Walgreen Sues Theranos, Seeks $140 Million in Damages

Holmes was a 2000s kid, where it was cool. Now VCs typically give you the "you wanna be zuck?" look.

The technologist will tell you that Soylent is essentially a direct marketing business that mixes commodities (poorly) and sells them at high markup.

A similar narrative has existed in business news for the past year, where readers bemusedly read about a pyramid scheme company that distributes protein shake called Herbalife to see whether it will implode or not.

I'm a mealsquares man myself but all for something like Soylent or something becoming popular and cheap.

Perhaps those better connected people didn't succeed because they were operating in real environments with real products, where the competition is also more real.

She did that largely because everyone wanted her a young, well educated smart white woman to succeed. Everyone wanted to be a part of an industry where she and other women like her could found billion dollar unicorns. They wanted her as a role model. They were willing to look past the signs that things weren't adding up until the very end when it all came crashing down.

So, no I don't think her story should be held up for emulation because it's unlikely to be repeated.

This industry still desperately wants a woman to make a billion dollar startup that isn't in fashion, or markets where women traditionally are greater consumers or have greater inside knowledge (fertility, ovulation, makeup, certain parts of the fitness industry, etc.)

I don't know if Elizabeth Holmes has hurt the image of women at the helm. She hasn't helped. I would like to think that I'm a part of an industry that doesn't think that every woman who wants to found a non-woman's industry startup is the next Elizabeth Holmes. I don't have data on that either way.

jesus fuck, this is NOT what I need to hear as we push our salvage therapy companion biomarker into a 160 patient trial.

then again I work in pediatrics these days and nobody ever made any money in peds. So I guess there's that. People expect their 99-year-old grandpa to die of prostate cancer (or apnea, or constipation, or...). It's rather a more unpleasant shock when your 3-year-old does the dying.

Won't make anyone rich but maybe it'll relieve a little suffering in the world. I guess I'd best be OK with that.

"But management pays me to kiss their asses" isn't a valid excuse.

It's not that women are less capable, it's that there's an angle where well meaning individuals may be exploited by predators.

In a way, it's flattery to claim that there may exist women who are aware of this opportunity and are exploiting it.

Arguably the worst tech CEO, ever! Male or female.

If it did, you'd see wildly variable outcomes indexed by founder gender.

I think the comment more refers to hospitality industry litigiousness (and sometimes, competition). I think any feeling of invincibility would be curtailed by constant embattlement in their own headquarter city.

I was talking about the founders being humble.

My point was that the company doesn't seem to think they're invincible. They seem aware of the dangers.

personally, i think the point where a startup becomes a company is very clear: the point where the company's core business is able to provide sustainable positive cash flow. i believe that as long as a company is still in the "burn rate" phase where instead of trying to figure out where they can squeeze more profits, they're simply trying to figure out how long they can keep running with what money they have left, then they're firmly still in the startup phase.

> I'm actually pleased to hear that a tech company is going to perish. Too many of them think they are invincible (airbnb)

The OP said a tech and not theranos. Wishing failure on really any company is IMO a terrible attitude. What you want is the company to change and improve.

It appears the OP is glad that people will loose jobs and options in the company (i.e. regular employees).

I don't agree with North Korea or China but do I really want them to fail? No you want change and improvement.

They ate it up and anyone who asked any questions was immediately labeled a misandrist, so I think it's quite easy to understand how she got this far. Virtually everything was stacked her way and she was immune to criticism.

This is the one thing that I always think about when people talk about the SV crowd. There were a fuck ton of red flags and everybody ignored them continually until you couldn't any more.

All I ever read about SV is that you have to have a solid idea, solid financial plan and make damn sure you know what you're doing before you even get a whiff of the big VC money. In her case, all of that somehow just evaporated and they jumped in without doing any due diligence. I guess to some degree, the investors have no one to blame but themselves. If you're not going to vett these companies before you throw a few million at them, then you get what you deserve and her investors are getting in spades right now.

Its okay, that is a common sentiment.

Incorrect though

The real story turns out that the whole thing was smoke and mirrors and it was obscured by both her secrecy, her powerful connection and the point that some are making here in part the image of a woman wasn't one that they wanted to look at critically.

It isn't the entire problem but, it contributed.

Also, I don't think that the opposite would be true, that if she were a man, she would have gotten more scrutiny. I think it wouldn't have been a factor to be pointed out. People are ready and willing to see men as villains. There are plenty of companies founded by people with a deep powerful roster and that have pulled the wool over many peoples' eyes founded by men.

This is just far worse because this is a medical device issue and obscuring and ignoring standards is playing with people's lives. Martin Shkreli was tarred and pilloried in the press for merely increasing the price of a drug treatment that we knew to work. Theranos misguided people into believing that their treatment worked when it didn't. All the money in the world can't buy back the time to detect issues and diseases that could be caught early or caught at all with other higher standard tests.

Her gender isn't everything but, it did contribute and even now we treat her with kid gloves in public opinion despite the depth of what Theranos did and worse how it conspired to do it.

edit - spelling