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Theranos: Blitzscaling, Blitzfailing, or Blitzfrauding?
- claydavisss 8y agoso "Blitzscaling" is basically working people to death?
- jvagner 8y agoBlitzscaling blitzscaling blitz blitz blitzscaling blitz blitz blitzscaling blitz blitz. And blitz.
- crooked-v 8y agoSounds like it's time for the next development paradigm, blitzing. It's like agile, except instead of standup there's spinup, where everyone has to pedal as fast as they can on a stationary bike while giving a status update.
- claydavisss 8y agoAnd the slowest rider at the end of the spinup is ground into food for the CEO's annoying dog everyone has to pretend they love
- twblalock 8y ago> so "Blitzscaling" is basically working people to death? No, it's "pursuing rapid growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty", which is what the author wrote in the very first sentence of the article.
- facetube 8y agoYes, a Theranos employee committed suicide.
- stefan_ 8y agoWhy on earth would you invent a term that leans on the Nazi blitzkrieg. It's like we need another essay on the essay on the speech.
- ur-whale 8y agoBlitz just means lightning in German. People use the word every day. The association only exists in your head.
- rhino369 8y agoIn English, Blitz certianly relates to/connotates Blitzkrieg. But I wouldn't call it a Nazi techinque. First, it was likely a mtyh or innaccurate description of German military doctrine. It was mostly popularized as a term by the English press. But its werid to avoid terminology about german stuff invented during the time Nazi's controlled germany. You wouldn't call jet propulsion as Nazi invention.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoTheranos took mortal risks at a massive scale by giving hundreds of thousands of patients inaccurate blood test results that might lead to improper care That doesn't even begin to describe the extent of malfeasance. John Carreyrou specifically mentions one patient who based on Theranos testing ordered thousands of dollars worth of further medical tests. Their prothrombin time was completely worthless, and people had their anticoagulants adjusted on random numbers. People might have died because of that.
- redisman 8y agoThis is our modern day Enron (except with people potentially dying).
- Reedx 8y agoKinda, but I think it's small potatoes compared to the scale of Enron and the amount of damage they did. In any case, would love to see the folks who made the Enron documentary ("smartest guys in the room") make one about Theranos.
- redisman 8y agoI recommend Smartest Guys in the Room to anyone who mentions documentaries in my presence! One of my all time favorites too.
- facetube 8y agoA Theranos employee committed suicide during and partially as a result of Holmes' scam. There were deaths inside the company – nevermind the potential ones inside.
- Nasrudith 8y agoPeople can potentially die because of artificially induced blackouts as well.
- WalterSear 8y agoAll of the above, along with Blitzfarthuffing.
- kathydenver 8y agoMale-owned businesses have committed hundreds of billions worth of fraud over millenia (hello Enron anyone). This thread is nothing more than a bunch of bro-guys collevtively bitching about a woman doing it. I'm not condoning the fraud, but why's everyone extra salty about this one?
- jacoblambda 8y agoI and likely many others couldn't care less if the business was owned by a man or a woman. Honestly I didn't even remember the sex of the owner until now. I take issue with a company being reckless and grossly negligent in a field with particularly vulnerable consumers such as the medical industry.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoI'm a woman and it pisses me off all the more that Theranos was run by a woman because the extremely legitimate criticisms of the company just make it that much harder for legitimate business women. That's on her for happily defrauding people for years. It's unfortunate that it may help fuel sexism, but that is entirely on the female founder who did this terrible thing. No one should be expected to pull their punches because it was a woman who endangered lives out of greed instead of a man. You want "equality" and you do a really terrible thing? You can take it like a man and not hide behind your gender when it's time to pay the piper.
- gwerbret 8y agoI think we can agree that placing the lives of thousands at risk just so you can make a quick buck is indefensible, whether perpetrated by a man, a woman, or a green, warty alien. To suggest that criticism is misplaced or unfair because the accused happens to be a woman achieves nothing positive, not even for a feminist ideology.
- kathydenver 8y agoAgreed, I just noted that a high-profile failure of a woman-owned business like Theranos just brings the closet misogynists out of the woodworks, including on sites like HN. Also my comment getting flagged is just a further validation of peoples unwillingness to consider the feminist angle on this. Sad.
- sorokod 8y agoThe fact that autonomous vehicles sometimes crash doesn't mean we should simply ban them. But you should be explicit about how you're mitigating risk, and how your product or service improves overall outcomes How would such "explicit risk mitigation" look like? Passing legislation that indemnifies the manufacturers?
- stephengillie 8y ago> How would such "explicit risk mitigation" look like? Passing legislation that indemnifies the manufacturers? How are car risks currently expressed and addressed? How many risks are currently accepted instead of mitigated?
- sorokod 8y agoWell, if a car spontaneously bursts into flames. There is no mitigation. If two autonomous wehicles (by the same manufacturer to make things interesting) crash into each other what mitigation can there be?
- stephengillie 8y ago> Well, if a car spontaneously bursts into flames. There is no mitigation. This is what the (literal, in the literal sense) firewall between the engine and the cabin mitigates - the fire stays in the engine compartment, so the passengers have more time to escape the (usually stopped) vehicle.
- sorokod 8y agoHa! Didn't realize car firewalls existed - thanks for that. Back to my question; if two autonomous wehicles by the same manufacturer crash into each other what mitigation can there be?
- maxxxxx 8y agoI can imagine it being similar to medical stuff. You have to demonstrate that you have considered risks and took reasonable steps to avoid them. But you don't have to be perfect. Things can still happen.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- evrydayhustling 8y agoThe core idea in this essay is that Theranos' decision to take big risks in order to scale disproportionately compared to product readiness can decoupled from their decision to trick others into sharing those risks. I'm left unconvinced. For example, Reid suggests Theranos could have have started by offering traditional blood drawing services transparently, instead of taking the pin pricks. Why would CVS have permitted access to their stores for such an incremental test? Would investors have financed such a mundane trial? Theranos' access to patients and capital seems to have depended explicitly on falsifying how close they were to a breakthrough. That's not a hustle that happens to be dishonest, it's a business model that can't progress without dishonesty. Strip away the potential for dishonesty, and "blitzscaling" is just "grow as fast as you can by honestly engaging your market"... Duh?
- rezistik 8y agoHonestly, is empowering patients to have control over their testing really a mundane trial or incremental test? The magic I saw in Theranos was in their ability to move the power closer to the consumer. If they had pursued that in place of their fraudulent tests that could have been huge.
- stevehawk 8y agoI honestly fear the day consumers can fully do that. I already have to listen to a bunch of night time calls from patients to my wife where they are obviously spending the day, post clinic visit for testing or diagnosis or post surgery, using google to either question her diagnosis /treatment or reinforce their own hypochondriac behavior. I realize there are reasons for some people to question medical decisions, like if your family was victim to something like the Tuskegee Syphilis trialing, but people need to know their thirty minutes of online browsing doesn't replace a decade of medical education. (note I'm not saying we shouldn't be able to do some of our own testing like blood sugar level, cholesterol, some others, but more like things where just because you had an elevated level of X doesn't mean you have Y and you should self treat immediately. And in probably jaded on this because she deals with a lot of people that think either vitamin C or the power of prayer will cure them or that she's lying about cancer because a chiropractor's thermagram doesn't show it)
- gnicholas 8y ago> Holmes told the gathered employees that she was building a religion. If there were any among them who didn’t believe, they should leave.” My wife teaches a class at Stanford called "The Religion of Stanford and Silicon Valley". It has been interesting to see how the course has morphed over the last few years, with Theranos, Juicero, Hampton Creek, and other notable failures (both financial and moral). The above quote from Elizabeth Holmes definitely made it into a Powerpoint slide.
- rossdavidh 8y agoHe touches on, but doesn't quite make explicit, the central point that the business techniques that are appropriate for one industry aren't always appropriate for another. Much of Theranos' alleged sins would be wrong in any industry, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Silicon Valley methods are not appropriate in health care. Even 23andMe, a vastly more responsible company than Theranos, got into a bit of trouble for dispensing health advice without FDA approval. I am thinking that we will see a few high-profile mismatches of industry culture in the fintech space sometime in the next few years. If you were a software startup in, say, civil engineering or architecture, you would similarly not be able to use people like Larry Ellison for your role models, because buildings falling down is fundamentally different than a search engine, social media, or e-commerce site crashing under high volume. I think the real lesson for VC's is that when the industry involved is an established, conservative one, that doesn't just mean it's "ripe for disruption"; sometimes there are good reasons that risk is viewed differently in that industry.