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> if the startup bubble pops Therano's problems neither indicate a "startup bubble" exists nor would it pop it if there was a bubble. The bay area economy is l
by VeilEm 11y ago
> if the startup bubble pops
Therano's problems neither indicate a "startup bubble" exists nor would it pop it if there was a bubble. The bay area economy is larger than the economies many countries and one company that doesn't yet have significant revenues doesn't have make much of an impact. Theranos isn't the Bear Sterns of San Francisco. The problem many troubled unicorns face is that they guaranteed results to get high valuations in their late stage investor financing. Their problems are exactly that, just their problems.
- lvs 11y agoOh yes. This company exists in a vacuum, just like all the private capital that's propping up your local economy. I can't possibly imagine the mechanism by which the perception of failure might cause private investors to stop investing in things. Certainly, most investors don't read the news or sites like this one, so there's no way they might know that the unbridled optimism that fuels growth of unproductive companies could be approaching a precipice. Investors will obviously stay the course, continue dumping ever more capital into pointless apps and SaaSy startups, not to mention mysterious vaporware technologies like the one in question. It's nothing like that shameful bubble from the late 1990's when more public investment was involved, since everyone knows that perception requires a public market.
- Asparagirl 11y agoIt is unlikely that this is the only start-up with such large problems, it's just that this is one of the more obviously fraudulent ones. There is rarely just one cockroach.