Comment by vonklaus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vonklaus | Hacker News Reader

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this is a reasonable counter claim and the middle ground I was looking for. Everyone pounces on Theranos, which was founded by a research student who dropped out of college in 03, which is 13 years ago. It irritates me that people come out in condemnation of Theranos like a foregone, obvious conclusion they would have been fully equipped to make 13 years ago.

Maybe they could have used the best search engine to do due dilligence[0]. Of course it was google, they had just taken 29% market share to eclipse yahoo by ~1%. So yeah, with 13 years of hindsight and a decade of research the 20 year old college whiz didn't build a successful company. Like you pointed out, there are a reasonable subset of things you should expect(even from a failing company) and I believe you are correct.

It would just be nice to see a bit more contemplative thought around Theranos. Quite obviously they made major mistakes, had some ethical violations which regardless of being par for the field are piss poor from a judgement and statistical validity standpoint, and other short comings.

I'll gladly be the person that says I would fund 5 Elizabeth Holmes if I could get 1 Elon Musk/Steve Wozniak/Bill Gates ect. and I think we all know, that would be too cheap a price.

[0]http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=218099

If you could manage a ratio of 5 big losses for one massive hit you'd be quite a successful investor indeed :)

Microfludics itself was still a young science at the time Holmes founded Theranos. It still is. I'm not sure if she could have really done due diligence that would have provided an insight how Theranos turned out at the time. I believe this was one of those try it and see if you can make it work science problems.

Having built a microfludics chip as a student, I do still think that there is plenty of promise the technology. I hope life science investors don't shy away from it. Just perhaps ask for more supporting evidence of claims. And extraordinarily evidence for extraordinarily claims.

I think the phenomena that you're seeing is a result of the kind of personally cargo cult that surrounds leaders like Holmes. As everyone sees the shadow of Icarus pass over them they marvel at his brilliance. Try to soak in every detail less they too can figure out how to soar just as high. And then when Icarus falls suddenly everyone who held him in such high esteem feel foolish. "I'm no fool, of course he was going to fall."

At least that's my theory.

I do empathize. I've been working on a product which started with very ambitious goals. It's been painful cutting out capability. I'm going to ship a product tomorrow that is less advanced than the designs and prototypes I have from a year ago. But it works consistently and I can use it as a the foundation from which to build upon. And if anything, I think the lesson from Theranos is that in healthcare the path to MT. Olympus must be a slow and steady climb. Skip a step or try to move forward before you have good footing where you are now and you'll fall.

I don't understand your reasoning about this. It's obviously not a big deal that the technology might be a sham. Who cares about the investors losing money.

It's a huge problem that they provided bogus results to patients.

Here's a simple mechanism they could have used to develop their testing technology: While doing the pilot research on the new technology, build up an excellent lab practice using existing tech. Once the pilot tech is ready for wider testing, start using those delicious VC bucks to offer patients a trade; in exchange for a lower price on the excellent traditional testing, they allow you to use their sample to test the new tech against the existing tech.

So the moonshot doesn't requires exposing patients to any additional risk at all.

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