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Theranos To Close Shop (cbsnews.com)
Major Blud writes: Multiple news outlets are reporting that Theranos, the company that promised to revolutionize healthcare with new blood-testing devices, is closing shop. The company "was unable to sell itself and is now looking to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash of about $5 million in the upcoming months," reports CBS News. The CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and President/COO Ramesh Balwani recently settled a civil suit with the SEC, which charged them with massive fraud related to them seeking investment based on misleading information regarding the accuracy of their "Edison" diagnostic equipment. According to The Wall Street Journal, investors lost almost $1 billion in the company. At one point, it was valued at almost $10 billion.
I wish the investors lost the full $10B...
She knew she didn't have a viable product, and willingly defrauded investors. Whenever someone on her team approached her with concerns about their approach or strategy, she sidelined or fired them. She was not a leader, she was a charlatan and a crook.
No wonder nobody goes to jail for this crap.
here in America we don't spill the blood of kings, and she was very well connected with the American equivalent of royalty.
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The investors in Theranos were an example of people being extremely ignorant of technology. Someone who understood would ask a few questions and immediately determine something was wrong.
An example of someone who asked a few questions in 2013: Bill Maris: Here's why Google Ventures didn't invest in Theranos (Oct. 20, 2015 article)
Quote:
"We looked at it a couple times, but there was so much hand-waving -- like, Look over here! -- that we couldn't figure it out," Maris tells Business Insider. "So, we just had someone from our life-science investment team go into Walgreens and take the test. And it wasn't that difficult for anyone to determine that things may not be what they seem here."
...and turned to dust.
...and then turned to dust.
Bye bitch, have fun in your next scam.
Her trial is scheduled to start later this year.
https://www.justice.gov/file/1072521/download
I heard Elizabeth Holmes will be joining the Tesla board as her next step.
There were a lot of people whose blood work went through this scam and may have had all sorts of false negatives that caused them harm or death.
While I sympathize with the investors, its the patients that I feel far more sorry for. You can work another day to make another dollar. You can't undo the type of harm that false blood tests can create.
The investors in Theranos were an example of people being extremely ignorant of technology.
I am too-often amazed at how so many VC firms don't really seem to understand the technologies at which they are throwing money.
One case in point (there are plenty of others I know of): a few years ago I watched a presentation of a cybersecurity company that had received a $40m investment from a VC firm. I happened to make a comment to a colleague after the presentation to the effect that the product was snake oil (which was the conclusion he had reached as well), and was immediately asked what I meant by someone who was listening... who was from the VC firm that had made the investment. A couple of weeks later, the VC firm flew me to talk to the company executives in their presence. The company shut down the next day. So the VC firm saved themselves from throwing away more money, but I never understood why they had given $40m to the company without bothering to get any independent input about the technology. It was hard to escape the conclusion that "cyber", "security" and a lot of waffling and some pretty slides were more important than getting answers to hard questions.
It was basically clear to me when the media heralded her as the the superior female mind the world had obviously waiting for, when her actual education and work history showed that she was way lacking in experience and education to get a complicated real-world product done.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And about time.
Interesting story!!! A quote: "I never understood why they had given $40m to the company without bothering to get any independent input about the technology."
From reading about investing, I get the impression that kind of foolishness happens frequently.
This is indeed a good question. I think it may have to do with a sense of urgency. That is (some) VC firms may think they have to make decisions fast or they might lose a good investment to someone else, so they don't do their homework and essentially just gamble in hopes of a big win.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
...y business. That is all.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
A friend of mine has nearly three decades experience in this space and he said his company looked at investing in Theranos. Company policy absolutely disallowed writing big checks without seeing peer reviewed journal articles and/or data in lab notebooks. They were told: no way -- our data is awesome and too secret to show. So the conversation was over.
He found it very "interesting" to see which companies failed to follow reasonable and common best practices for the industry.
That was my impression, also.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, seemed only to try to get people to like her. She seemed more like a young girl than anyone who could operate a business.
People who have technical knowledge create cultural differences in themselves that are often easy to detect socially. Holmes gave no impression of having technical knowledge, or of even being the kind of person who likes technical knowledge.
Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Indicted on Fraud Charges (June 15, 2018)
She should be. A total fraud. Too rich to jail?
Corporatism != Free Market
But they'll be back in fashion in a year or two.
We have been hearing these reports of Trump's imminent demise daily for 3 years now...
if rich investors lost money. If it was your everyday peon investor, nothing will happen to her. Rich people only go to jail if they rip off other rich people.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
she can still have a career playing a villainess on lifetime and hallmark channel movies.
Am I the only one who initially read that as "Thanos"?
I am too-often amazed at how so many VC firms don't really seem to understand the technologies at which they are throwing money.
They understand money.
The techies are (allegedly) doing cutting-edge tech, so it's not unreasonable for them to claim that only a handful of people, including them but not including the VCs, understand this hot new tech thing.
If a non-specialist DID understand it, so many specialists in the field would also understand it that, if it had suddenly become practical, it would be a many-horse race for the window that no more than three can get through before it closes. The VCs want to be in a one-horse or only-a-couple-horses race, so they have a good chance of getting a profit on their investment.
Or at least that's what the techies want the VCs to think. B-)
A couple of weeks later, the VC firm flew me to talk to the company executives in their presence. The company shut down the next day.
So how much did they pay you for the consult that let them salvage some of their $40M from the wreckage rather than throw more millions at it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Not just mom-and-pop investors. Walgreen's got royally screwed too. Now there, you'd think, they'd have some experts check this thing out thoroughly. Unbelievable that they got taken.
Just kill that dumb wannabe jobs slut, and torture and kill the subhuman indian
yea, fuck the bitch.
in your strive to make women great, you have bent them al over.
down in history as a dumb bitch.
Thanatos to close shop. Which would have been good news.
The author of Bad Blood specifically brought up the FOMO aspect (fear of missing out) in regards to Theranos investors.
No, it's because VC firms are stupid. They have money, check, but they are not smart. Stop equating wealth, or access to other people's wealth, with intelligence.
I am too-often amazed at how so many VC firms don't really seem to understand the technologies at which they are throwing money.
VC funding is a high-risk high-reward strategy. Many (relatively) small losses are more than compensated by a few really big wins. However, in order for the wins to be big you need to be at the very cutting edge, hence the (normal) risk factor. An additional risk factor then is that some of the investments are not really cutting edge, but snake oil, as was your story. That is also inevitable. You would notice though that while the initial round of funding might be sometimes lax in its technical validations, these increase abruptly for additional rounds of funding. Well, except when you're doing a Theranos and populating your Board with the "right" people.
Always good to hear the feminist take on things.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This should send a message to others who try to contrive medical processes and devices that don't work.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Any chance of Sand Hill Road learning their lesson from this?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The investors in Theranos were an example of people being extremely ignorant of technology. Someone who understood would ask a few questions and immediately determine something was wrong.
An example of someone who asked a few questions in 2013: Bill Maris: Here's why Google Ventures didn't invest in Theranos (Oct. 20, 2015 article)
Quote:
"We looked at it a couple times, but there was so much hand-waving -- like, Look over here! -- that we couldn't figure it out," Maris tells Business Insider. "So, we just had someone from our life-science investment team go into Walgreens and take the test. And it wasn't that difficult for anyone to determine that things may not be what they seem here."
No kidding. The real question was why anybody let it get as far as it did.
The answer is not one anybody that wants to hear. She was a young, pretty woman. She was perfect for magazine covers, men turned off their brains, and ... yes, she was a woman CEO! And a "woman in tech"! How many more boxes could she possibly check?
She couldn't possibly have had the deck stacked any more for her. The only thing she lacked was a working product ...
I am too-often amazed at how so many VC firms don't really seem to understand the technologies at which they are throwing money.
I sure like to know how people able to get others to give them millions while I struggle to get purchase approvals for items in $100 to $1000 range. I have heard VCs will nitpick planning proposal documents to the T, but some simply write a check for $40M after a single presentation. I gotta be missing something or perhaps the worst creator of PPTs.
mfwright@batnet.com
I am too-often amazed at how so many VC firms don't really seem to understand the technologies at which they are throwing money.
I sure like to know how people able to get others to give them millions while I struggle to get purchase approvals for items in $100 to $1000 range. I have heard VCs will nitpick planning proposal documents to the T, but some simply write a check for $40M after a single presentation. I gotta be missing something or perhaps the worst creator of PPTs.
mfwright@batnet.com
Those are valuable insights.
Here area more ideas:
1) Possibly Elizabeth Holmes didn't know what she said was not the truth. Why is that a reasonable theory? Because she obviously is the kind of person with no knowledge of technology and no interest in technology.
2) Apparently she was not actually the CEO, but merely pretending. From the Wikipedia article about Theranos management:
"Holmes' then-boyfriend Sunny Balwani, a software engineer 18 years her senior whom Holmes had met during high school, joined the company as its president and chief operating officer in 2009."
I'm guessing he was the actual top manager of Theranos, at least when it began to be taken seriously. They had started going together when she was a teenager, the article implies.
I gotta be missing something or perhaps the worst creator of PPTs.
Perhaps consider improving your skills associated with writing in English, as well as your attention to basic details.