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Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

#22

Post by onetimemanytime »

>>“Why is [Theranos] worthless? It’s worthless because this writer was like a badger going after her, like a hyena going after her, and then it became a bigger and bigger thing,”

He has a point: if it weren't for the press discovering her fraud, Theranos would still be going and still be valued billions. WSJ should have stood back. Yeah, maybe thousands would have died due to bad blood tests but hey, it's a great idea that decades from now might work. And Tim would have made even more money.

/sarcasm, if it's not obvious

Re: Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

#24

Post by perl4ever »

a-dub wrote: post #18

The Drapers are weird. I guess the family has been rich for a long time and they've made a lot of investments, but I don't really see a clear track record of being particularly good at picking winners. I was at a Bitcoin trade show a few years ago and his son was there pumping his Bitcoin specific venture fund. Quite honestly, he struck me as an enormous asshole. He was on a few panels with people who actually knew h…

According to the BBC, Russia has been funding and promoting the California secessionists, among other similar movements.

See: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41853131

Edit: This is a direct explanation of why "just 'cause" is misleading or incomplete, based on public information from mainstream media.

Re: Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

#26

Post by twic »

colmvp wrote: post #2

> “Why is [Theranos] worthless? It’s worthless because this writer was like a badger going after her, like a hyena going after her, and then it became a bigger and bigger thing,” he said. “She got bullied into submission,” Draper explained, adding that if it weren’t for Carreyrou and other opponents, Theranos “could have been one of these big, huge winners.” And we would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for…

So what he's saying is that the two things he doesn't know anything about are business and badgers.

Re: Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

#28

Post by petra »

amacbride wrote: post #9
kemiller2002 wrote: post #3

From what I understand about biology (which is little), there was no real way this was ever going to work. Am I missing something?

What they promised is theoretically possible, but they ran afoul of the huge practical problems that made people with actual biology and engineering backgrounds (like myself) very, very skeptical.

I agree that analyzing small volumes of blood is theoretically possible , but afaik it's yet unclear that you can get good samples from blood drawn from fingers, because it's mixed with interstitial fluid.

Re: Tim Draper defends Theranos and its disgraced founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes

#29

Post by perl4ever »

allisterb wrote: post #6

Can't people stop beating this dead horse already. She screwed up, her company is dead, just let her be.

I think "screwing up" has an incorrect connotation that she didn't commit fraud deliberately. People who have never been anywhere near a coal mine express anger at Don Blankenship for contributing to the deaths of dozens of people via deceiving inspectors. So it doesn't seem strange that people would continue to be angry at Holmes, when everybody depends on medical services such as blood tests that they can trust. Ordinary people almost always die in circumstances that only amount to statistics and not a newsworthy outrage, but surely it is an injustice if casualties are deemed irrelevant in a situation like this.
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