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Theranos promised a faster, cheaper way of doing something.

Tesla built a very expensive sports-car, before they advanced towards cheaper products for the masses.

They had to raise significant sums of money to advance. Starting a car company is no joke. I would argue that Tesla is still not out of the woods. The most trying times still lay ahead for Tesla. This is why people have laughed for decades at anyone who says, "I want to start a car company." Tesla is still an absurd and absolutely crazy idea that I hope pans out.

I was actually thinking more about SpaceX. They promised technology that was faster (in terms of development speed) and cheaper.

Isn't that because they could work outside many bureaucratic regulations and Musk's focus on the essential?

Regulations don't prevent you from inventing new things, only from inflicting them onto the whole of the society. But they didn't invent anything useful in the first place, so arguing that regulations were what stopped them is silly.

Regulation was a wrong word.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about how SpaceX or NASA's finances work. But I assumed that, due to their tighter coupling with a government, NASA has less leeway in their decisions of which technologies to research compared to SpaceX.

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