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An Open Letter From Elizabeth Holmes
- arkitaip 10y agoHow long are they going to continue this farce? When will the investors step in and try to save what's left of the business?
- pinewurst 10y agoI'm expecting Elizabeth Holmes to announce having herself, Sunny and a core force of bodyguards put into cryonic suspension.
- adrenalinelol 10y agoWhat would they do? If they can maintain say 5% of its hype valuation that's worth more than the market/product they have (nothing).
- blhack 10y agoMaybe I'm missing something, but...nothing? Just looking at google maps there are like 10 theranos labs just in Phoenix (my hometown). Recently, I was talking to a doctor-friend, and they recommended that if I was curious about something like my blood sugar, but didn't want to go for a whole doctor visit, to just go over to a theranos lab and have them do it.
- DanBC 10y agoWhy wouldn't you just ask a pharmacist? EDIT after downvotes: Maybe it's an English thing, but if I wanted to know my blood glucose I'd ask my local pharmacist. http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/pharmacists/Pages/pharmacistsandchemists.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/pharmacists/Pa...
- TillE 10y agoThose are the labs they're being forced to close, right? So not much of an asset, besides maybe the equipment and stuff they could sell.
- pkaye 10y agoYou could also get it tested at a lab like LabCorp. There are a few websites that let you select the tests and pay for them online and then visit the lab. You can get a standard panel of 25 or so blood tests for $50.
- gusbus 10y agoSure... local grocers/pharmacies offer flu shots and blood glucose testing. Why pay for Theranos branding?
- car 10y agoActually, it's pretty cool you can do this in Arizona. Wish this was possible in California. I've installed the Theranos app on my iPhone, and was pleasantly surprised at their very affordable a la carte clinical lab testing. It feels pretty empowering for a consumer to order whatever clinical test they want without having to consult a doctor first (at least in Arizona).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ericseppanen 10y agoAssuming the press articles are correct, Theranos class B stock has 100x voting power. Investors may not have sufficient voting power to overrule the founder(s).
- tommynicholas 10y agoWhat do you mean what's left of the business, the money on the balance sheet?
- daveguy 10y agoThere is nothing left of the business. They are finally trying to come up with a product they can sell before running out of money. If they try to raise more money the valuation will be pennies on the dollar. There is no way they are close to unicorn valuation after this fiasco.
- AWildDHHAppears 10y agoMaybe Marissa can take her job, post Yahoo!
- cjslep 10y ago"An Open Letter From Elizabeth Holmes" posted by Staff Writer It wouldn't surprise me if a shadow writer indeed wrote this letter "from" Elizabeth Holmes. That's how the world of open letters from CEOs works, right? But usually they wouldn't expose the farce this way?
- kldaace 10y agoI doubt she actually wrote this but to be fair all of their posts are written by "Staff Writer" except an op-ed linked by "Theranos Staff."
- hprotagonist 10y agoDeath by a thousand cuts.
- kejaed 10y agoMore precisely, 340.
- objclxt 10y ago> "We have decided to close our clinical labs" ...or, perhaps more accurately, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has banned Elizabeth Holmes from running any kind of blood testing laboratory[1]. It seems a little odd to write a letter making it sound like you're just pivoting when in fact your chief executive is not permitted to carry out the kind of business they were previously carrying out. [1]:http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-regulator-bans-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-from-operating-labs-for-two-years-1467956064 http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-regulator-bans-theranos-ceo-...
- Bud 10y agoIt's more than "a little odd". It's a blatant lie.
- lingben 10y agoyes but to be fair blatantly lying has been their business model from the very beginning
- eli 10y agoThey could still stay open and not accept Medicaid/Medicare payments. It would just be terrible for business.
- chipperyman573 10y agoNo, it is factually accurate. Instead of firing the CEO, they decided to pivot. Regardless if it was the decision they would have made with no restrictions placed on the company, it is the decision they made, all external factors included.
- Bud 10y agoNo. Deciding is when you have a choice. They didn't have a choice. This is a lie.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
- zerooneinfinity 10y agoI went to the technology page which was a whoops 404 error.
- kctess5 10y agoHa they fixed it. Someone at theranos reads hn.
- Mango_Diesel 10y agoEither broken again or maybe you hit a cache.
- kctess5 10y agoWhen I click the link in the footer now, it directs to the homepage. The /technology page is still 404.
- kevinbluer 10y agoStill getting a 404: https://www.theranos.com/technology https://www.theranos.com/technology
- throwanem 10y agoHow perfectly apropos!
- kldaace 10y agoI feel bad for those 340 employees. I can't imagine what it would feel like to have years of your work be exposed as (basically) a farce. I can barely stand working a week without getting results much less x years of my professional life.
- aswanson 10y agoYeah. Having the big "T" on the resume might be one of the few red flags signalling fraud and corruption worse than a few years at SAC capital after a internship at Enron and Lehman Bros. Maybe the employees themselves will sue the company for fraud and damage to their careers. Crazy situation.
- jdavis703 10y agoThey'll probably change their name (why hello Accenture), and the people associated can now put the untainted name on their resume.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoHeh, had no idea about that one! I had recently been thinking about how terrible it would be to have a resume with a Wells Fargo job ending in the last couple months.
- FilterSweep 10y agoThat's a good point, but I would hope employers would be able to distinguish situations clearly created solely on: a) the upper management level (Wells Fargo, Theranos) from: b) the employee level, whereby the employees themselves use private data for advantage and personal gain - DraftKings comes to mind here[0][1] [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-fantasy-employees-bet-rivals.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings-... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-sports-fanduel-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/draftkings-daily-fantasy-spor...
- walrus01 10y agoWorth reading: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-ther...
- paulvs 10y agoGood old common sense is lacking all throughout this farce. It's one thing to build a company on an existing technology, like Jobs did, but promise to implement it better. It's another to come up with a wouldn't it be nice if... scenario, and raise capital on it. Are Silicon Valley investors stupid enough to throw their money at any bright young dropout with a change-the-world idea? The fact that some Ivy League dropouts found billion dollar companies does not mean a particular Ivy League dropout chosen at random (or one of the many who express a desire to change the world) has a non-zero chance of returning $$$ on investments. Demonstrating that inteligence and common sense are seperate traits, the latter not always accompanying the former.
- fsloth 10y agoHolmes had extremely good family connections. I'm sure it sounded credible at the time. From VC:s point of view the type of people she had connections to functioned as social proof and some of them even probably as celebrity advocates (i.e. Rumsfeld).
- lordnacho 10y agoIf you wait for all the pieces of a proposed business to be functioning properly, you will have missed the boat as an investor. It's perfectly reasonable to take a bet on someone who appears intelligent and well connected, with a "maybe" idea. There's all sorts of hurdles that a company might not get over: - Tech turns out to be a red herring - Tech works, but competitors also get it to work - You can't scale the team - People buy the product, but you need critical mass to make it worthwhile - etc
- TillE 10y agoI don't think it's too much to demand a scientifically verified "proof of concept" before investing. There's still a very long road from that to a real functioning business. What Theranos had was merely the hope of developing such a process, with many reasons to believe that it's simply impossible. That's insanely risky.
- M_Grey 10y agoPreparing for charges to be levied, you have to hope.
- hans 10y agoi'll say it again, there's a really cool Don DeLillo book in this Theranos burn out .. "Through it, we see a world in which no one ever has to say ‘goodbye’ too soon, and people are able to leverage engagement with their health to live their best lives." -- bunch of BS :]
- erinfrey 10y ago+1 this would make a kickass Don DeLillo book.
- jaredhansen 10y agoYou might enjoy Zero K, a Don DeLillo book that is more or less about cryogenic suspension.
- transfire 10y agoHow does this become top post with only 79 points and 21 comments posted 1 hour ago?
- kens 10y agoTo simplify, lots of votes in a short time gets the article to the top, unless penalties kick in. If you're interested in the HN scoring algorithm, I wrote about it in 2013: http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... Some changes have been made to the algorithm since then, but it's still roughly accurate.
- sp332 10y agoThat's more than 1 upvote per minute, pretty high. The 2nd story has 55 votes in >1 hour.
- lelandbatey 10y agoRealistically: for a while, this company has been engendering a lot of ill will, enough that many people recognize it by name, and many of those same people will quickly upvote any bad news about it.
- josh_carterPDX 10y agoThe most frustrating part of this whole situation is that this is going to cause VC deal flow to be impacted for those entrepreneurs who actually know what they're doing.
- gumby 10y agoUnlikely -- this deal didn't really get any VC deal flow. DFJ invested because Draper's kids were childhood friends of Holmes'. Ellison (not a VC) invested because his investment manager was a college friend of her father's. ATV invested because, well who knows -- perhaps because DFJ invested. Those are the three investors. No life science VCs invested.
- josh_carterPDX 10y agoI guess I was speaking more broadly. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but my hunch is that there are more elements at play such as the economy that is slowing early stage deal flow. But this whole situation sure is making it easy for someone investing in a company to spend more time scrutinizing the team and company. Again, may not be a bad thing. Time will tell.
- ben_jones 10y agoI'm a really uninformed opinion but doesn't public perception impact VC at some level, even subliminally? If public perception goes to shit, might the market (and VC) follow?
- gumby 10y agoLife science investors need to invest in life science deals -- it's the promise they made to their customers (err...LPs) and what the need to do to make any more than the management fee. If anything, they can tout their prowess in passing on the Theranos shitshow. As far as I can tell right now life science investing is doing fine. I am advising one company (and in the device diagnostic space, same space, if different application than Theranos) which is deciding over multiple offers.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago“We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform. Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care.” People who are expected to die before they can sue. Also kids. Am I reading this correctly? http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-retreats-from-blood-tests-1475713848 http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-retreats-from-blood-tes...
- daveguy 10y agoAlso known as vulnerable patient populations -- a critical group for healthcare needs. That part is definitely not a conspiracy. From Theranos' perspective they have families that are quite capable of litigation. That angle is a bit of a stretch to put it mildly.
- sopooneo 10y agoFrom an outside perspective, the "mini-lab" sounds like a slightly different name for the same thing they already promising five years ago. What am I missing? Anything?
- daveguy 10y agoI think they are trying to pivot from a dumpster fire. The original "product" was blood tests with microliter volumes. That is essentially a farce. Now they are trying to sell lab automation in a box.
- sopooneo 10y agoRight. But as they are describing the "lab", it seems to be for doing blood tests with microliter volumes. No?
- daveguy 10y agoYes, so the "pivot" is more from a service to an instrument -- with a different set of regulations that they haven't yet burned to the ground. It's more of a 90 degree pivot than a 180 degree pivot.
- Tycho 10y agoIn July 2011, Holmes was introduced to former Secretary of State George Shultz, who joined the Theranos board of directors that same month.[48] Over the next three years, Shultz helped to introduce almost all the outside directors on the "all-star board," which included William Perry (former Secretary of Defense), Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State), Sam Nunn (former U.S. Senator), Bill Frist (former U.S. Senator and heart-transplant surgeon), Gary Roughead (Admiral, USN, retired), James Mattis (General, USMC) There's some crony capitalism for you.
- guelo 10y agoI guess, but it didn't work. She was probably hoping all the political connections would help push back the regulators. But the regulators have come down hard.
- drcode 10y agoIf letting them use equipment that was never seen by regulators and hidden from inspections for 2 years before sounding the alarm is "coming down hard" then you're right.
- ekianjo 10y agoYou know who Dropbox has on their board right?
- Tycho 10y agoYes. At least Dropbox isn't selling snake oil. I find it just appalling that these high ranking officials were seemingly cashing in by sitting on the board of a corrupt company. I wish we could adopt Taleb's idea of capping lifetime earnings for anyone who takes a job as a high ranking public servant.
- oneloop 10y agoNo, who?
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- andriesm 10y agoThat bitch is delusional. If she really cared about the business she should have stepped down. Then again having a shite non-working product and lying even when it endangers the health of people is psychopathic. She is NOT dealing with reality in this letter even as she uproots the lives and careers of countless employees.
- imaginenore 10y agoOne of a few cases when "bitch" is completely justified. She endangered people's lives because of her greed.
- alasdair_ 10y agoWhose lives were put in danger exactly? Was there anyone specific?
- danso 10y agoThere are ways to condemn someone without casting aspersions on an entire gender. The WSJ was able to basically single-handedly dismantle her hype and company without even any kind of insult. Cue the protest of "political correctness", as if not explicitly deriding her gender would put us at risk of whitewashing her crimes. I've liked using the b-word too. I stopped after working construction in a rural town, where perfectly decent fellows would use the n-word in the same context as the b-word, e.g. That's -work, or: I got shotgun, you're sitting . I found it hard to believe that I could use the b-word and not have it be a subconscious comment on what I thought of women. Holmes is an asshole, no thought of gender needed.
- imaginenore 10y agoWhat are you talking about? He called one person "bitch", not the whole gender. Your attempt at Oppression Olympics is just sad.
- tnones 10y agoAnd yet "asshole", "dick", "creep" and so on are perfectly valid to throw at a man without anyone worrying it's casting aspersions on the entire gender. Double standards, must protect the m'ladies!
- lint_roller 10y agoYes. That would be a start. The downvotes are comical. Never seen so much sympathy for people who defraud investors and put healthcare at risk.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dang 10y agoOne needn't sympathize with those things to downvote unsubstantive snark on HN. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12649468 and marked it off-topic.
- lint_roller 10y agoSnark begets snark, dang. I didn't perceive the parent comment to be particularly substantive either. We'll agree to disagree. Voters seemed to agree with my sentiment after all.
- dang 10y agoVoters upvote snark routinely. That's a weakness of the voting system, not a sign of quality. HN can't live by upvotes alone.
- brooklyndude 10y agoIn the future you will be able to run a multitude of blood tests on a single drop of blood. Just the future is not here just yet. Just like DNA. You amplify. And amplify. And a very cool guy got a Nobel prize for that.
- anbende 10y agoIt's not at all clear that that is the case. On of the problems, as I understand it, is that there's just not enough material in a drop of blood to run many tests. I'm not an expert, but while improvement may be possible, miraculous improvement may not be.
- lekeve 10y ago"Stop breaking the law, asshole!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx40udwQvZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx40udwQvZI
- beachstartup 10y ago> We have a new executive team leading our work toward obtaining FDA clearances, building commercial partnerships, and pursuing publications in scientific journals. hm, that's funny, no mention of products or services...
- Fricken 10y agoShe's a mighty good leader. It takes a rare and special talent to build a 9 billion dollar company using only smoke and mirrors. Even after all that has transpired she hasn't given up, she's still trucking. She doesn't see herself as a fraud at all, her faith in her mission, however delusional, is ironclad. She inspired her investors to take insane financial risks without so much as a whiff of due diligence. Elizabeth Holmes is a modern day Joan of Arc.
- Shivetya 10y agoYou need to read up on Joan of Arc, unless I am missing the idea your entire post is in jest. She sounds like a modern day politician caught with their hands in the cookie jar whose response is to change the issue to fit their own narrative. My only shock is they haven't trotted it out as if her company was treated differently because of the sex of the leadership.
- Grishnakh 10y ago>She sounds like a modern day politician caught with their hands in the cookie jar whose response is to change the issue to fit their own narrative. Yeah, but isn't that exactly what true leadership is? After all, people are perfectly happy, by the millions, to follow such people, and they've been doing it throughout history.
- fsloth 10y agoI'm not sure what people are so pissed about (unless they are investors). A little help here? Did they cause actual medical harm to someone? Had the minilab worked they would have had a functioning commercial service available to test and finetune the process immediately. Isn't field testing and shipping products what's important when developing new products and services? Sure, there is the chance it's a psychopath bullshit scenario from start to the end but do we have any actual proofs that this is the case?
- new299 10y agoActually, you know what people are pissed about? Poor investments like this create a business environment where it's harder to get really useful things done. It becomes impossible to bootstrap, and then get funded because VCs a) are looking at all the wrong metrics b) make development more expensive because the money they've thrown into the sector has pushed up costs. Poor investments as an employee, that when you're looking for an interesting, innovative hard science company to work for, you're comforted by a stream of companies that have been evaluated, not on their scientific merit but on their ability to sell an image of themselves. As an employee who doesn't just want to take a pay check, but would like to actually do something useful this is frustrating. You might say "it's their money, they can spend it how they want". As far as I'm aware that's not really true. The majority of the money invested in these kinds of companies ultimately comes from Banks. It's either money created out of thin-air (and doubly diluting every dollar you own) or it's a debt owned to the banks customers.
- fsloth 10y agoI understand all but the last of your arguments: "the majority of the money invested in these kinds of companies ultimately comes from Banks. " I suppose from the point of view of economy this is a problem if the funds exit circulation. If, on the other hand, the funds are mostly used for payroll and purchasing goods and services to maintain the business this means the whole economy benefits. Or am I totally clueless of fundamental economics (which might be the case, computer science and physics are more familiar to me)?
- readhn 10y agoRIP THERANOS.2016.
- readhn 10y agoThis is after several papers were published on inherent inaccuracy of small blood volume based tests..
- readhn 10y agoThe whole company is full of delusional characters it seems... Read recent article, apparently during recent company meeting the entire auditorium of Theranos employees chanted "F... Y.. Carreyrou! F... Y.. Carreyrou! " What kind of mentality people need to have to behave like that? Professional Scientists? Come on. I will not be sorry to see this dirty company go down the drain.
- readhn 10y agoDoes anyone else think this is the type of behavior expected of supposedly world class, cutting edge researchers? Cussing at the person who is challenging them? With the approval of the management? Theranos, MAY have a chance to build a successful product if they replace ALL of their decision makers who got them here in the first place and then clean up the ranks and build appropriate science team. Only then they have a SHOT at making a good product. If this does not happen then it is RIP for Theranos 2016..
- seesomesense 10y agoFrom John Carreyrou,the Wall Street Journal writer who wrote the investigatory series on Therano: "Patients are finally safe tonight. I did my job. #theranos"" Carreyrou will probably get a Pulitzer for his work on this story.
- baoha 10y agoIt's strange that there are so many people at the company. If I were one of them, I would jump ship long time ago.
- seesomesense 10y agoThe initial plan was to sell the technology to the Defence Department for use in battlefields. Theranos might still be able get a few billion out of them.
- seesomesense 10y ago"She also controls a majority voting stake in the company and can’t be easily removed from her position, according to people familiar with the matter." From the Wall Street Journal.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoThe last dying gasps of a Silicon Valley fraud..
- FussyZeus 10y ago> "An Open Letter From Elizabeth Holmes" > "By Staff Writer" I think this encapsulates this phony in two lines perfectly.
- swingbridge 10y agoI think it's more like she's been banned by regulators from running a lab and given their history no sane person would purchase such services from them anyway... but you know, details.
- lohankin 10y agoShe was used by greedy VCs. She's a victim. Take pity folks. (No sarcasm)