Elizabeth Holmes's partner raises millions for blood-testing startup | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes's partner raises millions for blood-testing startup

theguardian.com

59 pointselorm75 comments

If its possible to keep creating and rug pulling new shitcoins, then it seems obvious that the same can be done with medical start-ups.

What a weird world we are living in.

In the words of Coffeezilla, crime is legal now, fraudsters who donated to Trump are getting pardons

[0] https://youtu.be/xUBCX7AV5PY

Billy McFarland, famed "entrepreneur" behind Fyre Fest got out of jail and immediately announced plans for raising funds for Fyre Fest 2. Apparently there are enough suckers to go around, so why not just copy/paste the original scam instead of doing the work of tweaking it to boost legitimacy?

https://www.biography.com/crime/a63917214/billy-mcfarland-no...

I’m terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Fyre Festival 2 has been cancelled https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/new...

OP here. I edited the title from Partner to Lover to distinguish between business and romantic partners but I just found out "Lover" carries an incendiary connotation in American English as opposed to British English.

Not my intention at all....

It really didn't help:

https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-health-elizab...

I grew up in America and didn't find it incendiary at all. The extreme reaction was surprising to me, as well. The word was very common in 80s and 90s songs with no illicit or incendiary connotation whatsoever! In fact, I find headlines phrased like this article's annoying. It's just unclear and poor writing, IMO.

How about something simple and accurate like "baby daddy"?

Rather than focusing on Holmes and her lover, I'd like to posit some other questions I have with this approach. Let's assume for just a minute that Holmes wasn't trying to rug pull and that she genuinely wanted Theranos to succeed in it's stated mission.

Wouldn't a foundational invention like this 20-30 years ago come out of a university lab? It feels like VC funding is not the right vehicle for the kind of development that takes a lot of time and must work the first time. Those VCs are going to be looking for returns.

That was implication of the original con. She was this superstar Stanford undergrad who’d discovered something so radically important she had to drop out of school for the sake of humanity.

She wasn't a "superstar" in any way whatsoever. She dropped out after 1 year of undergrad, with zero papers published where she was a principal author, or anything that would even hint that she knew what she was doing. She was rich and connected so was able to get funding on the basis of not much more than a powerpoint and a couple of supportive professors.

Yes, those are the cold facts. I probably should have put superstar in scare quotes. But the con was that she was some sort of Stanford 'superstar'.

I looked over her bio on Wikipedia. Yeah, she certainly came from a rich + connected background. So she understood rich people and what they wanted to hear. However, I don't think her Stanford professors were implicated, at least as far as I've read. They didn't knock any sense into her but they also didn't co-sign.

But none of the adults raised alarm. I got into it once with a VC trying to say that Sand Hill was blameless. That was nonsense too.

It is possible that they are licensing technology that was developed in academic science and are raising money to scale it up and get it ultra-standarized for commercial scale.

I agree that the modern Silicon Valley model of VC funding has been spoiled by SaaS startups, where the capital expense is smaller, the timeline to exit is shorter, and pivots are easier. It is not great for deeptech innovation because those require more capital, time, and are more technology-constrained than software. Ironically, modern VC was developed to support semiconductor startups (1970s-90s), but has drifted from that technology-heavy origin.

I was always under the impression that actual science/tech startups were more of a MIT/Northeast thing than what you generally see out of Stanford.

She had a recent interview[1] where she claimed she's actively working on her research behind bars and still wants the opportunity to change the world with her invention.

This is not a coincidence at all.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0&pp=ygUWZWxpemFiZXR...]

This would have to factor into any future parole considerations, wouldn’t it?

No, because federal parole isn't a thing for crimes committed after November 1, 1987.

Federal parole may not be possible, but a pardon definitely is.

Yes, and given the current administration’s pardon practice, being shamelessly unrepentant and flagrantly likely to be a recidivist looks more like a positive than a negative consideration.

A thought just came to me, that the selling of indulgences triggered the Reformation.

It's been a moneymaker for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31-line_Indulgence

Maybe they can raise enough money for a pardon.

In case anyone can't view that link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0

What would be expected from a complete psychopath.

If she eventually gets this right and revolutionizes blood-testing, the legend will live forever!

Big "if", I know...

Here is the nyt article

https://archive.is/20250511164818/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

Here is the patent

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/10/business/Haem...

Both are mentioned but not linked in the article above.

Are there some knowledgeable people who would like to comment on the patent?

> Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

- Karl Marx (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumai...)

Elizabeth should donate a few millions to the right person near the West Wing and get a pardon.

I understand that justice is for sale in Washington these days.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Even if the tech has evolved, this family is hardly the one to trust with one's money.

As a doctor I called out Elizabeth Home's as a fraud when she first hit the scene. I have no doubt her partner is also a fraud.

This time it's different

Just wow.

I think it's an uncomfortable truth that there was some good in Theranos in terms of the unfulfilled needs of society and the potential of diligent work toward realizing those needs with technology.

I don't know how often it's been said by others, but I often think that Theranos would have had an easier time if they hadn't falsified anything. Faking things takes effort too, and aiming a little lower and being less secretive would have been a better outcome. Maybe a different tack is possible through this reboot.

Mr. Evans' silver spoon is worth $10M, so raising $20M against that in such a fraught area is eye-opening. Whether he sees this as part of Elizabeth's redemption arc or just can't quit the hair of the dog that bit him, I guess we'll see.

Elizabeth Holmes' crime wasn't defrauding people, it was defrauding people richer than her. Change my mind.

Most VC's are taking it in the shorts right now anyway, because they're addicted to free money and there's no more free money, and most of them quite frankly suck at spotting good deals. So for the intrepid souls who cast their lot in with Mr. Evans, maybe only Nixon could go to China, and maybe they'll fare better than the stodgy fat-dumb-and-happy B-tier VC's who are not long for this brave new world anyway.

If Theranos hadn't falsified anything, would they have had a product? My recollection, having read _Bad Blood_, is that they would not.

Good intentions to save the world, without any working (or even possible!) technology, are not investment-worthy.

Having read the same book (while on the fourth floor of MDC Brooklyn of all places) I believe the conclusion I read was that they were trying to make it all work with one drop, which was impossible, because of the number of tests they were promising and the low solute concentrations some of those tests had to work with.

But there's a wide gulf between a drop and a 20mL vial. Requiring three drops and claiming half the battery of tests would still be a substantial improvement. That's what they should've done. And I think this new startup can do that.

I interviewed with Theranos toward the very end. I have never been in a place with a bigger show of security, and I've previously worked for years in nuclear weapons laboratories. If this new startup ditches the demonic-possession voice and the arch-military security schtick, and the Wizard of Oz curtain, I might not consider an investment in them as foolhardy as one in Theranos.

There is a sucker born every minute.

Parallels with cryptocurrency where the scam scamcoin token authors just spin up a new one after running off with the funds from their prior one.

Awful title; this is her husband, not her "lover."

1: they were never married

2: why is lover so bad?

I see the hate in this discussion for the phrase, but I don't get it.

Is it some modern thing where we're supposed to separate the concept of marriage from sex due to asexual types or some such?

legitimate question : I don't get it. I'm more than willing to avoid the use of lover, but someone at least explain it to me.

would more casual concepts like 'defacto' or 'commonlaw' be better? 'life-partner'? 'co-life strategist' ?

Lover = bit on the side.

Partner = main romantic connection.

Partner doesn't mean that at all.

Warren Buffet and Charley Munger were partners. So were Jobs and Woz. Or Buffet and Gates while playing Bridge many times. There's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about the word "partner" itself, though of course partnerships exist in those realms as well as in business, sports, music, dance and countless other pursuits.

I'll take a crack -- I think America's puritanical roots are STILL in play today, and mentioning the very idea that people have sex, even married people, instantly triggers pearl clutching.

I don't think it's rational either, but it is pervasive. If I described the lunch I had with my lover in a work setting, I'd expect to get tutted or an email from HR. It would probably be nonspecific and merely say that I am making others uncomfortable without mentioning the actual problem -- because to put it into words exposes the ridiculousness.

$0.02 :)

To a native English speaker, the term "lover" here has an unnecessary sexual connotation, which is a silly thing to highlight. They are married (supposedly), and thus he is her husband.

Seems that Americans have a very weird 'love and hate' relationship to anything related to sex.

In other countries, would it be typical to introduce someone's spouse as their "lover?"

Tangent but why does the title here says lover while the article says partner; no fan of Holmes, based on that, a probably (unfair?) low opinion of this guy, but come on.

Came here to say this.

The reporting of that guy and his relationship with her definitely caused me to have some negative thoughts and opinions, as in, what's wrong with this guy that he'd be involved with her? Isn't it irresponsible to have kids knowing she was headed for prison? But putting that aside, they have two kids together, which gives him a higher status than "lover".

The wikipedia on them says their status is also oddly ambiguous:

> In mid-2019, Holmes and Evans reportedly married in a private ceremony.[137][138] Holmes and Evans have not directly confirmed whether the two are legally married, and several sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her husband

I reported what was the actual and correct title and got downvoted for it :-)

I’ve just completely lost the ability to tell the difference between satire/parody and reality.

This title is ridiculous. He's Holmes's husband, not her "lover". They were married in 2019.

The title is: "Elizabeth Holmes’s partner reportedly raises millions for blood-testing startup"

It was modified in the HN submission to replace "partner" with "lover", probably as an ill-conceived attempt to distinguish from him being just her business partner.

It's a great example of why not to change titles, though, because "lover" carries wildly different implications than "partner" and makes the title seem much more salacious.

Some of us get too upset about words in a title and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Agreed, & flagged the submission. The actual article is of interest, but I really don't want to reward inflammatory titles.

As clickbait trash, it is nevertheless sublime.

Technically they never married, which is why the original article uses a bunch of other phrases to describe their relationship, but agreed that the change from "partner" to "lover" makes the title needlessly provocative. "Partner" was fine.

I’m guessing it was trying to distinguish between him and her previous business partners?

Yeah, so I get why it was attempted. It's likely they didn't realize that "lover" carries with it a sense of a clandestine or illicit relationship, especially in the kind of saucy story this already is by default.

Yea I now see that, but what ever happened to the word “boyfriend”? It does the job and doesn’t sound like something out of 19th century literature or “clandestine” as a sibling commenter is saying.

I see the same thing happening in Spanish - no one can say “novio/a” anymore. Why?

Strange. I don't think "lover" sounds illicit in any way, though maybe it suggests youth and romanticism.

Definition 4a in Webster is "paramour", which is "an illicit or secret lover". It isn't the primary definition for sure, but in this context that's the vibe it gives off.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lover

Well, her previous business partner & lover was a co-conspirator iirc (the CFO).

I am afraid that a few facts cannot be denied. The Wikipedia article details several things: that she was in some sort of clandestine romance with the co-founder, Ramesh Balwani. That she alleged sexual assault and abuse from him and other people in the course of her rise to notoriety. That she allegedly married Billy Evans and definitely had children by him, as well. That the most recent conception of her child may or may not have been a bargaining chip for her criminal trial. I don't know about other men, but to me, her photos indicate that she is extremely attractive, and seems to be into Steve Jobs type turtleneck chic, which is an interesting angle for the financial villain role she's assumed.

In light of all these facts, I, for one, would say that "partner" is an impoverished term to use in this headline, because what really does that signify? A business partner? Come on. There are obstacles here to clarity of terminology, due to the dubious nature of her legal marriage and such. But this is a woman who seems to have leveraged her sexuality to every advantage, as well as being taken advantage of in return. Not a good scene!

Most times I've read "partner" the meaning has been "business partner", e.g. a cofounder or a partner in a law firm or agency, etc.

I've noticed a trend, especially in Commonwealth or European countries to use "partner" to mean "sexual partner" or "romantic partner". However, it's also used in business, sports and many other contexts. Just saying "partner" on its own is less clear than "lover".

Since English is not my mother tounge, I looked it up.

Oxford actually has (as one of three definitions):

either member of a married couple or of an established unmarried couple. "she lived with her partner"

a person with whom one has sex; a lover. "make sure that you or your partner are using an effective method of contraception"

They were engaged, but never officially married.

https://people.com/elizabeth-holmes-relationship-billy-evans...

Doesn't look like any smart money on this one yet, but there's something bold about it. It's like Nassim Taleb's thing that you hire the ugly surgeon. This is one hideous surgeon. Fraud seems near impossible here.

[Edit: a lot of thoughtful responses but downvoting?]

Matt Levine (financial columnist) often makes the point (or joke) that in fund management there a tendency to reward (as in: they get more money to manage) people who lost a lot of money, on the basis that they did manage to have a lot of money to start with, make bold bets, and should at least have learned something at this point.

That is not unique to fund managers.

Second time entrepreneurs are more likely to raise capital even if their first venture failed and spectacularly so.

Adam Neumann got funded by a16z(their largest?) despite all the governance issues at Wework , there are many other examples of high profile and regular entrepreneurs getting funding .

The difference is that Neumann didn't attempt to conceal his scam in the slightest, and more importantly, he didn't break any laws, just screwed over his investors.

> just screwed over his investors.

> didn't break any laws,

To VCs, I would imagine the first is bigger disqualification than the second.

Startups are modeled around breaking laws to disrupt all the time. Ask for forgiveness than permission mentality.

Uber and Airbnb did it with taxi, breaking privacy laws in Europe by ad supported tech or fintech with AML/KYC securities law or more recently on copyright law to build their training data by ai companies . All of these depend on law being broken to succeed.

Calculating the risk of prosecution and the size of the penalty with upside of doing it anyway happens in these companies all the time.

Taleb took payment to promote cryptocurrency scammer Craig Wright and his BSV scamtoken.

If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

What are you talking about? The conference where he talked as a critic of digital assets? Confused

If everyone uncritically invests because the Holmes association is perceived as making fraud impossible, then the association has actually had the opposite effect.

This is literally a rule that is entirely dependent on the rule itself not being popular.

I hear what you're saying, but counterexamples (i.e. repeat scammers) abound.

Maybe Taleb's works should be added to that blog post - leading on HN today - about the questionable value of lay business books.

Yes, but in that example, he specifically says the ugly surgeon has to be as high-profile as the carefully-coiffed, megawatt-smile, could-have-just-walked-off-the-Chicago-Hope-set surgeon you're comparing him to. It's a heuristic for choosing between experts of roughly the same rank.

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