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It seems like a typical SV case of "fake it til you make it", except instead of risking a down website or burned investor, they risked harm and death of patient

It seems like a typical SV case of "fake it til you make it", except instead of risking a down website or burned investor, they risked harm and death of patients. She clearly had some knowledge and strategy about the technology and likely fully intended for it to be successful, but responded to delays and difficulties with deception rather than just admitting it was harder than they expected. "If we just get over this hurdle, we'll revolutionize medical testing and become legends." Not unlike Ponzi schemes which start out as legitimate investment ventures, do very poorly, and then just make up the return numbers. Martin Shkreli arguably pulled that fraud off "successfully" and actually got over the hurdle, but of course it came back to bite him.

atombender 8y ago
They did start with legitimate attempts at implementing th technology needed to microfluidics (though apparently Holmes knew nothing about the field and didn't even know anything about existing players such as Abaxis, who actually had working machines). However, they could not get the technology to work and abandoned several development paths in favour of a less ambitious approach that, among other things, involved doing blood analysis the old-fashioned way (manually in the lab), and only pretending to be using new tech they'd invented. They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud. Most of their money was raised after they failed to develop their blood analysis technology, but to the investors, to the press and to their clients (such as Walgreens), they were still claiming to be using their proprietary technology [1]. [1] http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of-the-silicon-valley-bubble http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-...
- meowface 8y ago
  >They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud. I'm playing Devil's advocate and not justifying or defending their fraud and the physical harm they caused, but if we were to look at Holmes' intentions, I'm suspecting it was something like "we just need to do this for a few months/years until our technology works", rather than "let's just run this scam forever and get rich". As for how close they actually were to developing that technology (and assuming most of their talent didn't leave) or if it was even possible for them, who knows. And of course, regardless, they still intended to commit fraud and should pay the price.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    No, it's just that annoying mentality of "fake it till you make it".
    - meowface 8y ago
      I guess we might find out during the trial.
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      Fake it until you make it is just a nice way of saying fraud. People that do that are being deceitful and should be publicly shamed and face criminal prosecution in some cases. They are scam artists, not honest entrepreneurs.
      - zebnyc 8y ago
        Are you going to say that to the founders of reddit & airbnb?
        paulie_a 8y ago
        I would absolutely say that to them. It's doubtful they actually committed a crime but it shows a lack of character and constituition to say the least and potentially fraud to their investors. Fake it until you make it makes you a scam artist, con man, flim flan man etc... People that embrace that philosophy are frauds and cheats that should not be trusted.
        meowface 8y ago
        Seeding a community where pseudo-anonymous users submit image/link content with images and links might be fraud by some semantic and technical definition (certainly not a legal one), but 1) it's pretty much necessary to get something like that off the ground, 2) no one is really being deceived or misled in a significant way. I'd say it's pretty harmless. My understanding is reddit did this at the very start of the site's existence and stopped pretty early. They probably would've died quickly if they didn't seed some content.
jvagner 8y ago
You might be able to "fake it til you make it" with some kinds of products, or business plans, or interactions with customers and partners. You can't really fake science. This may have been faking too hard in a place where experimentation, or R&D, yielded nothing usable.

atombender 8y ago

They did start with legitimate attempts at implementing th technology needed to microfluidics (though apparently Holmes knew nothing about the field and didn't even know anything about existing players such as Abaxis, who actually had working machines). However, they could not get the technology to work and abandoned several development paths in favour of a less ambitious approach that, among other things, involved doing blood analysis the old-fashioned way (manually in the lab), and only pretending to be using new tech they'd invented. They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud. Most of their money was raised after they failed to develop their blood analysis technology, but to the investors, to the press and to their clients (such as Walgreens), they were still claiming to be using their proprietary technology [1]. [1] http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of-the-silicon-valley-bubble http://m.nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-...

meowface 8y ago
>They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud. I'm playing Devil's advocate and not justifying or defending their fraud and the physical harm they caused, but if we were to look at Holmes' intentions, I'm suspecting it was something like "we just need to do this for a few months/years until our technology works", rather than "let's just run this scam forever and get rich". As for how close they actually were to developing that technology (and assuming most of their talent didn't leave) or if it was even possible for them, who knows. And of course, regardless, they still intended to commit fraud and should pay the price.
- konschubert 8y ago
  No, it's just that annoying mentality of "fake it till you make it".
  - meowface 8y ago
    I guess we might find out during the trial.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    Fake it until you make it is just a nice way of saying fraud. People that do that are being deceitful and should be publicly shamed and face criminal prosecution in some cases. They are scam artists, not honest entrepreneurs.
    - zebnyc 8y ago
      Are you going to say that to the founders of reddit & airbnb?
      - paulie_a 8y ago
        I would absolutely say that to them. It's doubtful they actually committed a crime but it shows a lack of character and constituition to say the least and potentially fraud to their investors. Fake it until you make it makes you a scam artist, con man, flim flan man etc... People that embrace that philosophy are frauds and cheats that should not be trusted.
        meowface 8y ago
        Seeding a community where pseudo-anonymous users submit image/link content with images and links might be fraud by some semantic and technical definition (certainly not a legal one), but 1) it's pretty much necessary to get something like that off the ground, 2) no one is really being deceived or misled in a significant way. I'd say it's pretty harmless. My understanding is reddit did this at the very start of the site's existence and stopped pretty early. They probably would've died quickly if they didn't seed some content.

jvagner 8y ago

You might be able to "fake it til you make it" with some kinds of products, or business plans, or interactions with customers and partners. You can't really fake science. This may have been faking too hard in a place where experimentation, or R&D, yielded nothing usable.