She founded SiriusXM, a religion and a biotech for starters | Hacker News Reader

She founded SiriusXM, a religion and a biotech for starters

washingtonpost.com

127 pointsmodfodder35 comments

I lived across the street from United Thera. a few years ago and met Rothblatt at a company party I walked into on the street. I googled her and read all the things in the article and was amazed at her life story . This happened before the party, as I was curious about the company right in front of my window. Was great to talk with her about the insane amount of hard work she had to do to save her daughter, etc. Everyone I met at UT said she was the best boss they ever had. They have a very startup type vibe at United Thera, and the buildings they constructed are amazing too ! Everytime I saw Rothblatt, there would be a circle of people waiting to talk to her, and fawning over her.

Its great to see this years later on yCombinator

A very interesting article, I just wish whatever ad plugins they have going didn't constantly crash Chrome.

Those disembodied lungs are amazing. And incredibly creepy. The business plan -- patching up donor lungs not approved for transplant (which is most of them) and keeping them alive long enough to find a patient they can save... to the tune of perhaps 2,000 lungs and lives per year. That's pretty amazing. Approved in Canada and awaiting FDA approval as well? That's incredible. I couldn't find a news reports of their first rejuvenated lung, the article doesn't really give much detail on how the procedure went.

Martine, I'm sure YC would want her at their Female Founder's Conference! ;-)

Some other interesting posts I found;

Martine Rothblatt - The Trans-Everything CEO http://nymag.com/news/features/martine-rothblatt-transgender...

Book Review: Virtually Human by Martine Rothblatt http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/09/09/book-review-virtually-hu...

United Therapeutics Website http://www.unither.com/

I just finished Virtually Human and would definitely recommend it. It makes a very in depth analysis for why "conscious" computers of the future will eventually want human rights - the same way that certain minority groups fought for equal rights throughout history.

The book seems to argue that the likely future scenario is for humans to replicate themselves in a separate computer entity. So people would have a duplicate robot twin. Very little mention is left to addressing the case of people actually merging with computers (so one entity and not two). I think this case is far more likely.

"The 60-year-old grandmother and CEO of United Therapeutics, the Silver Spring-based biotech she founded to help save her younger daughter’s life, banked $38 million last year. It made her the nation’s highest-paid female executive."

I find it hard to believe that $38 million made her the highest paid female executive in the US. I would be stunned if this outpaced Sheryl Sandberg. Interesting story nonetheless.

Bad research by the reporter, from another Washington Post article:

"That figured landed her the No. 1 spot on the Capital Business ranking of best compensated executives in the Washington region, and the No. 10 slot on a New York Times list of the highest compensated executives in the nation. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/unite...

It was also a huge jump from her normal compensation due to the company doing very well under her in 2013, so the shareholders turned around and immediately penalized her for good stock performance. I can understand adjusting a bit, but if your stock has shot up that much your investments have too and slashing your CEO's options by 2/3rds sounds greedy as hell. She agreed to amend her contract, but I doubt they could have forced her to short of removing her which would almost certainly hammer the stock price and triggered a golden parachute. Really bizarre move, all and all, and I've never heard of it happening to an executive of her caliber who's company is doing incredibly well.

Ah, it may have been related to this (though I believe it came after):

"The decision comes as officials also announced Rothblatt will share the CEO mantle beginning Jan. 1 with Roger Jeffs, who joined United Therapeutics in 1998 and currently serves as president and chief operating officer. He will become co-chief executive.

Fisher said Jeffs’ promotion “reflects a division in responsibilities that the two of them have had for sometime.” Rothblatt focuses on long-term strategy and research, while Jeffs handles commercial operations and near-term research, he said.

David Zaccardelli will subsequently be promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer. Zaccardelli, who joined the company a decade ago, holds the titles of chief manufacturing officer and executive vice president of pharmaceutical development."

So basically she'll be splitting her responsibilities with two guys and the CEO title with one of them and is giving up basically all operational control to focus on strategy and "long term research". Maybe that's a good choice and something she wants, but it looks a bit like a demotion. She may not have one foot out the door, but I'm guessing she's got ideas for a few more multi-billion dollar companies if she gets tired of UT.

Marissa Mayer has got slightly more than 200M form Yahoo in 2013, although biggest part of this is probably her bonus, not salary.

I believe these were 2013 numbers? (not sure might be 2014) Sheryl Sandberg made about 16M in salary and stock in 2013 however.

http://qz.com/194054/mark-zuckerberg-and-sheryl-sandberg-too...

Note according to this list:

http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-08-19/the-15-highest...

Safra Catz from Oracle was the highest paid in 2013 so maybe this is a 2014 list.

As a side-note, she's also a male->female transgender. I'm not personally making any judgments here, but some people might consider her still a male, and thus not the highest paid female exec.

It's more of an interesting factoid than anything, though.

FWIW, since it's just part of her identity, not her defining characteristic, many people consider it impolite to use "transgender" as a noun. The preferred usage might be something like "transgender person" or just a "trans person" for short.

Consider "a 10 year old autistic" as an analogously impolite usage.

Anyone who considers her male is wrong.

Period.

If she is the highest paid female exec, then she is the highest paid female exec.

If Rothblatt sent a DNA sample off to a DNA testing lab, would they detect the sample as being from a male or a female?

(not that I really care all that much)

Male, because that's her genetic sex. Note that gender and sex are two different, not necessarily correlated things. Sex is the sum of your physical characteristics; gender is what you feel and/or identify as. She identifies as a woman, and has in fact had sexual reassignment surgery (giving her most female physical characteristics). She's a woman, and female.

One is something related to science ; the other is related to political or social beliefs.

Sheryl Sandberg earned $16M in cash and stock in 2013. More in prior years, but less than $38M.

they ranked in regular pay. all ceo get bonuses and other tax evading sources as their main income.

Yikes. The creep factor is very high in this article. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the fawning over what is arguably a potentially dangerous new cult.

Interesting, I've heard people talk about transhumanism and singularitarianism as similar to religions/cults, but those philosophies aren't usually presented with an explicitly spiritual/religious component. It sounds from the article like the Terasim Movement does try to add a religious component (the profile suggests elements of Judaism). A light skim over the Terasim Movement website (http://www.terasemmovementfoundation.com) doesn't seem to reveal much about that religious component, although this video (http://vimeo.com/100518959) has a nebulously "spiritual" feel to it.

Do you think this cult is dangerous because you believe all cults/religions are, or do you see something particularly worrisome here?

I think the desire to form an organization which has the purpose of interfering with life at a fundamental level is quite dangerous, particularly since it seems focused around the desires - and thoughts - of a single individual. The creation of alternate-to-nature/-robot life is, arguably, another way to build yourself a slave colony.

What exactly do you find creepy and what makes her religion a "cult?"

I guess you didn't read the article...

The Terasem Movement most certainly is creepy (aren't all religions?) but we don't have enough information to determine if it is a cult (would need actually followers). I want to guess this "religion" is really meant to be satirical.

The thing that really annoys me about profiles like these is that they are about someone who was born into privilege and then lucked into wealth at a young age. Yeah, Martine was right about the future of satellite radio. But lots of people were right about a lot of things but didn't hit big paydays. When someone hits one like that, it's mostly down to luck.

Leveraging that early wealth into other successful things is better than squandering it, but it's not a tale of heroism.

Instead of giving me actual reasons to admire Martine, this profile is just a list of things that came from that fortunate early privilege and wealth.

And yeah, the cult is an indication of some kind of mental problems to me.

Wow, where did that come from?!? Was starting her workday at 2am everyday part of her "luck"? From this profile, it sounds like she's worked very hard, she's smart, she's sacrificed living on very little as a grad student, she's taken risks, and she's been driven to do work that's important too her (developing technology to save her daughter).

Sure, tons of people live fortunate lives by skating forward on the momentum of a privileged upbringing. But I get exactly the opposite vibe from this article.

Lots of people work very hard and never make it rich. Working long hours is not a trait unique to very successful people. Therefore, what is unique? Luck.

As far as "living on very little as a grad student", grad students may live on a tight budget but they don't know what poverty means.

I didn't say there was no hard work involved, but the article is not really about the work. It's about these big things that Martine was only able to do because she got very wealthy and very lucky early on.

If you're not already super rich, no amount of hard work is going to let you start a drug company to save your child.

Please don't confuse my dislike for this fawning profile with dislike of Martine. My whole point is that this article nothing but sycophantic fluff, and as a result I don't know Martine at all really. The most insightful thing in this whole article is that she started a weird cult.

The vast, vast, vast majority of people who are born with every advantage don't accomplish anything worthy of a profile like this. And I don't dispute that, if she'd been born in a starving village in a third-world country (or probably even to poor parents in the US), its very unlikely that that she would have done these particular things.

It seems that the only criteria for interestingness or laudability that you'll accept is to have overcome underprivileged circumstances. I think that's a perfectly fine factor, but I'm personally interested in reading profiles of people for LOTS of other reasons: impressive accomplishments, impressive problem solving, overcoming/motivated by bad things happening to you or your close family, personal struggle, unusual ideas / perspective, hard work, humor, ... and many more (some that I'm not even aware of).

If a person's story has the right weighting of factors like that, I'm interested. And Martine Rothblatt's story was WELL OVER the bar for being someone who I'd want to learn about.

Most of the things I think are good criteria for admiring someone have nothing at all to do with their bank account. Thanks for missing the point entirely.

> Thanks for missing the point entirely

Please don't be personally abrasive in Hacker News comments, even when the other person misses a point.

United Therapeutics are a strange company. In 2010, they released a supplement to their annual report in comic book form - http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/UTHR/1290392365x0x466...

And the following year, released it as a musical.

i would be extremely worried if a company im investing did this. as much as it is not, it does at least seems like diversion tactics.

Without the Oxford comma I read that as SiriusXM being "a religion and a biotech for starters", I was pretty confused until I red the article and realized my mistake.

But even with the comma there's still the intepretation of SiriusXM being a religion, right? (ESL speaker here; that's how I might interpret it.)

Yes, that is true. Short statements inside pairs of commas are sometimes parenthetical asides, descriptions of the previous term/expression.

All hail the ambiguity of the spoken word....

> All hail the ambiguity of the spoken word....

But this is actually about the (lesser, but still present) ambiguity of the written word.

Oh wow, I saw the United Therapeutics HQ in Silver Spring being built, walked around it a bunch when it was done, thought it was a cool building, etc. and had no idea it was Rothblatt's company. Neat!

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