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Holmes delivered nothing. She claimed that accurate blood tests could be done with much smaller amounts of blood and never even built a prototype that could del

Holmes delivered nothing. She claimed that accurate blood tests could be done with much smaller amounts of blood and never even built a prototype that could deliver that. Musk claimed that reusable rockets and electric cars were the future and people said those things wouldn't happen for 50 years. Now where are we? Saying that FSD is 50 years away seems like a risky bet given what musk has accomplished already.

mrtksn 6y ago
>Holmes delivered nothing What I am saying, she should have delivered what she could and promise to devliver better in the feature instead of failing to deliver on the promises. She could have bought a small manufacturer with all that funding, slap a nice UI and iOT functions on top of it and deliver that. Continue to work on the original 1 drop of blood tests, maybe integrate it into the more expensive version of the machines of the manufacturer she bought, call it beta and use on own risk and the accurate version will be enabled through software update in the future. Also, being funny on twitter could have been better strategy than imitating Steve Jobs.
- bob33212 6y ago
  I agree that not committing fraud would have gotten her into less legal trouble, but I don't know how much funding she would have got with that approach. Her whole scam was that she was the blond steve jobs of biotech. She needed to promise a "revolutionary" product was possible soon to keep that image alive.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    She failed to keep the machine churning. She was not likeable and banked on being paddled by people with their own agenda(people who advocate for the women in business). She didn't have to be fraud, had she acted smarter IMHO.
    - cedilla 6y ago
      The problem though is that what she was selling was complete fantasy. Tesla raised some eyebrows over whether they would be able to produce faster, better and cheaper, but the product Theranos had didn't even exist with higher costs or quality control issues; it simply was inexistant. Theranos was fraud from beginning to end. They literally tested samples on Siemens machines and pretended that their own machines did the analysis.
      - mrtksn 6y ago
        I don't think that it was complete fantasy but unsolved Engineering problem. It's not like she promised something unscientific like faster than speed travel or free energy device. Also, Tesla too failed on cost and quality control issues until they stopped failing. Yes, she apparently faked the tests but faking till making is nothing new in SV. With all that money, she could have bought a manufacturer or lease buy and rebrand from Siemens by adding something on the top of it. Many big names start by acquiring their parts from OEMs. She could have build on top of some less known European company that sucks at the software UX, for example and keep kicking the can down for the one one drop blood tests. When asked what is going on, give a presentation about the challanges and about the work you did and say that it's going to be ready in 2 years.
        nradov 6y ago
        Theranos's whole product concept was unscientific and far more than just an unsolved engineering problem. It is biologically impossible to get accurate results on most assays from a single finger prick drop of blood. That can work reasonably well for a few things like glucose level or positive/negative on antibodies but generally it's a dead end.
        mrtksn 6y ago
        You need to add "with the current technology" at the end, and the statement will be accurate. You can't know what a research will bring, maybe it will be discovered that you can do all these tests through some proxy measurement etc. In biology they don't deal with "laws of nature" in the same sense with the physicist, therefore everything is engineering problem since you always have the option to go above or below the biological processes. You can't transplant a heart until you find a way to do it, you can't change genes until you find a way to do it. There's no natural law prohibiting measuring something something from the finger that can be measured from somewhere else, it simply cannot be done with the current methods due to some process going on in the human body. The task would be to find a way around the mechanism that is preventing you doing it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mrtksn 6y ago

>Holmes delivered nothing What I am saying, she should have delivered what she could and promise to devliver better in the feature instead of failing to deliver on the promises. She could have bought a small manufacturer with all that funding, slap a nice UI and iOT functions on top of it and deliver that. Continue to work on the original 1 drop of blood tests, maybe integrate it into the more expensive version of the machines of the manufacturer she bought, call it beta and use on own risk and the accurate version will be enabled through software update in the future. Also, being funny on twitter could have been better strategy than imitating Steve Jobs.

bob33212 6y ago
I agree that not committing fraud would have gotten her into less legal trouble, but I don't know how much funding she would have got with that approach. Her whole scam was that she was the blond steve jobs of biotech. She needed to promise a "revolutionary" product was possible soon to keep that image alive.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  She failed to keep the machine churning. She was not likeable and banked on being paddled by people with their own agenda(people who advocate for the women in business). She didn't have to be fraud, had she acted smarter IMHO.
  - cedilla 6y ago
    The problem though is that what she was selling was complete fantasy. Tesla raised some eyebrows over whether they would be able to produce faster, better and cheaper, but the product Theranos had didn't even exist with higher costs or quality control issues; it simply was inexistant. Theranos was fraud from beginning to end. They literally tested samples on Siemens machines and pretended that their own machines did the analysis.
    - mrtksn 6y ago
      I don't think that it was complete fantasy but unsolved Engineering problem. It's not like she promised something unscientific like faster than speed travel or free energy device. Also, Tesla too failed on cost and quality control issues until they stopped failing. Yes, she apparently faked the tests but faking till making is nothing new in SV. With all that money, she could have bought a manufacturer or lease buy and rebrand from Siemens by adding something on the top of it. Many big names start by acquiring their parts from OEMs. She could have build on top of some less known European company that sucks at the software UX, for example and keep kicking the can down for the one one drop blood tests. When asked what is going on, give a presentation about the challanges and about the work you did and say that it's going to be ready in 2 years.
      - nradov 6y ago
        Theranos's whole product concept was unscientific and far more than just an unsolved engineering problem. It is biologically impossible to get accurate results on most assays from a single finger prick drop of blood. That can work reasonably well for a few things like glucose level or positive/negative on antibodies but generally it's a dead end.
        mrtksn 6y ago
        You need to add "with the current technology" at the end, and the statement will be accurate. You can't know what a research will bring, maybe it will be discovered that you can do all these tests through some proxy measurement etc. In biology they don't deal with "laws of nature" in the same sense with the physicist, therefore everything is engineering problem since you always have the option to go above or below the biological processes. You can't transplant a heart until you find a way to do it, you can't change genes until you find a way to do it. There's no natural law prohibiting measuring something something from the finger that can be measured from somewhere else, it simply cannot be done with the current methods due to some process going on in the human body. The task would be to find a way around the mechanism that is preventing you doing it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]