4 ms·

You know, where Theranos went wrong was not selling some other thing and then tack on their “Full blood test in just one drop” thing as an add-on. Oh and making

• joering2 4y ago
  Milton from Nikola would be better example in my opinion. You had him rolling a truck down the hill to show it works despite at the time it was still technology in development (company is still doing progress now). It still shocks me he is going to prison for that as a fraud when it was just a commercial. I don't know if you know - but classical trick in advertising food is using cigarette smoke instead of hot steam to show hot fresh food. Obviously steam would cover camera's lens and render image useless. Also most close-up food commercials have food made from rubbery guee, and not actual food because it shines better and "stays" fresh for longer than an hour when you want to do multiple shots for hours. How come McDonalds management is not facing prison like Milton is? Its because everyone knows commercial of a product does not equal to the same exact product you will pick up off the shelf and eat. Nobody at McDonald is going to jail because you attempted to sell people plastic guee covered with cigarette smell.
  • kube-system 4y ago
    No, McDonald’s execs don’t go to prison because they can actually deliver the product they advertise. Between the statements “Here’s a burger you can eat it” and “here’s a truck look at it go”, only one is a lie.
    • joering2 4y ago
      Only lie here is that their commercial said "here is a truck look at it go". Have you ever even watched it before commenting??
      • kube-system 4y ago
        Those are scare quotes in my comment, not literal quotes. I’ll rephrase it plainly: difference between the situations is a misrepresentation of material fact.
  • alsodumb 4y ago
    You make it seem like the commercial was the only evidence used to prove that he committed fraud. He made statements, both in media and in legal documents, that proved in the court that he commit fraud.
  • notahacker 4y ago
    I suspect that if McDonalds' management were only pretending that they were opening new burger franchises to dupe investors and they'd managed to raise billions in funding by pretending a single mockup restaurant with a rubber burger and some city stock footage was a restaurant chain, they would be quite likely to serve jail time. But McDonalds is, in fact, entirely capable of making and selling burgers. Nikola is not capable of making and selling functioning hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, despite lying about already having that capability seven years ago when their stock soared. Doesn't matter what consumers know about authenticity of advertising imagery, it matters that McDonalds investors aren't being lied to about the existence of the Big Mac and Nikola One investors were being lied to about the existence of the Nikola One's propulsion system. Which is why "other companies that aren't amongst history's biggest pump and dump scams also get creative with product images" was never going to be a viable legal defence for Milton.
• mrtksn 4y ago
  If you look at the track record of Musk, you can see that he promises something futuristic and delivers something conventional but with improvements that's still desirable. Haven't Holmes imitated Jobs but Musk, today she could have been a success story. She should have still promised all your tests from a single drop of blood and keep claiming that it's coming next year and deliver classical machines but with greatly improved usability, integration with the modern hospital management system and fart jokes. They even had a prototype that worked some of the time for some of the test, sell it at an outrageous price and warn the users that all the tests should be repeated on a traditional machine because this is a beta device. Also She shouldn't have relied on people from the establishment for PR, she should have partnered with popular-science YouTubers. Just send them a machine to play with, they wouldn't know if the machine is any good - they will be grateful for having access to such a device and make it the cool way of testing your blood.
  • tenpies 4y ago
    I think where we can all agree that Musk is a genius is in seeing where billions of public funds are going to flow, and then positioning himself to be in a position to profit. That was a key difference between Theranos and Tesla/SolarCity. Imagine if Elizabeth Holmes had gotten just a bit luckier with timing and had been around when the COVID pandemic occurred. Not only would she have launched a highly-futuristic COIVD test, but also received billions of funding with nearly no oversight. She almost certainly would have negotiated to receive proactive immunity from the government, like the vaccine manufacturers did.
    • mrtksn 4y ago
      Good point. I like to think that people ultimately have good intentions and maybe even the guy from WeWork could have had make it work somehow if they had a bit more integrity and actually tried to kick the can down the road until they can deliver something with value. When you can stay alive for long enough you greatly improve your chances for a great timing. Had Holmes survived till 2020, she might have become a success story with the testing during the pandemic.
    • jdminhbg 4y ago