your milestones and you executing against your plan". These folks see this as a way to keep the questions of why they aren't actually doing all of that at bay because later when they are "making it" those questions…

> For example you lie about how your marketing efforts are reaching customers who are signing up in droves while you use mechanical turk and other techniques to make the observable metrics go up

> By doing this you avoid the inefficiency of the whole "we aren't sure you can do this" discussion which helps no one.

Pretty sure that it would help investors differentiate between those who can actually make it, and those merely good at faking it and making observable metrics go up ... especially if the ones actually capable of making the don't make the metrics go up quite as high as the ones putting their effort into faking it.

And like another commenter said, that difference might well be worth billions.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#552

Post by tripzilch »

ericd wrote: post #326
Noughmad wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV/tech/USA is so great, anyone can make it big. You just have to be smart and work hard. Oh, and be family friends with billionaires. Yeah, that's all.

That's one way to get funding, but it's certainly not the only way, there are lots of counterexamples. As one obvious counterexample, one of the founding principles of YC is providing an open application process to provide people who don't have any personal connections access to the SV network. Larry and Sergey weren't well connected when they started, either, afaik, as most PhD students aren't. If you're doing somet…

> This is an incredibly defeatist/self pitying line of thinking that I'm seeing more of (the world is stacked against me, you have to be born into it, etc) and is related to a lot of other self-defeating thought patterns.

Can you back up this statement? Why is it self-defeating? You put it in your post as if it somehow logically follows from the rest but it doesn't.

The claim is that people who were not born or just lucked into connections with the rich and powerful are going to have to work significantly harder or get lucky to get access to those opportunities. While the people that do, can put some work in and basically claim the opportunity or just simply try again without significant loss or even having to settle for less.

"Lots of counterexamples" don't mean anything unless you can show that there are in fact so many counterexamples that they outnumber them in a similar ratio as the people in the first group utterly outnumber the people in the latter group. Or even by a factor of ten.

But they don't and almost nobody would be having this discussion if they did.

> Maybe it's just that bad news is much easier to see, thanks to the web, so people think bad behavior is more common now, and it's turning people cynical.

And you're going to need more than those words to properly argue that this is a bad thing.

Because a lot of bad news wasn't visible enough. And people have been underestimating the magnitude of bad behaviour. And a lot of people in a lot of places in the world most definitely aren't being cynical enough.

Sure there are psychological downsides to being bombarded with bad news and negative information all day, and we need to find ways to handle that, for our collective mental health. Doesn't mean the bad news is somehow wrong or faulty.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#553

Post by wpietri »

sgt101 wrote: post #367
wpietri wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Concierge and Wizard of Oz approaches [1] are just one thing people mean by "fake it 'til you make it", but I definitely don't think they're the most common meaning. Startups engage in all sorts of puffery, trying to project the appearance of success long before they have actual success. Fancy websites, fancy offices, sales and investment pitches that cherry pick stories, numbers, and milestones that give…

This is fine when the elements of automation aren't beyond the state of the art. However when you have startups like Spinvox et-al hoping that automated transcription will show up and save them (I mean transcription of variety of voice in variety of environments, using uncharacterized microphones and transcoded from mobile to core ect) or the current rash of chatbot liars and charlatans then real real damage gets don…

Yeah, same.

And it can even be fine when things are beyond the state of the art, as long as the CEO has the bravery to look reality in the face and either a) find another way, or b) say "sorry, startups are gambles, and this one's a busted flush".

And it's the liars and charlatans that really get to me. I figure it's at least 30% likely that I'll end up in jail because somebody says "blockchain" to me one too many times regarding some application which would be better off done with a MySQL database.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#554

Post by kahnjw »

zaphos wrote: post #549
kahnjw wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not fundamentally contradictory, everyone would know they are victims, still if it is in their net benefit to participate, they will. Again, this is an experiment with unrealistic assumptions (getting caught is an endogenous variable), it is intended to bring to bear the the absurdity of the statement that one can control their own fate if they commit fraud.

This experiment just sounds like "what if fraud were not fraud"

From op:

>...avoiding the ire of the SEC is relatively easy if you set your mind to committing fraud without getting caught.

The experiment is a simple application of the economic theoretic framework to the statement above. Nothing more. There isn't all that much to argue about here, as long as you accept the framework upon which almost all of theoretical economics is based.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#555

Post by sulam »

iopuy wrote: post #543
sulam wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're ignoring the iterated nature of the game he plays. He is looking for founders to fund -- deal flow is the lifeblood of any VC. This is a signal like many other, and what it says is "As an early stage investor I absolutely have your back."

Just curious where you heard the phrase "deal flow is the lifeblood of any VC". I read that exact line last night from a book.

Funny. I didn’t know I was quoting anything - this may just be an obvious statement to people who have investigated the economics of venture capital.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#556

Post by dmix »

gammarator wrote: post #471
ascendantlogic wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago that would have been peak Silicon Valley but now it would have to be a drone-based burrito delivery service settled on the blockchain to be peak SV in 2018.

Maciej beat Elon to the idea of using tunnels instead: http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_t...

That's brilliant, I'm just trying to imagine how NYC will send Pizzas back via a tube to SF in return for the Burritos.

Re: Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud

#557

Post by lghh »

vl wrote: post #545
lghh wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why it matters at all? Penalty should be proportional to the deed, not to the person's finances. I would argue the opposite, why do you think this is the case?

Isn't it basic profiling, in this case based on wealth? Should rich people be penalized more for their mistakes than poor people?

And what we're arguing is not that right now they are being penalized less and should be penalized the same.
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