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Most software companies have a Theranos-like business model, ship broken stuff on purpose for profit. It worked great until someone thought it was a great idea

Most software companies have a Theranos-like business model, ship broken stuff on purpose for profit. It worked great until someone thought it was a great idea to do it with technology used to provide medical treatment to human beings.

TillE 10y ago
It's also unwise when your concept probably isn't even theoretically possible. You can definitely bite off more than you can chew with software, but most problems are actually solvable.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > It's also unwise when your concept probably isn't even theoretically possible. If the concept is easier and cheaper blood tests, I think we can solve that. If the concept is testing with a given volume of arbitrary blood, you've dug yourself your own grave.
  - petra 10y ago
    >> easier and cheaper blood tests, Cheaper isn't enough to drive enough demand against the competition, because of insurance. So they got pushed towards easier, i.e. no pain finger prick, which was their downfall.
  - gnipgnip 10y ago
    I'm not familiar with medicine; was this not known in the field ? Surely a student from Stanford, who I hear was also doing research at NUS, should have had access to enough advisers who could've averred that to her (before the company took off) ?
    - maverick_iceman 10y ago
      A lot of her professors in Stanford told her that her vision is not possible. Of course she didn't listen to them.
- partycoder 10y ago
  How companies see themselves: Disruptive next-gen mobile VR social network startup powered by serverless machine learning and blockchains implemented by engineers/adept hikers fed exclusively with gluten free organic kale/tofu/quinoa salads and kombucha. What they really are: Death march ran by Steve Jobs' cultists/buzzword collectors solving problems that nobody has in a way they don't really understand implemented by overworked depressed people that drink themselves into oblivion to cope with technical debt.
Fomite 10y ago
"Move fast and break things" works well until one of those "things" is grandma.
return0 10y ago
Even in the software world, at least the product "basically" works. In this case even the basic product didnt work.
SEJeff 10y ago
And when most software companies break things people don't die or get misdiagnosed and then die! This is very different.
- partycoder 10y ago
  https://youtu.be/aRrDsbUdY_k?t=5m23s https://youtu.be/aRrDsbUdY_k?t=5m23s http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-ios-6-maps-phone-5-buggy-complaints http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-i... http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
  - striking 10y ago
    The first one isn't a product that can be sold but rather a systemic failure. The rest of them didn't kill anyone. iOS 6 Maps was definitely a pretty big mistake, but Google Maps was available the majority of the time it was broken. I guess I can let you have that one, since it was pretty appallingly bad and because not everyone knew you could download the actually good Maps app. The next two examples were unfortunate mistakes where a tiny bug caused a massive failure, and these things happen sometimes. They didn't ship a broken product, just a product with a worse-than-expected bug. I feel like that's understandable when your target platform is a damned jet airplane or ship, and your underlying platform is some complicated 35 "Intel i960" mess running Ada[1] or 27 Pentium Pro computers all running Windows NT 4.0.[2] I'm not sure what you expected. And yes, the loss of the Mars Orbiter was awful, and yes the error was noticed by two different people who said something about it.[3] I think this might be the most applicable scenario to your point, where a broken product was shipped broken on purpose because of stupid time pressure. Two of five isn't too bad, but it hardly shows a pattern of shipping broken stuff for profit. Sometimes people want profit, but many times people make mistakes. 1: http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-12/issue-5/news/f-22-avionics-designers-rely-on-obsolescent-electronics-but-plan-for-future-upgrades.html http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-12/is..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_ship_testbed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_shi... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
deleted 10y ago
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erikb 10y ago
I think they are not the only ones who provide broken medical technology. It sks but that is how most businesses work. Overpromising and underdelivering. But the ones that get attacked get attacked because they made too many enemies. In some regards they are actually the ones who tried the most to actually change something, thereby commiting themselves too much to attack.

TillE 10y ago

It's also unwise when your concept probably isn't even theoretically possible. You can definitely bite off more than you can chew with software, but most problems are actually solvable.

duaneb 10y ago
> It's also unwise when your concept probably isn't even theoretically possible. If the concept is easier and cheaper blood tests, I think we can solve that. If the concept is testing with a given volume of arbitrary blood, you've dug yourself your own grave.
- petra 10y ago
  >> easier and cheaper blood tests, Cheaper isn't enough to drive enough demand against the competition, because of insurance. So they got pushed towards easier, i.e. no pain finger prick, which was their downfall.
- gnipgnip 10y ago
  I'm not familiar with medicine; was this not known in the field ? Surely a student from Stanford, who I hear was also doing research at NUS, should have had access to enough advisers who could've averred that to her (before the company took off) ?
  - maverick_iceman 10y ago
    A lot of her professors in Stanford told her that her vision is not possible. Of course she didn't listen to them.
partycoder 10y ago
How companies see themselves: Disruptive next-gen mobile VR social network startup powered by serverless machine learning and blockchains implemented by engineers/adept hikers fed exclusively with gluten free organic kale/tofu/quinoa salads and kombucha. What they really are: Death march ran by Steve Jobs' cultists/buzzword collectors solving problems that nobody has in a way they don't really understand implemented by overworked depressed people that drink themselves into oblivion to cope with technical debt.

Fomite 10y ago

"Move fast and break things" works well until one of those "things" is grandma.

return0 10y ago

Even in the software world, at least the product "basically" works. In this case even the basic product didnt work.

SEJeff 10y ago

And when most software companies break things people don't die or get misdiagnosed and then die! This is very different.

partycoder 10y ago
https://youtu.be/aRrDsbUdY_k?t=5m23s https://youtu.be/aRrDsbUdY_k?t=5m23s http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-ios-6-maps-phone-5-buggy-complaints http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-i... http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by+International+Date+Line/article6225.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Lockheeds+F22+Raptor+Gets+Zapped+by... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
- striking 10y ago
  The first one isn't a product that can be sold but rather a systemic failure. The rest of them didn't kill anyone. iOS 6 Maps was definitely a pretty big mistake, but Google Maps was available the majority of the time it was broken. I guess I can let you have that one, since it was pretty appallingly bad and because not everyone knew you could download the actually good Maps app. The next two examples were unfortunate mistakes where a tiny bug caused a massive failure, and these things happen sometimes. They didn't ship a broken product, just a product with a worse-than-expected bug. I feel like that's understandable when your target platform is a damned jet airplane or ship, and your underlying platform is some complicated 35 "Intel i960" mess running Ada[1] or 27 Pentium Pro computers all running Windows NT 4.0.[2] I'm not sure what you expected. And yes, the loss of the Mars Orbiter was awful, and yes the error was noticed by two different people who said something about it.[3] I think this might be the most applicable scenario to your point, where a broken product was shipped broken on purpose because of stupid time pressure. Two of five isn't too bad, but it hardly shows a pattern of shipping broken stuff for profit. Sometimes people want profit, but many times people make mistakes. 1: http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-12/issue-5/news/f-22-avionics-designers-rely-on-obsolescent-electronics-but-plan-for-future-upgrades.html http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-12/is..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_ship_testbed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_shi... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...

deleted 10y ago

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erikb 10y ago

I think they are not the only ones who provide broken medical technology. It sks but that is how most businesses work. Overpromising and underdelivering. But the ones that get attacked get attacked because they made too many enemies. In some regards they are actually the ones who tried the most to actually change something, thereby commiting themselves too much to attack.