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Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

arstechnica.com

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#231

Post by michaelrpeskin »

gitfan86 wrote: post #149
cactus2093 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows very little about biology, I watched the HBO documentary about Theranos and am kind of still confused by some of the conflicting claims I hear. In the documentary, they focused a lot on the engineering challenges of the machine they were making. The blood samples would spill, which would gum up the mechanical workings of the machine and make a huge mess and contaminate all the other samples. The…

There is room for improvement in testing technology and processes. But not to the extent of "One drop of blood from your finger can provide accurate tests on 26 different types of tests" Especially when some of those tests are only accurate with a large sample of blood

I'm always reminded of this when Theranos comes up. Years ago I was in the hospital, they wouldn't let me out until a blood test showed some numbers that made them feel better. I asked about how the one test worked. The nurse would come in and draw a tube of blood (I forget the volume, but if you've had your blood drawn for a test, a typical tube sized - 10's of mL). And then that'd go down to the lab and be mixed with reagents and a tech would look in a microscope slide and count things. Then they'd reverse the math and turn the things they counted into a concentration of stuff in my blood. That's the number the doctor looked at. So when I worked through the process, and deduced that what the lab tech counted was on average 4 particles of interest. And since I was an obnoxious grad student, I brought up shot noise and said that means there's a 50% error in the measurement and that the doctor should discharge me. Of course, he said that even with a 50% buffer, the numbers were too low for him to feel comfortable.

Long story, but they needed an entire tube of my blood to count 4 particles in the microscope. A drop of blood would not have enough things in it to count. Real life is discrete, and often we need a big sample just to get enough things to count.

That's why I always though Theranos was a fraud.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#232

Post by lizdax »

mardifoufs wrote: post #204
edot wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork and Nikola come to mind. Robinhood depending on if you consider purporting yourself to be “stealing from the rich, giving to the poor - Robinhood”, but you actually take orders from Citadel to be fraud. I think a lot of recent IPOs will turn out to be fraud-lite, in which it is shown over the next decade that these companies were pump and dumps that never actually do anything. They look just good enough to gar…

Which investor actually made money from WeWork? If anything it's an example proving the opposite. The founder may have made some money but the investors were left holding the bags. The whole scandal was centered around the size of the investment loss that the main investor, Softbank, had to eat...

Benchmark did. Invested in the early rounds (starting with Series A of $15m, mentioned in "WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the great Startup Delusion"), mid rounds and the final stake when they were supposed to IPO was $626m -- 40x their initial investment, according to FT[0].

0. https://www.ft.com/content/d32c8526-f555-11e9-b018-3ef8794b1...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#233

Post by supperburg »

ModernMech wrote: post #227
supperburg wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but would they be profitable if you took out the advertising and expansion costs? From the document I saw, yes. Can you please explain where are these enormous costs that are necessary to run the business? Is it SV salaries? Are their servers costing too much money? It doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that the concept of dispatching taxis with a computer is not capable of being profitable. It simply isn’t…

> It doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that the concept of dispatching taxis with a computer is not capable of being profitable. If that’s all you are doing, then yeah, that’s probably not profitable because competition would just eat your margins. You’re essentially a broker matching drivers with passengers, and they can use any service they want. They will choose the one with the lowest cost to use and that pays…

> If that’s all you are doing, then yeah, that’s probably not profitable because competition would just eat your margins.

So markets don’t exist? Businesses can’t exist in a market? This is economics 101. No wonder everyone is so off

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#234

Post by ModernMech »

supperburg wrote: post #233
ModernMech wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that the concept of dispatching taxis with a computer is not capable of being profitable. If that’s all you are doing, then yeah, that’s probably not profitable because competition would just eat your margins. You’re essentially a broker matching drivers with passengers, and they can use any service they want. They will choose the one with the lowest cost to use and that pays…

> If that’s all you are doing, then yeah, that’s probably not profitable because competition would just eat your margins. So markets don’t exist? Businesses can’t exist in a market? This is economics 101. No wonder everyone is so off

No, that's not what I said. My point is explicitly that markets do exist, and that markets are the mechanism by which Uber will find itself unprofitable, because they aren't adding enough value to the equation. Having the app and the scheduling algorithm was a game changer a decade ago, but now that part of the business has been effectively commoditized.

But Uber doesn't want to be 1 of 1000 taxi players in a crowded market with no margins. They want to be taxi king of the world. How do they stay on top when every local municipality can hire some college kids to make a close facsimile to what Uber does? Sure maybe it's not as good as the Uber offering, but they don't have to support a global taxi empire, so they can offer their service for a lot less than Uber can. If that app takes hold in city X, why are people going to use Uber when they come to town 30% more expensive than your small town provider?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#235

Post by MrGando »

kube-system wrote: post #207
MrGando wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stopped calling it fully self driving a little while ago in part due to a lot of pretty bad press and some good journalistic research.

> "Full Self-Driving Capability $10,000" ... is listed today as an option when configuring any vehicle on tesla.com

You're right. I think there's several regulators on it, but no one has forced them to rephrase the statement.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#236

Post by MrGando »

codegeek wrote: post #226
MrGando wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're somewhat making an argument that the "means" are justified if the end is noble. I think the whole discussion revolts around the several issues with that "system" or "philosophy" here in the Valley. I personally don't think it's the right way to do things. Big fraud, small lies (fraud), it's all pretty bad.

To some extent, aren't startups supposed to be doing things to challenge the status quo which sometimes can mean that they are breaking rules ? Uber overall has been a net positive in my humble opinion so I definitely think that to an extent, the means are justified if the end is noble.

If we're going to restraint to personal opinions, my strong personal opinion is that startups have to operate in the context of truth, rule of law and business ethics. That would be my hope. I think it's totally possible to succeed and still work through that lens. I think thinking otherwise, is actually a fallacy perpetuated by certain groups here in the Valley.

I strongly believe that you can challenge the status quo and abide by honesty and rule of law.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#237

Post by cblconfederate »

elliekelly wrote: post #76
SkipperCat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, does this case get so much publicity because it touches upon all the tropes of Silicon Valley? 'Fake it till you make it', 'move fast and break things', 'disrupt the markets', etc. IMHO, this business model is fine when the only things at risk are venture capital and you're trying to sell more widgets, but when it comes to life and safety - bad news.

> IMHO, this business model is fine when the only things at risk are venture capital and you're trying to sell more widgets, but when it comes to life and safety - bad news. She's not on trial for defrauding patients and putting their life and safety at risk. She's on trial for defrauding investors and putting their money at risk.

she s also on trial for defrauding doctors and patients

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#238

Post by KptMarchewa »

supperburg wrote: post #164
ta1234567890 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber Explanation, since this is being downvoted. Uber might not have lied about their business, but it surely looks like investors never cared about the businesses viability and rather only cared about being able to turn a profit on their investment (which was the point being made by the gp). To this day, it is still not clear if Uber’s business model is viable. Also not to mention the original CEO/founder’s reputati…

The idea that Uber is not profitable is a myth isn’t it? I remember they posted some financial documents a while back that showed them in the red. But when I looked at the papers there were literal billions in advertising and expansion. Uber runs the app. People call an Uber and they pay money. Some of that money goes to the driver and some goes to Uber. You’re really saying that Uber can’t collect enough money to ru…

They hide tons of opex as "marketing".

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#239

Post by supperburg »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #238
supperburg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Uber is not profitable is a myth isn’t it? I remember they posted some financial documents a while back that showed them in the red. But when I looked at the papers there were literal billions in advertising and expansion. Uber runs the app. People call an Uber and they pay money. Some of that money goes to the driver and some goes to Uber. You’re really saying that Uber can’t collect enough money to ru…

They hide tons of opex as "marketing".

There it is! The one person who actually answers my question!

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#240

Post by _tom_ »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #169

I know there is “fake it till you make it” but usually these companies have some idea how to get success. But as far as I understand Theranos never had any technology or approach that promised to lead to their goals. They just tried various stuff that never worked and lied about it. It was more like me starting a company that wants to create a battery with ten times the capacity of current batteries but having no ide…

There's a world of difference between saying "we will do great things" and claiming "we have done great things".
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