Sometime last year I had moved to the Bay Area from Denver and was looking for jobs. After hearing a lot of buzz about Theranos and seeing a recruiter post here (on HN: Who's Hiring) I sent my resume over. Was rejected right off the bat for not having a degree from a top tier school. This after ignoring the fact that I have almost 20 years of experience and have worked on some world class Medical Devices deployed over 150 countries. Granted, I could be a complete idiot, but refusing to look at anything past my degree obtained 2 decades back was a little jarring.
In any case, I do think they are pursuing a worthy goal and we should not lose sight of that fact. Kudos to Holmes for trying. As in any entrepreneur's case there might be a lot of optimism bordering on delusion. If they fail, is it because the problem was too hard to begin with or mismanagement? That is something I'm curious to know.