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Elizabeth Holmes's partner raises millions for blood-testing startup
- elorm 1y agoShe had a recent interview[1] where she claimed she's actively working on her research behind bars and still wants the opportunity to change the world with her invention. This is not a coincidence at all. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0&pp=ygUWZWxpemFiZXRoIGhvbG1lcyB2b2ljZQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0&pp=ygUWZWxpemFiZXR...]
- browningstreet 1y agoThis would have to factor into any future parole considerations, wouldn’t it?
- dragonwriter 1y agoNo, because federal parole isn't a thing for crimes committed after November 1, 1987.
- hilux 1y agoFederal parole may not be possible, but a pardon definitely is.
- dragonwriter 1y agoYes, and given the current administration’s pardon practice, being shamelessly unrepentant and flagrantly likely to be a recidivist looks more like a positive than a negative consideration.
- analog31 1y agoA thought just came to me, that the selling of indulgences triggered the Reformation.
- ahazred8ta 1y agoIt's been a moneymaker for a long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31-line_Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31-line_Indulgence
- analog31 1y agoMaybe they can raise enough money for a pardon.
- DoktorEgo 1y agoIn case anyone can't view that link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_xyGbUNZ0
- belter 1y agoWhat would be expected from a complete psychopath.
- tokai 1y agoIf its possible to keep creating and rug pulling new shitcoins, then it seems obvious that the same can be done with medical start-ups. What a weird world we are living in.
- repeekad 1y agoIn the words of Coffeezilla, crime is legal now, fraudsters who donated to Trump are getting pardons [0] https://youtu.be/xUBCX7AV5PY https://youtu.be/xUBCX7AV5PY
- rchaud 1y agoBilly McFarland, famed "entrepreneur" behind Fyre Fest got out of jail and immediately announced plans for raising funds for Fyre Fest 2. Apparently there are enough suckers to go around, so why not just copy/paste the original scam instead of doing the work of tweaking it to boost legitimacy? https://www.biography.com/crime/a63917214/billy-mcfarland-now-fyre-festival-2 https://www.biography.com/crime/a63917214/billy-mcfarland-no...
- cbsks 1y agoI’m terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Fyre Festival 2 has been cancelled https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/news/fyre-festival-2-cancelled-postponement-billy-mcfarland-b2738450.html https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/new...
- j4coh 1y agoI’ve just completely lost the ability to tell the difference between satire/parody and reality.
- piker 1y agoDoesn't look like any smart money on this one yet, but there's something bold about it. It's like Nassim Taleb's thing that you hire the ugly surgeon. This is one hideous surgeon. Fraud seems near impossible here. [Edit: a lot of thoughtful responses but downvoting?]
- riffraff 1y agoMatt Levine (financial columnist) often makes the point (or joke) that in fund management there a tendency to reward (as in: they get more money to manage) people who lost a lot of money, on the basis that they did manage to have a lot of money to start with, make bold bets, and should at least have learned something at this point.
- manquer 1y agoThat is not unique to fund managers. Second time entrepreneurs are more likely to raise capital even if their first venture failed and spectacularly so. Adam Neumann got funded by a16z(their largest?) despite all the governance issues at Wework , there are many other examples of high profile and regular entrepreneurs getting funding .
- rchaud 1y agoThe difference is that Neumann didn't attempt to conceal his scam in the slightest, and more importantly, he didn't break any laws, just screwed over his investors.
- manquer 1y ago> just screwed over his investors. > didn't break any laws, To VCs, I would imagine the first is bigger disqualification than the second. Startups are modeled around breaking laws to disrupt all the time. Ask for forgiveness than permission mentality. Uber and Airbnb did it with taxi, breaking privacy laws in Europe by ad supported tech or fintech with AML/KYC securities law or more recently on copyright law to build their training data by ai companies . All of these depend on law being broken to succeed. Calculating the risk of prosecution and the size of the penalty with upside of doing it anyway happens in these companies all the time.
- nullc 1y agoThere is a sucker born every minute. Parallels with cryptocurrency where the scam scamcoin token authors just spin up a new one after running off with the funds from their prior one.
- Michelangelo11 1y ago> Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. - Karl Marx (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumai...)
- OutOfHere 1y agoEven if the tech has evolved, this family is hardly the one to trust with one's money.
- bigmattystyles 1y agoTangent but why does the title here says lover while the article says partner; no fan of Holmes, based on that, a probably (unfair?) low opinion of this guy, but come on.
- asveikau 1y agoCame here to say this. The reporting of that guy and his relationship with her definitely caused me to have some negative thoughts and opinions, as in, what's wrong with this guy that he'd be involved with her? Isn't it irresponsible to have kids knowing she was headed for prison? But putting that aside, they have two kids together, which gives him a higher status than "lover". The wikipedia on them says their status is also oddly ambiguous: > In mid-2019, Holmes and Evans reportedly married in a private ceremony.[137][138] Holmes and Evans have not directly confirmed whether the two are legally married, and several sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her husband
- belter 1y agoI reported what was the actual and correct title and got downvoted for it :-)
- BurningFrog 1y agoIf she eventually gets this right and revolutionizes blood-testing, the legend will live forever! Big "if", I know...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jayavanth 1y agoThis time it's different
- mchannon 1y agoJust wow. I think it's an uncomfortable truth that there was some good in Theranos in terms of the unfulfilled needs of society and the potential of diligent work toward realizing those needs with technology. I don't know how often it's been said by others, but I often think that Theranos would have had an easier time if they hadn't falsified anything. Faking things takes effort too, and aiming a little lower and being less secretive would have been a better outcome. Maybe a different tack is possible through this reboot. Mr. Evans' silver spoon is worth $10M, so raising $20M against that in such a fraught area is eye-opening. Whether he sees this as part of Elizabeth's redemption arc or just can't quit the hair of the dog that bit him, I guess we'll see. Elizabeth Holmes' crime wasn't defrauding people, it was defrauding people richer than her. Change my mind. Most VC's are taking it in the shorts right now anyway, because they're addicted to free money and there's no more free money, and most of them quite frankly suck at spotting good deals. So for the intrepid souls who cast their lot in with Mr. Evans, maybe only Nixon could go to China, and maybe they'll fare better than the stodgy fat-dumb-and-happy B-tier VC's who are not long for this brave new world anyway.
- hilux 1y agoIf Theranos hadn't falsified anything, would they have had a product? My recollection, having read _Bad Blood_, is that they would not. Good intentions to save the world, without any working (or even possible!) technology, are not investment-worthy.
- mchannon 1y agoHaving read the same book (while on the fourth floor of MDC Brooklyn of all places) I believe the conclusion I read was that they were trying to make it all work with one drop, which was impossible, because of the number of tests they were promising and the low solute concentrations some of those tests had to work with. But there's a wide gulf between a drop and a 20mL vial. Requiring three drops and claiming half the battery of tests would still be a substantial improvement. That's what they should've done. And I think this new startup can do that. I interviewed with Theranos toward the very end. I have never been in a place with a bigger show of security, and I've previously worked for years in nuclear weapons laboratories. If this new startup ditches the demonic-possession voice and the arch-military security schtick, and the Wizard of Oz curtain, I might not consider an investment in them as foolhardy as one in Theranos.
- oooyay 1y agoRather than focusing on Holmes and her lover, I'd like to posit some other questions I have with this approach. Let's assume for just a minute that Holmes wasn't trying to rug pull and that she genuinely wanted Theranos to succeed in it's stated mission. Wouldn't a foundational invention like this 20-30 years ago come out of a university lab? It feels like VC funding is not the right vehicle for the kind of development that takes a lot of time and must work the first time. Those VCs are going to be looking for returns.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CalChris 1y agoThat was implication of the original con. She was this superstar Stanford undergrad who’d discovered something so radically important she had to drop out of school for the sake of humanity.
- rchaud 1y agoShe wasn't a "superstar" in any way whatsoever. She dropped out after 1 year of undergrad, with zero papers published where she was a principal author, or anything that would even hint that she knew what she was doing. She was rich and connected so was able to get funding on the basis of not much more than a powerpoint and a couple of supportive professors.
- CalChris 1y agoYes, those are the cold facts. I probably should have put superstar in scare quotes. But the con was that she was some sort of Stanford 'superstar'. I looked over her bio on Wikipedia. Yeah, she certainly came from a rich + connected background. So she understood rich people and what they wanted to hear. However, I don't think her Stanford professors were implicated, at least as far as I've read. They didn't knock any sense into her but they also didn't co-sign. But none of the adults raised alarm. I got into it once with a VC trying to say that Sand Hill was blameless. That was nonsense too.
- blindriver 1y agoThis title is ridiculous. He's Holmes's husband, not her "lover". They were married in 2019.
- belter 1y agoThe title is: "Elizabeth Holmes’s partner reportedly raises millions for blood-testing startup"
- lolinder 1y agoIt was modified in the HN submission to replace "partner" with "lover", probably as an ill-conceived attempt to distinguish from him being just her business partner. It's a great example of why not to change titles, though, because "lover" carries wildly different implications than "partner" and makes the title seem much more salacious.
- esseph 1y agoSome of us get too upset about words in a title and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- michael_nielsen 1y agoAgreed, & flagged the submission. The actual article is of interest, but I really don't want to reward inflammatory titles.
- aerhardt 1y agoAs clickbait trash, it is nevertheless sublime.
- lolinder 1y agoTechnically they never married, which is why the original article uses a bunch of other phrases to describe their relationship, but agreed that the change from "partner" to "lover" makes the title needlessly provocative. "Partner" was fine.
- WrongOnInternet 1y agoFool me twice, shame on me.
- selfselfgo 1y ago[dead]
- ComplexSystems 1y agoAwful title; this is her husband, not her "lover."
- serf 1y ago1: they were never married 2: why is lover so bad? I see the hate in this discussion for the phrase, but I don't get it. Is it some modern thing where we're supposed to separate the concept of marriage from sex due to asexual types or some such? legitimate question : I don't get it. I'm more than willing to avoid the use of lover, but someone at least explain it to me. would more casual concepts like 'defacto' or 'commonlaw' be better? 'life-partner'? 'co-life strategist' ?
- reconvene1290 1y agoLover = bit on the side. Partner = main romantic connection.
- AlchemistCamp 1y agoPartner doesn't mean that at all. Warren Buffet and Charley Munger were partners. So were Jobs and Woz. Or Buffet and Gates while playing Bridge many times. There's absolutely nothing romantic or sexual about the word "partner" itself, though of course partnerships exist in those realms as well as in business, sports, music, dance and countless other pursuits.
- schmookeeg 1y agoI'll take a crack -- I think America's puritanical roots are STILL in play today, and mentioning the very idea that people have sex, even married people, instantly triggers pearl clutching. I don't think it's rational either, but it is pervasive. If I described the lunch I had with my lover in a work setting, I'd expect to get tutted or an email from HR. It would probably be nonspecific and merely say that I am making others uncomfortable without mentioning the actual problem -- because to put it into words exposes the ridiculousness. $0.02 :)
- ComplexSystems 1y ago
- xrayarx 1y agoHere is the nyt article https://archive.is/20250511164818/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/business/elizabeth-holmes-partner-blood-testing-startup.html https://archive.is/20250511164818/https://www.nytimes.com/20... Here is the patent https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/10/business/HaemanthusPatent.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/10/business/Haem... Both are mentioned but not linked in the article above. Are there some knowledgeable people who would like to comment on the patent?
- elorm 1y agoOP here. I edited the title from Partner to Lover to distinguish between business and romantic partners but I just found out "Lover" carries an incendiary connotation in American English as opposed to British English. Not my intention at all....
- readthenotes1 1y agoIt really didn't help: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-health-elizabeth-holmes-027bb063c784b99034e0a9840cb03a08 https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-health-elizab...
- AlchemistCamp 1y agoI grew up in America and didn't find it incendiary at all. The extreme reaction was surprising to me, as well. The word was very common in 80s and 90s songs with no illicit or incendiary connotation whatsoever! In fact, I find headlines phrased like this article's annoying. It's just unclear and poor writing, IMO.
- rchaud 1y agoHow about something simple and accurate like "baby daddy"?
- KnuthIsGod 1y agoElizabeth should donate a few millions to the right person near the West Wing and get a pardon. I understand that justice is for sale in Washington these days.
- uslic001 1y agoAs a doctor I called out Elizabeth Home's as a fraud when she first hit the scene. I have no doubt her partner is also a fraud.