At this point, I think the burden of proof is on Theranos to demonstrate that they weren't designed from the beginning to be a scam, initially aimed at the military but now just looking for any way to survive as a company.
Most folks, when faced with the reality that their original idea won't work and they don't have any idea how to make it work, fold up the company and go back to school or get a job. Some raise $800M, stack the board of directors with politicians and generals, and try to sell to the military.
Apply HN here I come...
Their development efforts failed, and they clearly ran their lab horribly, but I don't see any evidence (or motivation) for the company being a scam from the beginning. What would their exit strategy have been if they had never intended to produce a viable innovation?
>any evidence (or motivation) for the company being a scam from the beginning. What would their exit strategy have been if they had never intended to produce a viable innovation?
it wasn't pure scam (until of course you dare to call a shady government/military contracting a "scam" :). The story goes something like that that their exit was to sell the stuff to Pentagon, and unfortunately for them and all the high powered Theranos friends there happen to be a guy who insisted on FDA approval before that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/02/inter...
Very typical Theranos tactics: "Chief executive Elizabeth Holmes, the company’s superstar founder, asked an ally at the highest level of the military to squelch those “inaccurate” concerns in 2012"
The "ally" is 4-star Marine General who sits on the Theranos board right now :)
I am a woman and my experiences have been that this is a serious handicap for getting effective constructive feedback. Men don't really want to have a serious conversation with me about what works, what doesn't, why that is true, etc. If they talk to me at all, many of them are either 1) trying to be charming, even if they have no explicit goal of trying to sleep with me or 2) trying to be encouraging, as if the deeply rooted problems of sexism boil down to "girls just lack confidence!"
It has been enormously frustrating.
I am older than the woman who founded Theranos. I am older and I have had a less cushy life and I have really struggled with the question of how to get my work taken seriously and how to get men to talk to me about my actual work in an actually constructive fashion. Things have gotten better, but I look at Theranos and I suspect that there was no intent to do anything fraudulent and she may not even fully recognize that it is a failure yet, because she has been talked at for so many years by so many intelligent, successful people like she was a genius and surely was on to something big.
I really think this is the likely crux of the problem and I see no good fix for it. I still find it maddeningly difficult to get men to take my work seriously. And I have been very aware that them talking to me for the wrong reason, about the wrong things is a real problem for quite some years.
that is too, plus it is probably the other side of the same coin - i mean why risk and get into serious conversation, provide constructive feedback which in large part means criticizing and risk getting exposed to potential claim of creating a "hostile environment for females".