Isn't her activity like the textbook definition of fraud? Not to mention the dude who she basically pushed into committing suicide. I hope she gets at least as much time as Madoff.
Do you believe that when Holmes was handed the opportunity, at 19, to bring the Edison to market that she set out with the intent of defrauding investors?
The only thing she's provably guilty of thus far is believing in her company a little more than is sensible and being preternaturally competent as a fundraiser.
When Musk claims he can get people to Mars for $200k, do we say 'That's preposterous!', and slap him in cuffs? It's up to the investors of Spacex to decide whether or not they want to gamble on that proposition.
Would you put 100 million into Magic Leap because Rony Abovitz says 'it's rad', or would you insist on seeing a demo first? Because none of Theranos investors did that.
Going out on a limb here, I would say when found out their machine didn't provide accurate results. Yet waited until threatened to be closed for two years before voiding results. This is not Uber for Dogs, and puppy doesn't get to the park to play with its friends, but potentially life or death situations. We are not talking just a 0.01% error rate, this is stuff like like 20-40% error rates in some tests.
> Was it when Hwnry Kissinger joined the board of directors?
Well, some would say it would be a warning sign, for sure ;-)
Read this article.
It's perfectly fine to say "We are going to attempt to build something, here's our plan" and then fail. It's completely unacceptable to say "We have something" when you don't.
The only way Theranos could be analogous to Musk is if he had got up on that stage in Guadalajara and said "we have a Mars rocket ready to go, we've tested it extensively, it works, we'll begin commercial flight soon, the line for reservations is on your left, please bring your checkbooks."
Devils advocate but isn't that what SpaceX told facebook when launching their satellite? I would assume they asked for money to launch that thing and I would also assume facebook didn't want it blown up.
Nitpick mode: Facebook didn't own that satellite and their only involvement in it was a plan (now, obviously, altered) to lease a decent chunk (but by no means all) of its capacity from its owner once it was operational. I'm not sure why everyone decided it was Facebook's satellite.
If Spacecom wanted a demo to prove SpaceX could launch rockets, they only had to look at the previous 28 Falcon 9 launches that all (bar one) launched successfully.
Playing fast and loose with health care, that may be key to determining whether you have some life-threatening disease, is a big deal.
This is not like taking some VC money for the next social network, and having no chops to pull it off. Peoples lives could come into play.
That gave him the clout he needed. Then he used that clout to scam wealthy people starting in the 90's.
The good, and lawful, thing to do would have been to come clean at that point. He didn't, and his downfall began there.
Instead he did the bad, and illegal, thing: doubled down and paid off the small number of exiting investors with new investor's deposits, whilst lying about returns.
If you've read John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash: 1929 (a short and highly readable account), you'll find a very familar story in Madoff. He fell prey to what JKG calls "the bezzle".
Musk should be collecting money for the situation to be similar.
>being preternaturally competent as a fundraiser.
Why are you trying put a positive spin on this whole mess like a PR agency ? What would you describe Madoff as in that case ? A man of great persuasive ability ?