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| Where did all the Theranos money go and did they actually do 'work' ? |
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| MathWizard:
I missed this story, but I'm just wondering like did they have a big office building/lab, and did a bunch of people do some research? Did they have board meetings and what did they think they were getting done ???? The Holmes lady doesn't seem like the party type, but what did she do all the time? Just jet around living the high life? Did they all have mansions and fast cars? Did they party all the time ? Where'd all the money go ? |
| Caliaxy:
My understanding is that they worked really hard, with lots of people (including real scientists) employed and long hours of work (in an Apple inspired building). The problem is that they were not getting what they wanted and lied to the investors about the actual progress, pretending they are much more advanced than they actually were. “Fake it till you make it”. And they got caught before “making it”... |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: MathWizard on May 26, 2021, 06:07:21 pm ---I missed this story, but I'm just wondering like did they have a big office building/lab, and did a bunch of people do some research? Did they have board meetings and what did they think they were getting done ???? The Holmes lady doesn't seem like the party type, but what did she do all the time? Just jet around living the high life? Did they all have mansions and fast cars? Did they party all the time ? Where'd all the money go ? --- End quote --- Party? On the contrary, Holmes was an obsessive workaholic. Her downfall was being so convinced in her idea that she resistant to feedback (read: reality checks). I honestly suspect she didn’t set out to defraud people, she truly believed in her idea. The problem is that her idea is incompatible with real-world physics, chemistry, and medicine, at least what’s possible with today’s technology. Rather than accepting this reality, she somehow descended into fraud, pretending the machines worked while in fact sending out samples to be assayed in traditional labs. There are numerous documentaries about the Theranos downfall on YouTube. I suggest watching some, it’s fascinating. As an aside, she failed on one of the key thoughts about inventions: asking yourself not why you should try doing it, but rather why it hasn’t been done before. Because it’s rarely that nobody has ever thought of it. A cursory exploration of medical laboratories would make it obvious that if it were possible, somebody would have done it already. Whether a lab device manufacturer wanting to sell it to labs, or labs themselves developing it to give themselves a competitive advantage, if it were technically achievable, somebody would have done it. The arrogance to believe that existing companies and research institutions that specialize in analytical biochemistry couldn’t do it, but some random, untrained 19 year old could… :palm: |
| edavid:
Holmes was known for leading an extravagant lifestyle, to the extent that this will be part of the prosecution's case: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-holmess-final-months-at-theranos https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/23/elizabeth-holmes-jury-can-hear-limited-evidence-of-ceo-lifestyle.html Theranos had a very fancy office in Palo Alto, and a large but crappy lab building in Newark, CA. I think Holmes seems like a sociopath, but then so do most of the Silicon Valley CEOs I have met or read about. |
| Alex Eisenhut:
Where did the money *go*? I'd like to know where it came from in the first place, I have lots of ideas that don't work! |
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