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Theranos Inc.’s Partners in Blood
- atomical 8y agoTim Draper said a lot of nice things about Holmes. What's up with that? He's making himself look like an idiot.
- sparky_z 8y agoSomebody in another thread theorized that he's signaling to future business partners. "Do business with me and I will always publicly have your back, no matter what." Seems plausible to me.
- atomical 8y agoBut maybe hard-nosed entrepreneurs don't want to work with the village idiot?
- rdlecler1 8y agoIt would also signal to downstream investors: I don’t do my due diligence so don’t trust the companies I invest in. VC is a reputation market on both sides of the table so companies will want to take this into consideration.
- JackCh 8y agoMaybe he's stuck in the sunk costs fallacy. I've also heard that Tim Draper is an old family friend of Holmes; perhaps that is clouding his judgement.
- trendia 8y ago> Timothy Draper, the well-known venture capitalist, had been a neighbor when the Holmeses lived in California. The children played together. “I gave her her first million bucks to get the business going,” Mr. Draper says. “She totally blows me away with her vision.” [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/business/theranos-founder-faces-a-test-of-technology-and-reputation.html?_r=0_ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/business/theranos-founder...
- jasonmp85 8y agoMaybe he is one?
- mhluongo 8y agoHe's not. The first time I pitched him, I was blown away by how quickly he understood our business. He thinks differently, but from what I've seen contrarian bets are a good way to succeed as a VC. He also doesn't care about looking a little kooky or cheesy... sort of refreshing vs the rest of the Bay. Disclaimer - He passed years ago, but he's an investor in our latest venture.
- steve19 8y agoPay wall bypass: https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in-blood-1526662047 https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in-... Edit: Because it freaked someone out, clicking on this link redirects you via. Facebook. You don't need to be logged into Facebook for it to work.
- adeptus 8y agoWARNING: clicking this link may try to redirect you through facebook and expose your identity. Also, it didn't work for me as far as bypassing wsj.com to get the full article. I was logged off of facebook, but due to cookies, facebook still knew whom I last logged in as. If this worked for anyone, please just copy/paste the article text in here... assuming that's allowed.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JackCh 8y agoArchive.is has the full text, which is not atypical.
- jedwhite 8y agoFor anyone needing to bypass the paywall, if you google "WSJ Theranos Inc.’s Partners in Blood" in an Incognito window you will generally have no problem getting access. Not guaranteed but works most of the time. Sometimes there will be a pop up to close. Using Incognito increases the likelihood of access if you have previous WSJ use.
- bronson 8y agoThat hasn't worked for going on a year now. The only way that I know of is to bounce through a social network link.
- jedwhite 8y agoIt worked for me without problem in this case. If you regularly access the WSJ using this method they may track IPs as well as cookies as they have a differentiated access pattern for social and search links based on identifiable user history. Incognito mode gets around cookie tracking but not IP tracking.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoOr use this Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/ It changes your referer to "Facebook" every time you connect to the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.
- smaili 8y ago> In 1999, he joined CommerceBid.com as its president and No. 2 executive; it was developing a software program for companies to pit their suppliers against one another for contracts in live online auctions. Business-to-business e-commerce had become hot, and in November 1999, the sector leader—the similarly named Commerce One—acquired the startup for $232 million in cash and stock, though it had just three clients testing its software. Ah yes, the dot-com bubble at its finest.
- bane 8y agoNot too much new here except: - focus is on Balwani, the COO who drove to work in cars with vanity plates on his sports cars that read DAZKPTL and VDIVICI - Balwani and Holmes met in Beijing as part of a Stanford course in China, she was young and bullied by the other students and Balwani took her under his wing - apparently Holmes and Balwani were dating, she fired him, they aren't together and because of the ongoing criminal probe have been instructed not to speak with each other - Balwani had a small war against Glassdoor reviews including having HR post fake ones and pressuring Glassdoor into taking down overly negative ones - Holmes' weirdly low voice was an act! She's been caught using her normal register. - They invited VP Biden to tour a fake lab. Man the onion layers of weirdness just never stop peeling away about this company.
- foobarian 8y agoThey kind of glossed over it, but they were romantically involved? Apart from the age difference which is creepy enough, how was this kosher given she was his superior?
- xevb3k 8y ago> Balwani had a small war against Glassdoor reviews including having HR post fake ones and pressuring Glassdoor into taking down overly negative ones This now seems par for the course. Many many companies are posting fake Glassdoor reviews (and trying to get bad ones taken down) now.
- akyu 8y agoI called out the fake voice thing years ago. It was blatantly obvious, but I guess people were afraid of being "sexist".
- mc32 8y agoAlso curiously sanpaku, not that that really means anything. JFK was sanpaku as well, so... meh.
- refulgentis 8y agoThe low voice bit isn't in the article, was it previously?
- swampthinker 8y agoWow, I kind of feel bad for Holmes now. Seems like she really got taken advantage of and got romantic love interests confused with how to properly run a company.
- jjeaff 8y agoWhich, if true, is super annoying seeing as she was held up as an example that bucks the trend and stereotypes when it comes to women in entrepreneurship.
- fwdpropaganda 8y agoHow did she get taken advantage of? She commited a billion dollar fraud. All of a sudden just because there's a guy in the picture it's all his playing and she was just a pawn? Don't you think that's extremely patronising?
- swampthinker 8y agoI'm speaking as someone who went through an emotionally abusive relationship. I think you're significantly downplaying just how impactful shitty role models and power dynamics like this can be.
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago> I think you're significantly downplaying just how impactful shitty role models What you said would make sense if we knew that she had him as role model. THEN you could make the case that role models are important and claim that I downplay their importance. But we don't know if she had him as role model, so again you're guessing. I could just as easily make opposite guess: do you know how easy it is to manipulate men by dangling sex in front of them?
- dogruck 8y agoAnybody have a guess why Elizabeth Holmes got such a small punishment for running such a massive scam?
- dogruck 8y agoWhy is this question downvoted? People disagree with my view that the punishment is small in relation to the size of the scam?
- citrablue 8y agoCan you point to the specific statutes that she violated? "Fraud" is very broad -- I am not clear that she did anything illegally, just unethically and deceptive. We aren't criminalizing how Reddit astroturfed their site. Is the only difference the scope? The investment monies? The potential? I'm not interested in debating the moral aspects, as I suspect we violently agree. But it's crucial to be specific, against current legal code, when stating things like you did.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stochastic_monk 8y agoSerious question: is a test provider who knowingly provides test results which it knows to be inaccurate and therefore leads patients to wrong diagnoses and potentially treatment, are they criminally liable or only civilly for fraud/breach of contract?
- gaius 8y agoWe can compare her to Shkrerli, who if the media portrayals are accurate is obnoxious so I don’t want to be seen defending him, but it is a great contrast that the Armenian immigrant got 7 years and the pretty WASP got a slap on the wrist.
- gnicholas 8y agoI believe the civil case is settled but the criminal probe is ongoing.
- txsh 8y agoWhy aren’t we allowed to criticize these lunatics before their companies fall apart? It was obvious to many commenters on HN that these people were crooks long before the media caught up. But comments critical of them were often flagged or deleted. Musk’s house of cards receives the same preferential treatment. How many lives does a wacky billionaire get to destroy before HN stops running interference? How much blood does a god need to bleed before we stop worshipping them?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- citrablue 8y agoThe answer, of course, is hindsight bias. It says more about our inability to understand the probabilistic nature of the future than any sort of commentary about the downfall of civilized society. Call to mind the Michael Dell letter about Apple. Think in terms of your confidence about the current environment, right now. Would you bet something invaluable -- your children's lives, let's say -- that e.g. Uber will not be worth $10b on public markets in 5 years? If not, we have to ack there's uncertainty in the moment. It's only after the fact that the probability density function collapses to 1, and we forget about the other options.
- aaron-lebo 8y agoIt's maybe hindsight that allows us to know whether the schemes of a huckster are going to fail, but it's not hard to see people who are hucksters. They make big promises and don't meet them, and when that happens they just make another promise (usually including excuses or distractions from why they were previously wrong), and people worship them for that. These people are either liars or just wrong most of the time, but people don't seem to care. It's not that it isn't obvious, it's that people don't want to admit what's right there. Maybe it is from growing up in an environment where I've seen people who love power and control (even if that's only over a very small amount of people), it desn't shock me that ramps up with increasing power and fame. There are a lot of people on the scene today which are obvious hucksters, but nobody is going to admit that (and some won't) until their lies actually ruin things. Again, see Draper whom even knowing what he does is willing to lie or be delusional about what happened there. Consider that there's lots and lots of people who are willing to actually give up their lives for weird cult leaders. If that's the case (and those lies are very obvious to all but a small few), there's so much room on the other side of that where you can be equally as manipulative and fraudulent but because it's only business or politics and not religion, people aren't willing to apply the same standard and say, yeah, that guy is a liar who likes people talking about him (or whatever gender). Usually people in positions of power have actively sought that power, and it attracts a very specific kind of personality.
- neonate 8y agohttp://archive.li/IXtF9 http://archive.li/IXtF9