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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#871

Post by ineedasername »

rc_mob wrote: post #848
1cvmask wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kissinger is known for his war crimes and Nobel Peace Prize. Being associated with this fraud is not a stain on his reputation at all. They joined because they thought they were going to make a lot of money. Kissinger also has the fame of being the first Nobel Peace Prize recipient to bomb another Nobel Peace Prize recipient: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctors-without-borders-bombi... More on Kissinger war crimes…

I'm fairly sure that Hitler and some other really bad peoples have won a NPP. They didn't bomb any other winners?

If winning the prize is somewhat meaningless and awful people won the award then bombing a winner is not, by itself, a significant factor in judging the event. (well, not more significant than the fact of the bombing to begin with).

Heck, if we're choosing awful moments in Peace Prize history, one winner bombing another winner isn't even unique.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#872

Post by morelisp »

ajmurmann wrote: post #433
metadat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully she'll get more, SV could use a good example. Otherwise it signals that wantrepeneurs can keep doing it with minimal repercussions.

"Hopefully she'll get more, SV could use a good example." I knows Theranos was headquartered in Palo Alto for part of its life, but is it really a SV company? Looking at their board I see mostly old-school business people from a construction company, Wells Fargo, and James Mattis and a former head of CDC. Only real tech person seems to be someone from NetApp. On the investor side, I don't see any of the big SV names…

> is it really a SV company?

The answer to this depends a lot on whether you consider e.g. Arrillaga-Andreessen "SV" or not. Holmes certainly wanted Theranos, and herself, to be viewed and valuated as such.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#873

Post by s1artibartfast »

rossdavidh wrote: post #312
jonwachob91 wrote: post #40

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…

They weren't really being charged with the stuff about patients, in part I think because the communication between Holmes and investors was direct, whereas Holmes was not personally communicating with the patients. Basically, the prosecutors went for the charges that were easier to prove. If Theranos still existed as a company, it would doubtless be getting buried under a blizzard of charges relating to how Theranos,…

Correct, it is all about what they have a paper trail for. It is also very difficult to prove harm to patients. Any prosecution would depend on a lot of statistics and scientific detective work, which the prosecutors frankly aren't equipped to take on.

Theranos tests gave some inaccurate results, but the defense will say Traditional blood tests can be wrong as well. This devolves into statistical evaluation of the methods used for testing, e.g. if the standard test is 99.9 what was the Theranos result?

This is a huge mess, and why the pragmatic charge was financial fraud.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#874

Post by AlbertCory »

anamax wrote: post #855
AlbertCory wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's a literal "conflict of interest" but there's definitely a "protect your friends" thing going on. Laura is from the rich Stanford/Menlo Park VC/Palo Alto crowd, and that's Holmes' base of support as well.

> Laura is from the rich Stanford/Menlo Park VC/Palo Alto crowd, and that's Holmes' base of support as well. What support did Holmes have in SV? Yes, Draper put in some early money and Ellison put in some money, but the vast majority of Theranos' money seems to have come from outside the valley. (Yes, George Schultz lives in SV, but he's part of the SV investor "scene.")

You're thinking of the Sand Hill Road VCs, I guess. You're right: not much if any.

However, Schultz was in the Hoover Institute (on the Stanford campus), and he introduced her to lots of other government / defense heavyweights. James Mattis actually testified at the trial, for instance. Once you have a prestigious backer, the others fall in line like sheep.

I actually met Laura once, before she married Marc. Those people all know each other, believe me (I'm not one of them, in case you were wondering; it was some charitable thing).

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#875

Post by leroy_masochist »

ineedasername wrote: post #839
leroy_masochist wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once it was clear this wouldn't go away quietly, I'd bet they pushed hard to ensure criminal prosecution. You're saying that Mattis, Cohen, etc had the ability to influence decisions within Trump's DoJ and exerted that ability in order to ensure that charges were filed against Holmes in 2018? If so, why do you think this?

If so, why do you think this? Is it not clear that I'm speculating? And is speculating that people with government connections might use them in this situation? After all, that's part of why they were on the board in the first place. Did they actually use that influence? I don't know. But I think it's a reasonable bit of speculation. Influential people using their influence when they're publicly embarrassed shouldn't…

Got it, so your argument is basically an abstract appeal to cynicism.

Not sure why you'd think it's "a reasonable bit of speculation" to baselessly posit that Mattis decided to obstruct justice by reaching out to a regional prosecutor in order to influence the government's decision to prosecute a criminal case.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#876

Post by ljp_206 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #785

I wonder what parallels we can draw between Holmes and her blood testing, with Elon and full self driving. I suppose Elon has covered his bases by saying it is still a work in progress while charging for it, but he has also been saying it will be ready in about a year or two since 2016. I think the FSD research Tesla is doing is interesting, but man I would rather all of that money gone into a carbon fiber roof or so…

Theranos' marketing promise/demo was a small box that supposedly ran a number of usually laborious blood tests on a drop of blood. That box actually returned pre-programmed results, or just ran tests using traditional equipment.

With this, we can imagine scenarios that would be comparable for a Tesla, or any othet tech startup. It seems relatively safe to say that Tesla's FSD doesn't just pipe out the computation to a competitor or something, so by this thought experiment, it at least has that going for it.

There's moonshot, and then there is farce. Theranos was farcical, but someone might do it some day. Tesla, at the very least, still has chances to deliver.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#877

Post by troyvit »

bb101 wrote: post #786
ferdowsi wrote: post #737

I'm loving reading through all of the sickening puff pieces that business/tech journalists put out about her and Theranos. It's funny to think back to 2015 and the hagiographical void still left in tech journo hearts after Steve Jobs died. https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-i... > How Elizabeth Holmes Became America's New Entrepreneurial Icon > She represents the part of entrepreneurship that…

I do feel sorry for her in a way. She was riding a treadmill of expectations. Started off slowly, probably thinking "yeah, we can do this" and by the time the treadmill was moving at light speed, it was too late to get off. Even TED has removed her talk from YouTube. What responsibility do the media bear when their shallow hype turns out to be false and damaging to all parties?

I feel bad for her too. She messed up, and probably did it intentionally too. That's messed up, but how much physical harm did people suffer? 60 years of prison time's worth? Near as I can tell a bunch of investors lost some money. Are they on the street now, begging for dinner? Kinda doubt it. Maybe there's a more fitting punishment.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#878

Post by ska »

acegopher wrote: post #742
vasilipupkin wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B.S. and fraud are two different things though. BS in the startup world is commonplace, but not fraud.

What's the difference? Aren't both knowingly lying to affect an outcome?

> What's the difference? Aren't both knowingly lying to affect an outcome?

"This product will revolutionize the industry", "We are going to disrupt X", etc. is usually BS, based on irrational optimism about the future. Of course, in the unlikely case that it comes true, they will say you "had vision"

"I have a working prototype, and if you give me $Xmm we'll productize it". If you don't in fact have a working prototype, this is fraud.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#879

Post by ineedasername »

deepsun wrote: post #870
ineedasername wrote: post #792

Ironic that her board of directors-- one of the most praised aspects of Theranos-- probably hurt her when it came to going after her with criminal charges. These were some of the most well-connected people in the country, and making them look like fools did her no favors. Once it was clear this wouldn't go away quietly, I'd bet they pushed hard to ensure criminal prosecution. (which I think she deserved anyway.) Espe…

Tim Draper was telling everyone that Holmes did no wrong. Last time I checked, a large poster with Elisabet Holmes was still present at the back of Hero City (Draper's accelerator, across the street from Draper University).

Tim Draper is one person. It's the non SV/VC members that would be a factor here. Of course I could be wrong: There's enough to Theranos to make the career of any prosecutor involved, and that may have been enough. But speculating on that as the animus doesn't seem any more or less unreasonable than speculating that people who were on the board for their government influence might have been a factor. They may never even have needed to make a call: Having the names of two former Secretaries of State, a former Secretary of Defense, and a 4-star general attached to a scandal would be more than enough passive influence for people in the DOJ to perk up their ears and start looking to see what the heck happened.
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