71–80 of 119 posts
The "dress like Steve Jobs" thing is starting to feel kind of messed up, am I right? (I read somewhere that she claimed that she hadn't considered that Steve Jobs used to wear black turtlenecks, that she was more inspired by Sharon Stone... which is really hard to believe)
I feel like we've seen this before. Young startup, visionary founder, boat loads of money, then after lots of money burned, outright lies, false claims, or at the very least vaporware.
The funny thing is, this startup isn't that young. It's 12 years old. Someone basically gave a completely inexperienced founder tens of millions of dollars and over a decade to run an R&D lab.
I interviewed at Theranos a year ago, and found the employees to be smart and dedicated. However, the company was the most secretive I've interviewed at and the employees complained about being overworked. The fact the founder sold C++ compilers to Chinese universities when g++ is open-source sounded odd. But I still had hope in them even after they passed on me -- a Silicon Valley company actually making a differenc…
Holmes ran that business in high school. She was born in 1984, so that would put the date around 2000. There were good reasons not to use G++ in 2000. When Alexandrescu's book was published, in 2001, it was somewhat notorious on my team (shipping code on G++) for how much of it didn't work well, or at all, in G++.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Projections up and to the right.
"this graph looks like a hockey stick, how's $50 million?"
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How can you perform live tests on patients and still be in stealth mode? At some point you have to come clean with the FDA about your technology, right? Or is this considered a wide-field clinical trial?
> How can you perform live tests on patients and still be in stealth mode? That really hit the nail on the head for me.
The tl;dr is that Theranos makes their own machines, which makes every test that they perform technically a "Lab Developed Test" LDT which doesn't have the same oversight that machines which are sold to others. As long as they make their machines and use their machines, they're effectively exploiting a loophole.
From the article:
The backdrop for this dispute is an unusual regulatory structure that does, in fact, confer upon some–though not all–conventional lab tests an extra layer of validation that Theranos’s do not yet have. Most labs, like Quest and Laboratory Corp. of America, perform many of their routine tests using analyzers they buy from medical-device manufacturers, like Siemens, Olympus, and Beckman Coulter. Before those manufacturers can sell such equipment, they must obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the tests those analyzers perform–a process that is in addition to, and more searching than, the audits and proficiency tests required to win CMS certification for the lab itself.
At the same time, for other procedures conventional labs will devise their own lab-developed tests, or LDTs, which they do not have cleared by the FDA. While the FDA takes the position that it could require approval for LDTs, for many years it has said it would forgo that right in the exercise of its “enforcement discretion.”
Theranos, which does not buy any analyzers from third parties, is therefore in a unique position. While it would need FDA approval to sell its own analyzers to other labs, it doesn’t do that. It uses its analyzers only in its own CMS-certified lab. All its tests are therefore LDTs, effectively exempt from FDA oversight.
This company is looking less and less like they're struggling to develop new technology, more and more like a deliberate sham. Given that so much of their support thus far has been due solely to the Cult of Disruption, I can't help but wonder if news like this might make at least a few investors consider a return to good old-fashioned due diligence before placing their bets.
My take on it is that Elizabeth Holmes set out to make this idea a reality, but has been unable to do so. Sadly, all signs point to her trying to buy time via smoke and mirrors. If she has misled investors in the same way she has misled the media, given that she has raised $400 million, she's looking at decades in federal prison. I see this whole thing ending in tragedy, whether that just means the loss of $400 milli…
This company is looking less and less like they're struggling to develop new technology, more and more like a deliberate sham. Given that so much of their support thus far has been due solely to the Cult of Disruption, I can't help but wonder if news like this might make at least a few investors consider a return to good old-fashioned due diligence before placing their bets.
My take on it is that Elizabeth Holmes set out to make this idea a reality, but has been unable to do so. Sadly, all signs point to her trying to buy time via smoke and mirrors. If she has misled investors in the same way she has misled the media, given that she has raised $400 million, she's looking at decades in federal prison. I see this whole thing ending in tragedy, whether that just means the loss of $400 milli…
So, the root of this could simply have been poor reporting not deception. I mean you generally don't do multiple pilot projects with vaporware and Pfizer is a huge drug company.
PS: 400M is a lot of money, but probably not enough to do much R&D and start jumping though the hoops if the FDA get's picky.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My take on it is that Elizabeth Holmes set out to make this idea a reality, but has been unable to do so. Sadly, all signs point to her trying to buy time via smoke and mirrors. If she has misled investors in the same way she has misled the media, given that she has raised $400 million, she's looking at decades in federal prison. I see this whole thing ending in tragedy, whether that just means the loss of $400 milli…
Given how loaded her board is with insanely high-ranking ex-government officials, you can pretty almost certain that any federal prosecution will not happen.
edit: Apparently I wasn't clear. Enron's board was also stacked with high-ranking politicians and many executives still saw jail time.
My point was that a well-connected board won't necessarily shield executives from prosecution.
This company is looking less and less like they're struggling to develop new technology, more and more like a deliberate sham. Given that so much of their support thus far has been due solely to the Cult of Disruption, I can't help but wonder if news like this might make at least a few investors consider a return to good old-fashioned due diligence before placing their bets.
What's interesting is that venture capitalists are slamming media outlets for reporting on the issue. Here's a rather silly rebuttal to a recent Theranos piece on The Information from Dave Morin: https://twitter.com/williamalden/status/658705178523258880 "Isn't it time as Millenials that we try to use the Internet to unearth deeper facts and see through these traditional smear campaigns?"