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U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

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Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#191

Post by SilasX »

rz2k wrote: post #165
sveme wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Skinming through the comments, very little criticism, everyone in awe. Only way down there is someone stating how hard it is to get regulatory approval. I guess that‘s HN still in full fanboy mode, before all those startups started to display their dark sides.

Check out the top comment to April 2015: Scientists skeptical about Theranos blood test (businessinsider.com) : [1] > What stops the skeptics from doing their own tests by walking into a service center and having their blood analyzed for all tests possible and doing the same with their blood for conventional tests? Or an even large scale test? > If their concern is genuine (rather than a way to get a look under the h…

And for everyone one of those I can find about a thousand HN comments telling you to push on even if you're unsure about whether you can deliver.

Edit: For that reason, most of this "I told you so" sounds like hindsight bias if it comes from someone who would normally take the attitude of "fake it till you make it", "don't wait until you're sure you have a working product".

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#192

Post by sosa2k »

mikeryan wrote: post #187
tdurden wrote: post #182

Martin Shkreli is in prison now - he deserves it, though he was guilty of _far_ less then Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes should already be in prison for massive fraud. The fact she is a female and mimicked Jobs seems to have saved her so far though.

That’s an interesting read on what Shkreli did vs Holmes. At least Holmes “victims” AFAIK were mostly rich folks losing other people’s money they’re gambling with and should have known better. Shkreli fleeced normal folks just looking to get their day meds.

Shkreli's crimes had nothing to do with the drug prices. Unless you think the jury/judge was biased due to it.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#193

Post by rebeccaskinner »

cfadvan wrote: post #118
sveme wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Skinming through the comments, very little criticism, everyone in awe. Only way down there is someone stating how hard it is to get regulatory approval. I guess that‘s HN still in full fanboy mode, before all those startups started to display their dark sides.

It’s probably also a reflection of the fact that the flaw in Theranos’ goal was a medical issue, namely uniformity of sampled blood, and this isn’t a site of mostly MD’s. Part of it may well have been fanboyism, but it may just have been that most here lacked the requisite background to see the flaw. I find the self-driving, or near-future Mars colony fanboyism here a little harder to take, because a much larger segm…

I suspect you're right, but that also highlights a broad problem that we have in tech. In the face of missing expertise, most people assumed, or at least were willing to believe, that it was more likely that a tech company would be able to completely disrupt the way blood tests have been done, rather than question why something as simple as "use less blood" hadn't been done already if it were feasible.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#194

Post by the_narrator »

mikeryan wrote: post #187
tdurden wrote: post #182

Martin Shkreli is in prison now - he deserves it, though he was guilty of _far_ less then Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes should already be in prison for massive fraud. The fact she is a female and mimicked Jobs seems to have saved her so far though.

That’s an interesting read on what Shkreli did vs Holmes. At least Holmes “victims” AFAIK were mostly rich folks losing other people’s money they’re gambling with and should have known better. Shkreli fleeced normal folks just looking to get their day meds.

> At least Holmes “victims” AFAIK were mostly rich folks

why would that make it any better?

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#195

Post by madengr »

nikanj wrote: post #90
dboreham wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved with many vc funded startups and have never encountered a situation where nobody knows how to achieve the core product vision. Nobody knows how to achieve profitability...sure.

UBeam springs to mind.

Yes, that’s some bullshit there. Though they are small compared to Theranos, so uBeam will just fizzle out quietly.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#196

Post by madengr »

mozumder wrote: post #108
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

My understanding is that they could measure ~95% of what they wanted, but the remaining 5% needed for full accuracy certification was out of reach with the limited tests they were performing. And that this was the difference between their tests and more expensive tests.

Read the book. ALL of their tests were flawed.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#197

Post by maxxxxx »

bredren wrote: post #190
maxxxxx wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That guy is nuts. It scares me that with his money he has a lot of influence.

I realize the ongoing support of this founder looks pretty bad. But in all my interactions and work with Tim Draper, I've found him to be an ethical and good person. He is nuts in an amazing way, and of all the investors I have met in the valley, I can't think of any other one I'd entrust with his influence.

He is good at tech and investing, no doubt. His political ideas are interesting but his money gives him way too much influence in other areas that aren't his main expertise.

And supporting Holmes for that long and even now looks really bad and is very difficult to justify.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#198

Post by cat199 »

jaredhansen wrote: post #13

While Theranos was flying high, much was made of the company's connections to DC power elite - Kissenger on the board, etc.[1]. And the implication usually seemed to be that the deep bench of Serious And Important And Powerful People allowed the company to get away with things that otherwise would not have been possible. I think it's worth pausing to consider: when's the last time you heard of a startup CEO/CTO team…

> But I do have to wonder whether the degree of attention from the DOJ has more to do with avenging the reputational and possibly financial losses of those same board members, than garden-variety "the DOJ prosecutes fraud".

Or these two are convenient patsies..

Did they really lose money?

Theranos had huge contracts for blood testing at major national pharmacy chains for a year or two, and if you follow the timeline, there's a ton of related activity requiring well connected people which seems to indicate rushing things out the door to make sure they could get these contracts..

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#199

Post by mayank »

blakeross wrote: post #62

Biannual reshare of a pilot I wrote for a TV parody of Theranos: http://www.blakeross.com/pricks.pdf :)

Are you bummed that they didn't go with your screenplay for the big screen adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence [1]? :)

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5795144/

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#200

Post by URSpider94 »

teraflop wrote: post #176
comex wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s one example. Apparently RIM’s employees collectively thought it was impossible (to achieve the stated battery life); I think they count as experts: > RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. The BlackBerry maker is now known to have held multiple all-hands meetings on January 10 that year, a day after the iPhone was on stage, and to have…

The comments summarized in that article seem to no longer be available, but I have a hard time believing the summary is accurate. When the iPhone was released, there were already PDAs on the market with screens the same size or bigger.

The devices at the time with larger screens were larger, heavier devices that had shorter battery life. Nobody made a pocketable device with a screen that size.
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