391–400 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fake it all you want until your fakery harms innocent parties.
What's an example of a fakery that doesn't harm innocent parties? If you pretend a product (or a feature) that doesn't exist exists, then at the very least a competitor is unfairly harmed.
Question: could Holmes have avoided all of this by pivoting to something else and not losing investors money. It is extremely common for startups to exaggerate their tech just to later pivot to something else without any repercussions.
I followed the case very closely, read the transcripts I could find daily etc. What Elizabeth did wasn't far from what many many many founders do. This was held to a legal standard, sure, but let's be real here... since when was the legal standard the SV standard? Is SV really the bastion of morality and legal ethics? Is that the new norm, good behaviour? Notably some investors refused to participate and iirc Draper…
As a participant in the startup investment world you are willing Participant of SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF. This is roughly equivalent speak for REALITY DISTORTION FIELD. The point is you as an investor are a willing participant in believing that something more is possible than what has already been achieved.
If you're a founder: you should be worried about being held to a legal standard of the representations and warranties. That section is in every share purchase agreement and it's the stuff that gets you sued. And sometimes, like in this case, it's WIRE FRAUD and it's criminal. Crazy. We need another section to replace REPS AND WARRANTIES.
It blows my mind that she was found guilty for defrauding investors, but not guilty for defrauding patients about their test results. Investors know that every dollar they put into a company could disappear, it's why startups get capital from investors and not bank loans. But a patient does not expect for their blood test results to be completely wrong. Her tests weren't giving false-negatives or false-positives, the…
Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. Fun fact: In some places like Singapore you don't even get the chance to test again to verify the result, you just serve your time in quarantine and then get back your "safe" status.
Why isn’t she in jail right now? She’s doing at least a few years hopefully the full 80 but probably not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had a fully functional lab though, it just wasn't using Theranos' devices. This is what they did to Wallgreens, they sold them on the idea that they would have theranos machines in-store, but instead what they did was do IV blood draws (calling it a comparison check) .. and then would just process the samples the same way as everyone else using standard equipment. People were getting good results because Therano…
I believe they also reverse engineered a lot of the third party machines, in an attempt to make them work the way they wanted to. That's... that's bad.
Reverse engineering is not bad, and it is dismaying that someone posting on a site called "Hacker News" would think so.
The initial HN discussion of Theranos in 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349
It blows my mind that she was found guilty for defrauding investors, but not guilty for defrauding patients about their test results. Investors know that every dollar they put into a company could disappear, it's why startups get capital from investors and not bank loans. But a patient does not expect for their blood test results to be completely wrong. Her tests weren't giving false-negatives or false-positives, the…
Didn’t the FDA approve her tests… Yup - https://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-gets-fda-approval-2...
It blows my mind that she was found guilty for defrauding investors, but not guilty for defrauding patients about their test results. Investors know that every dollar they put into a company could disappear, it's why startups get capital from investors and not bank loans. But a patient does not expect for their blood test results to be completely wrong. Her tests weren't giving false-negatives or false-positives, the…
If she gets anything less than life in prison, it will effectively answer the question of "how many years of prison would you do for a billion dollars?". I'm guessing an absolute max of 5 in a minimum security white collar facility.