Here's a rather silly rebuttal to a recent Theranos piece on The Information from Dave Morin: https://twitter.com/williamalden/status/658705178523258880
"Isn't it time as Millenials that we try to use the Internet to unearth deeper facts and see through these traditional smear campaigns?"
These aren't trivial problems that can be fixed "at the time of, or within a week of, the inspection", as Theranos claims.
A lot of high profile posters making very embarrassing defences of Theranos. Lots of thinly veiled accusations of ageism, sexism, ludditism, etc. I fear few will learn any lasting lessons from this saga.
I see this whole thing ending in tragedy, whether that just means the loss of $400 million that could have gone to other startups, a full-scale criminal prosecution, or some other dramatic end. Whatever happens, a happy ending no longer seems to be in the cards.
This is why we have investor "accreditation".
So, the root of this could simply have been poor reporting not deception. I mean you generally don't do multiple pilot projects with vaporware and Pfizer is a huge drug company.
PS: 400M is a lot of money, but probably not enough to do much R&D and start jumping though the hoops if the FDA get's picky.
My favorite uncle has a brother who is rich behind wildest dreams. He invested in this supposed unicorn. What did or does she do to get rich people to pull out their wallets and possibly dump their money down the drain?
I, on the other hand have so much opportunity knocking at my door (demoing my tech to Google, Samsung, about to go onto an inventor reality tv show and tons more), yet am unable to connect with the same rich people including my uncle's brother.
As they say it only takes one wealthy person to invest in you and others will follow. Not sure what other signals that need to happen to show him and or others that based on my history I should be given a similar shot. Been at this for 8 years and these amazing opportunities continue to knock and knock. All opportunities are a huge honor, yet extremely frustrating when you don't have the resources to take advantage of it all!
Also it sounds like you have some good tech, but need a partner who is able and experienced in dealing with investors.
"She's a Stanford dropout with an idea!!!" Is not due diligence.
However, the company was the most secretive I've interviewed at and the employees complained about being overworked. The fact the founder sold C++ compilers to Chinese universities when g++ is open-source sounded odd.
But I still had hope in them even after they passed on me -- a Silicon Valley company actually making a difference in the people's health. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
If this turns out to be smokes and mirrors, I'd be very saddened. Theranos' failure would confirm what everyone interested in biotech knows but wishes wasn't true: that advancements in this field do not move at the speed of the digital economy.
She obviously didn't write a C++ compiler worth selling at that age in that time period , so at most it was likely some sort of off-the-shelf reselling sales gig.
Except, in many ways, it isn't: 'disrupting' lab blood testing[1] is far from a public health priority --just because the founder is scared of blood and thinks phlebotomies are "barbaric" doesn't make it so.
[1] As opposed to point-of-care (viz, no-lab) testing, which is a genuine public health priority: i.e. portable glucose monitors, field tests for malaria, and so on.
FWIW, this isn't the only company to be trying this sort of thing, there was a company in the first batch of indie.bio claiming to do this, perhaps tellingly at demo day, the attempted live demo failed.
It could have easily began with good intentions but slowly devolved into a house of cards over the course of a decade.
That... is true about most companies. Patents are almost always strategic disclosures.
And it recently came to light that Elizabeth Holmes was misleading people when she said her company voluntarily stopped using nanotainers -- it seems she was forced to stop by FDA: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/business/theranos-quality-...
Between all of this, FDA coming in for tests, and other strange things, it seems they have a lot of answering to do.
Or, alternatively, them being in stealth mode is the reason for all of these strange happenings and lack of better information out there.
At some point you have to come clean with the FDA about your technology, right? Or is this considered a wide-field clinical trial?
That really hit the nail on the head for me.
Tech? That's for the nerds. The light is blinking so it's fine I guess
What financials? Lots of these companies have little to no revenue.
(I read somewhere that she claimed that she hadn't considered that Steve Jobs used to wear black turtlenecks, that she was more inspired by Sharon Stone... which is really hard to believe)
Great pedigree. But, eventually, poof, gone. Nothing much to show for all the investment.
its ok - if only small portion of tests are valid at this point but if they show progress with data - this validates they are on the right track.
It is facing a number of issues, a few of which have led some to speculate that it could become pharma's version of Enron[1]. In July, VRX hit a high above $260. Today it's trading at less than $110.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/opinion/is-valeant-pharmac...
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/10/some-comments-on-v... http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/10/simple-proof-that-... http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2015/10/valeant-and-its-ca...
http://azvalue.blogspot.com/2015/08/valeant-detailed-look-in... http://azvalue.blogspot.com/2015/08/valeant-detailed-look-in...
Theranos is in a completely different situation. They could easily lose Wallgreens among others over the current fallout and not get the FDA to go the way they want. Company would take a huge hit and given that their signature technology is not really usable right now, I don't know how much more leeway they would really have after this.
Also, Theranos and Valeant seem like entirely different businesses.
I think you're missing the point I was making: Valeant is a timely and interesting example of what can happen to the valuation of a company under fire.
> I don't have much information, but I'm not all that convinced Valeant has real fraud issues.
If you don't have much information, how can you be convinced of anything one way or the other?
I am not a Theranos apologist but this is lousy reporting.
1. Homejoy
2. Theranos
3. ....
As someone who lived through the first boom bust, very interested to watch things play out again.
4. Fab
Yeah, that's VC funding for you.
