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In seriousness, internet business culture makes everything look easy. Internet things have outsized impact due to the global reach of a revolution in communica

by a-dub 8y ago

In seriousness, internet business culture makes everything look easy. Internet things have outsized impact due to the global reach of a revolution in communications technology. Smartphone things have outsized impact due to good UX finally reaching the masses when they were ready for it. I think the lesson here is that doing anything that interfaces directly with the physical and natural world is much harder, and those problems that have high impact have had a lot of very smart people working on them for a very long time. It's easy to think that the formula for internet media or smartphone IT success can easily translate to these domains, and it seems that the reality is "no, it doesn't.". There is no low hanging fruit on the hard problems, as there was with the internet and smartphone revolutions.

mrtksn 8y ago
I like your approach but I disagree with your conclusion. Just recently Pepsi Co bought SodaStream for $3.2B. AFAIK, SodaStream is essentially a company that innovated with the UX outside the Internet-based technologies, not solving some hard problems. Theranos claimed to have been doing something similar but failed due to their choice of UX improvement approach being based on technology that does not work. An analogy in the internet-based business would be promising to improve the UX of customer support using AI and then not delivering on the AI part. I think that your "Outsized impact" concept is interesting but I think that there is no such thing, it's just an illusion due to the speed differences of the delivery of the impact. Should Theranos was not based on pseudo-science, the eventual impact could have been no smaller than your average internet unicorn.
- a-dub 8y ago
  tldr; internet/smartphone success comes from low hanging fruit made possible by revolutions in communication technology. it does not translate to hard domains like biomedical science. these problems are legitimately hard. and quite orthogonal to soda and chatbots.
  - mrtksn 8y ago
    Theranos' was not about making something previously impossible, possible. Theranos doesn't have anything to do with biomedical science, they were supposed to improve the experience of blood testing both for the patient and for the medical professionals. Their problem was that they choose to try to do it by a method that was not technically possible at this time. Another company might try to improve the experience by improving the needles and redesign the machine to look like less offensive and scary and they might succeed in it. It's exactly like the difference between SodaStream's success and chatbots failure, that is, betting on UX improvement using a tech that's not there. Chatbots, SodaStream. Theranos - they don't do anything new that wasn't done before. Chatting with customer support was around since a while, Carbonating water to make soda was around since probably the industrial revolution and testing blood samples were around since modern medicine. All these companies tried to improve the experience and reduce costs, regardless of the nature of the business being internet or manufacturing based. It's not about the domain. EDIT: I'm not defending Theanos and I'm not going to comment about the motive of the people involved as I don't know them and I was not involved with Theanos at any time.
    - vkou 8y ago
      That's like saying that a scam company that claims to sell a widget that makes your car go at 500 mph, with a mileage of 1000 mpg is not 'claiming something previously thought impossible to be possible.' Cars exist, and fast cars exist, and people mod cars, so obviously, it should be possible to soup up my Honda Civic with their amazing invention. Theranos claimed that they had technology that could perform accurate blood tests on tiny samples of blood, drawn from a finger. For many tests, this is currently believed to be impossible (with sufficient accuracy.)
      - mrtksn 8y ago
        More like aiming to improve the safety of the cars. One company can try to do it by putting sensors to improve the driver's situation awareness and another company can try to make the cars driverless. Driverless cars also don't exist but apparently, enough people believe that it could be done and the research is going on. Maybe at Theanos they never intended to make the promised machine but I don't want to join the lynch as I don't know the people involved and I can't read peoples minds.

by a-dub 8y ago

mrtksn 8y ago

I like your approach but I disagree with your conclusion. Just recently Pepsi Co bought SodaStream for $3.2B. AFAIK, SodaStream is essentially a company that innovated with the UX outside the Internet-based technologies, not solving some hard problems. Theranos claimed to have been doing something similar but failed due to their choice of UX improvement approach being based on technology that does not work. An analogy in the internet-based business would be promising to improve the UX of customer support using AI and then not delivering on the AI part. I think that your "Outsized impact" concept is interesting but I think that there is no such thing, it's just an illusion due to the speed differences of the delivery of the impact. Should Theranos was not based on pseudo-science, the eventual impact could have been no smaller than your average internet unicorn.

a-dub 8y ago
tldr; internet/smartphone success comes from low hanging fruit made possible by revolutions in communication technology. it does not translate to hard domains like biomedical science. these problems are legitimately hard. and quite orthogonal to soda and chatbots.
- mrtksn 8y ago
  Theranos' was not about making something previously impossible, possible. Theranos doesn't have anything to do with biomedical science, they were supposed to improve the experience of blood testing both for the patient and for the medical professionals. Their problem was that they choose to try to do it by a method that was not technically possible at this time. Another company might try to improve the experience by improving the needles and redesign the machine to look like less offensive and scary and they might succeed in it. It's exactly like the difference between SodaStream's success and chatbots failure, that is, betting on UX improvement using a tech that's not there. Chatbots, SodaStream. Theranos - they don't do anything new that wasn't done before. Chatting with customer support was around since a while, Carbonating water to make soda was around since probably the industrial revolution and testing blood samples were around since modern medicine. All these companies tried to improve the experience and reduce costs, regardless of the nature of the business being internet or manufacturing based. It's not about the domain. EDIT: I'm not defending Theanos and I'm not going to comment about the motive of the people involved as I don't know them and I was not involved with Theanos at any time.
  - vkou 8y ago
    That's like saying that a scam company that claims to sell a widget that makes your car go at 500 mph, with a mileage of 1000 mpg is not 'claiming something previously thought impossible to be possible.' Cars exist, and fast cars exist, and people mod cars, so obviously, it should be possible to soup up my Honda Civic with their amazing invention. Theranos claimed that they had technology that could perform accurate blood tests on tiny samples of blood, drawn from a finger. For many tests, this is currently believed to be impossible (with sufficient accuracy.)
    - mrtksn 8y ago
      More like aiming to improve the safety of the cars. One company can try to do it by putting sensors to improve the driver's situation awareness and another company can try to make the cars driverless. Driverless cars also don't exist but apparently, enough people believe that it could be done and the research is going on. Maybe at Theanos they never intended to make the promised machine but I don't want to join the lynch as I don't know the people involved and I can't read peoples minds.