4 ms·

Theranos 2006 pitch deck

13 points by chirau 10y ago

danso 10y ago
I was impressed with how technical it was. I mean, it does all the things that Edward Tufte hates about PowerPoint, but it's a pretty barebones text dump on top of a PowerPoint template, with nothing flash other than charts. This is not to say that the bullet points or charts correlate to the truth. Just that I was expecting something more slick/simplified to sell a "big idea" startup. Did investors actually pass this deck to their technical people to verify/validate any of the technical claims?
- jnaina 10y ago
  To me it looks like obfuscation through technical jargon overload. The intended audience were prospective investors who have no real understanding of medical testing market. The pitch deck seems calibrated to dazzle the uninitiated in a very unassuming way.
  - toufka 10y ago
    To a scientist's eyes it looks like a standard science presentation with all the interesting bits taken out. It's a great study on the clash of cultures. A standard scientific presentation will have those exact slides, along with 40 more that explain each of those 20. It will last an hour, and will be, ultimately, about a single thesis/topic. To try to evaluate that topic after the hour is challenging. To rest many millions of dollars of investment on an abbreviated, shortened version without having the technical foundation to evaluate it just seems dangerous. What you see here is an ultra-compressed version of a scientific presentation without any of the detail or followup. And then mashed between the business essentials.
boulos 10y ago
Always fascinating to see these (assuming it's real, but it's got the right set of blandness to suggest it is). Can I suggest that the URL be replaced with a direct link to the PDF (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3319335/Theranos-Inc-PPT-IS-Ppt-2.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3319335/Theranos-...) as the wrapper "article" is mostly useless?

4 ms·

Theranos 2006 pitch deck

13 points by chirau 10y ago

danso 10y ago
I was impressed with how technical it was. I mean, it does all the things that Edward Tufte hates about PowerPoint, but it's a pretty barebones text dump on top of a PowerPoint template, with nothing flash other than charts. This is not to say that the bullet points or charts correlate to the truth. Just that I was expecting something more slick/simplified to sell a "big idea" startup. Did investors actually pass this deck to their technical people to verify/validate any of the technical claims?
- jnaina 10y ago
  To me it looks like obfuscation through technical jargon overload. The intended audience were prospective investors who have no real understanding of medical testing market. The pitch deck seems calibrated to dazzle the uninitiated in a very unassuming way.
  - toufka 10y ago
    To a scientist's eyes it looks like a standard science presentation with all the interesting bits taken out. It's a great study on the clash of cultures. A standard scientific presentation will have those exact slides, along with 40 more that explain each of those 20. It will last an hour, and will be, ultimately, about a single thesis/topic. To try to evaluate that topic after the hour is challenging. To rest many millions of dollars of investment on an abbreviated, shortened version without having the technical foundation to evaluate it just seems dangerous. What you see here is an ultra-compressed version of a scientific presentation without any of the detail or followup. And then mashed between the business essentials.
boulos 10y ago
Always fascinating to see these (assuming it's real, but it's got the right set of blandness to suggest it is). Can I suggest that the URL be replaced with a direct link to the PDF (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3319335/Theranos-Inc-PPT-IS-Ppt-2.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3319335/Theranos-...) as the wrapper "article" is mostly useless?