Thank you very much for elaborating. I was hoping that you wouldn't take offense at my question. I'm a heavy cryptocurrency investor and have considered stretching myself relatively thin but fortunately have enough discipline. I am currently reading the book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou which is a great story that has some parallels to what you are describing. At one point, Theranos described themselves as having positive cash flow for x-consecutive months. Which, if one were able to see everything that a major investor would be able to see, they'd know that not a penny of that was from legitimate revenue but was from rounds of investors who believed the crap being "sold" to them. I wish you the best in your financial recovery and your ability to learn from an awful situation.
by alexandrawallace69 2019-11-17
I don't doubt your experience of him being good boss but if you read Bad Blood him and his firm seem really sleazy. They pressured Carreyrou not to write the book, members of his firm duped Former Secretary of State George Schultz and pressured his grandson to sign documents trying to prevent him from being a Theranos whistleblower. What him and his firm did might not be illegal but it should be. Also, he joined other members of the deep state on the Theranos board which makes me concerned that he his part of the deep state.
> I think you are extremely off here.
What do you mean, are you saying he never hired Black Cube
by jerkenstine 2019-07-21
Haha yes I was joking. I just finished reading Bad Blood the other day, I highly recommend it. I'm not much of a reader but finished it in two days because of how interesting the whole story is.
by Graphic-Addiction 2019-07-21
In a way, she wanted you to be able to prick your finger, and with just one drop of blood, be able to get blood test results for over a hundred different diseases. The problem was you need lots of blood to test for all the things she claimed she could test for and required lots of professional lab equipment, not just a little box. There is a great book about it that goes into great detail and is a fantastic read called Bad Blood
by Mecha_Hobbit 2019-07-21
I hear the book is awesome.
Bad Blood
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X
Making a unit as small as Holmes envisioned might have made it exponentially more difficult, but the idea of making a smaller cheaper unit wasn't impossible.
Thank you very much for elaborating. I was hoping that you wouldn't take offense at my question. I'm a heavy cryptocurrency investor and have considered stretching myself relatively thin but fortunately have enough discipline. I am currently reading the book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou which is a great story that has some parallels to what you are describing. At one point, Theranos described themselves as having positive cash flow for x-consecutive months. Which, if one were able to see everything that a major investor would be able to see, they'd know that not a penny of that was from legitimate revenue but was from rounds of investors who believed the crap being "sold" to them. I wish you the best in your financial recovery and your ability to learn from an awful situation.
I don't doubt your experience of him being good boss but if you read Bad Blood him and his firm seem really sleazy. They pressured Carreyrou not to write the book, members of his firm duped Former Secretary of State George Schultz and pressured his grandson to sign documents trying to prevent him from being a Theranos whistleblower. What him and his firm did might not be illegal but it should be. Also, he joined other members of the deep state on the Theranos board which makes me concerned that he his part of the deep state.
> I think you are extremely off here.
What do you mean, are you saying he never hired Black Cube
Haha yes I was joking. I just finished reading Bad Blood the other day, I highly recommend it. I'm not much of a reader but finished it in two days because of how interesting the whole story is.
In a way, she wanted you to be able to prick your finger, and with just one drop of blood, be able to get blood test results for over a hundred different diseases. The problem was you need lots of blood to test for all the things she claimed she could test for and required lots of professional lab equipment, not just a little box. There is a great book about it that goes into great detail and is a fantastic read called Bad Blood
I hear the book is awesome. Bad Blood https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X
[https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/152473165X)
Bad Blood
> But Theranos was specifically saying it could achieve the same outcomes with less blood on new equipment, and THAT is not yet possible.
There's a big difference between "that is not yet possible" and "nobody has built one yet".
From what I've been reading in excerpts from "Bad Blood" , the obstacles they were facing weren't a matter of not possible, they were a combination of design mistakes and limitations imposed by Holmes' refusal to make any compromises. In normal companies, these kinds of problems get ironed out. The engineers say "sorry, this is the limit of what we can do in this about of space" and the management figures out how to adapt. In the case of Theranos, Holmes had over-promised so drastically that apparently they didn't feel that scaling it back was an option.
Making a unit as small as Holmes envisioned might have made it exponentially more difficult, but the idea of making a smaller cheaper unit wasn't impossible.
One chapter talks about Mattis, including various emails that were sent. He comes across as genuinely wanting to do the best thing for his men and hoping that Theranos could save lives in the field. There never were any field tests, because Mattis listened to his underlings when they said it would need to get FDA approval first. They then offered to let Theranos test random blood samples to validate the results but Theranos never took them up on that offer.
Basically, Elizabeth Holmes wanted to be a billionaire and restore her family's fortune. She started a medical tech company but didn't include any scientists or doctors on her board. Demos and employment were tightly controlled by NDA, and structured so as few people as possible knew about the scam. Somewhere between 1-8M (10-100%) of blood tests Theranos performed on hacked machines from other companies are suspect or outright wrong. Her company rode the "unicorn" wave at just the right time to get lots of funding and publicity, even though it has been operating since 2006.