Theranos' Death Rattle

[Deej 76796]

If you could get them to admit the fetzer valve didn't use ball bearings, you'd have them dead to rights.

[Flg8rfan 201]

I give you Fecanos, lol.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Buzzrock 14920]

She looks like a different person in those depositions on 20/20. She looks like she just snapped out of some sort of state. She looks like a child. It's bizarre.

 

[Beau Vine 54230]

She looks like she just did a shitload of coke.

[Deej 76796]

Looks like she got found out.

[Reagan1k 3024]

She needs a drop of humility, a dash of honesty and a big dollop of hair conditioner.

[TwiceHorn 31476]

The thing about this whole deal is that it's somewhat serendipitous that we anything about it.  It was their own hubris that brought them to anyone's attention, and of course the investment it attracted.  But it was far from a massive fraud on the scale of Madoff or Stanford.

Carreyrou did great work exposing them.  But both its ascendance and its downfall are almost wholly attributable to the press.

[XYZ 2154]

Her hair is all wrong.

[Mojo Hand 4580]

14 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

The thing about this whole deal is that it's somewhat serendipitous that we anything about it.  It was their own hubris that brought them to anyone's attention, and of course the investment it attracted.  But it was far from a massive fraud on the scale of Madoff or Stanford.

Carreyrou did great work exposing them.  But both its ascendance and its downfall are almost wholly attributable to the press.

Its ascendance suggests a problem to me with our patent system.  Holmes' credibility was built in part on patents, yet she hadn't invented any actual process or technology to accomplish her claims, even in theory.  Competitors and investors should have been able to look at the patents to see at least a semblance of how her tech could possibly work; instead it appears that the most anyone knew was the "a chemistry is performed" joke of a quote.  There's some kind of disconnect there. 

[TwiceHorn 31476]

Meh it's not the patent system it is people's ignorance of it.  The mere fact of a patent is insignificant. It is what the patent discloses and "covers" that is significant. 

She may well have parlayed her patent(s) through her cult of personality into some credibility, but anyone professionally involved in technology or technical investing could have and should have investigated more deeply. 

Patents in fact may have been among the best ways to ascertain that this was bullshit. If anyone had bothered to look. 

I have said a couple of times that the patent portfolio for the company was surprisingly slim without going deep into the actual patents themselves. One of the notable aspects was that there wasn't much covering fluid handling or testing and quite a bit more about transmitting testing data via the internet from a sampling machine to an analytical device. 

Also, patents are examined and granted based on their departure from the earlier or prior state of the art, not their technical feasibility beyond kind of a straight face test. 

Edited March 29, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[babysdaddy 2724]

16 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

The thing about this whole deal is that it's somewhat serendipitous that we anything about it.  It was their own hubris that brought them to anyone's attention, and of course the investment it attracted.  But it was far from a massive fraud on the scale of Madoff or Stanford.

Carreyrou did great work exposing them.  But both its ascendance and its downfall are almost wholly attributable to the press.

Yep, if they just would've been 'in beta' the entire time, no issues and keep going.  Of course, a diagnostics company that is in beta doesn't raise $900mm and get to a $9B valuation or talk to Presidents and VPs and have board members like Theranos did, nor get on the cover of Fortune/Time/WSJ etc.  

[Buzzrock 14920]

Congrats are in order: she’s engaged. Favorite tweet so far:

 

[Guest Lobo]

She looks like the Bizarro-World Schmoopy in that photo

[HenryJames 66057]

 

[Not a cat 5657]

Wow.  So she's engaged to a rich guy after all this shit is public.

Not that there was much doubt, but this confirms she's a master manipulator from the cluster B personality disorder.  These people are so adept at finding your emotional weaknesses and using it against you.  Old farts like Kissinger and Schulz didnt have a chance.

[Parliament 14260]

12 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

Congrats are in order: she’s engaged. Favorite tweet so far:

 

[Pato del Muerto 52499]

Nice to see that she landed on her back

[ChickenSandwich 9836]

16 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Nice to see that she landed on her back

The Haters always want to bring you down when “ you are changing the world”

[Trey3216 15346]

On 3/28/2019 at 8:52 PM, Buzzrock said:

She looks like a different person in those depositions on 20/20. She looks like she just snapped out of some sort of state. She looks like a child. It's bizarre.

 

Those fucking eyes man.  

[Guest Lobo]

Beware the fiance whose only tangible claim to fame is her ability to detect Syphilis in other people.  

[Deej 76796]

33 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Beware the fiance whose only tangible claim to fame is her inability to correctly detect Syphilis in other people.  

fify

[WBT 20572]

8 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Nice to see that she landed on her back

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?

[Harvard Man 9]

Stanford < Harvard 

[SHOOTER12 8810]

9 hours ago, Lobo said:

Beware the fiance whose only tangible claim to fame is her ability to detect Syphilis in other people.  

She seduced him with her "Can't Touch This" dance.

[52-80 19159]

17 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Nice to see that she landed on her back

she seems like the type to be on top, imo.  or even behind.

[A-Tex Devil 2446]

I just watched The Inventor.  She is clearly a robot designed by Enron and Tim Draper.   Blade Runner is real.  Just not how we thought.  Seriously   She isn’t a human  

As a corporate lawyer, though, I love how they throw employment agreements up there like some unconscionable document (“Who writes these contracts”) when every tech company in the US has something like that in place with their employees if they want investment or to exit. 

[Buzzrock 14920]

Back in court:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/06/28/theranos-founder-elizabeth-holmes-arrives-at-san-jose-court-for-pretrial-hearing.html

And appears to have finally hired a hairstylist.

[Deej 76796]

I'd hate fuck her.

[Colonel Sanders 1336]

25 minutes ago, Deej said:

I'd hate fuck her.

[TwiceHorn 31476]

On 5/3/2019 at 11:03 PM, A-Tex Devil said:

I just watched The Inventor.  She is clearly a robot designed by Enron and Tim Draper.   Blade Runner is real.  Just not how we thought.  Seriously   She isn’t a human  

As a corporate lawyer, though, I love how they throw employment agreements up there like some unconscionable document (“Who writes these contracts”) when every tech company in the US has something like that in place with their employees if they want investment or to exit. 

Nowai!  I have it on good authority that all of Theranos' lawyers were Satan incarnate.  And it's not just "tech" companies.

[XYZ 2154]

9 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Nowai!  I have it on good authority that all of Theranos' lawyers were Satan incarnate.  And it's not just "tech" companies.

There, fixed it for ya.

[TwiceHorn 31476]

On 5/3/2019 at 11:03 PM, A-Tex Devil said:

I just watched The Inventor.  She is clearly a robot designed by Enron and Tim Draper.   Blade Runner is real.  Just not how we thought.  Seriously   She isn’t a human  

As a corporate lawyer, though, I love how they throw employment agreements up there like some unconscionable document (“Who writes these contracts”) when every tech company in the US has something like that in place with their employees if they want investment or to exit. 

People forget (hell, I do and I'm from here), but Dallas had it's own silly-ass "tech" boom back in the aughts in the "Telecom Corridor."  Remember NorTel?  People were crossing the street for a new job and a 50% raise every six months and Fuji, Nortel, Alcatel, etc. were lobbing covenant and trade secret suits at each other non-stop.  Not quite Theranos level, but a tulip bubble nonetheless.

[MrBig 5398]

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

People forget (hell, I do and I'm from here), but Dallas had it's own silly-ass "tech" boom back in the aughts in the "Telecom Corridor."  Remember NorTel?  People were crossing the street for a new job and a 50% raise every six months and Fuji, Nortel, Alcatel, etc. were lobbing covenant and trade secret suits at each other non-stop.  Not quite Theranos level, but a tulip bubble nonetheless.

Reminds me of the days when they kept calling Dallas the Silicon Prairie. 

[Pato del Muerto 52499]

Motorola and/or uniden were/are there too weren’t they?

[TwiceHorn 31476]

Nortel, aka Northern Telecom, was a 100-year old Bell Canada.  By 2000, it was almost completely fraudulent at every level and finally filed bankruptcy in 2009.

All those telecom companies were going berserk after Gore's ill-fated and ill-advised telco deregulation, plus add in wireless and the internet. There was all this speculation that they were going to sell all this telco hardware to new phone companies, cell phone companies, and internet companies.  The IP atmosphere was ludicrous; so many bullshit/dipshit patent applications, just fake technology like Theranos. It was insane.  Kind of an outgrowth of the dotcom bubble.

[Dbeasy 15051]

Nortel, aka Northern Telecom, was a 100-year old Bell Canada.  By 2000, it was almost completely fraudulent at every level and finally filed bankruptcy in 2009.
All those telecom companies were going berserk after Gore's ill-fated and ill-advised telco deregulation, plus add in wireless and the internet. There was all this speculation that they were going to sell all this telco hardware to new phone companies, cell phone companies, and internet companies.  The IP atmosphere was ludicrous; so many bullshit/dipshit patent applications, just fake technology like Theranos. It was insane.  Kind of an outgrowth of the dotcom bubble.

I lived this time period first hand and was an employee of Nortel. I also was involved with one of those massive telecom bubble startups. I’ve read the full story of Theranos and watched the documentary. There are some very important distinctions between Theranos and what happened at Nortel and elsewhere in telecom.

Theranos became flat out fraud across the board once they realized the products weren’t working. They purposely misled investors, posting completely fake financials and fake test reports on the products. Theranos was much like Enron.

Nortel improperly applied accounting standards to their financials. You might argue (correctly) that some of it was done purposely, but the level of fraudulent behavior was an order of magnitude below Theranos. Of course, you could argue fraud is fraud but I think it’s an important distinction.

The other startup companies that were being bought up in the industry at that time for insane prices (including by Nortel) often had very minimal product capabilities. However, you didn’t see too much out and out faking of financial reporting. Rather, they would tout how they were working on getting the technology to work or the product delivered and the buyers bought these companies knowing that. The odds of some of these technologies working, like optical switching, were low, but the buyers were responsible for making bad acquisition decisions. I knew a lot of the management teams of startups who had been acquired for multi-billions of dollar and we just all shrugged our shoulders as these idiot companies like Nortel lost their minds. It wasn’t fraud for most of them.

[TwiceHorn 31476]

4 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

 

I lived this time period first hand and was an employee of Nortel. I also was involved with one of those massive telecom bubble startups. I’ve read the full story of Theranos and watched the documentary. There are some very important distinctions between Theranos and what happened at Nortel and elsewhere in telecom.

Theranos became flat out fraud across the board once they realized the products weren’t working. They purposely misled investors, posting completely fake financials and fake test reports on the products. Theranos was much like Enron.

Nortel improperly applied accounting standards to their financials. You might argue (correctly) that some of it was done purposely, but the level of fraudulent behavior was an order of magnitude below Theranos. Of course, you could argue fraud is fraud but I think it’s an important distinction.

The other startup companies that were being bought up in the industry at that time for insane prices (including by Nortel) often had very minimal product capabilities. However, you didn’t see too much out and out faking of financial reporting. Rather, they would tout how they were working on getting the technology to work or the product delivered and the buyers bought these companies knowing that. The odds of some of these technologies working, like optical switching, were low, but the buyers were responsible for making bad acquisition decisions. I knew a lot of the management teams of startups who had been acquired for multi-billions of dollar and we just all shrugged our shoulders as these idiot companies like Nortel lost their minds. It wasn’t fraud for most of them.

 

Fair enough. Nortel had real products, afaik, that were pretty good.  But yeah, the buying up of little speculative sort-of-dotcoms, who were overselling their capabilities was rampant, and to a certain degree, the overselling continued by Nortel.

And Nortel wasn't the only one, by any stretch.  The competition among the various equipment makers to generate any sort of technical edge, was pretty fearsome.  And let to a lot of ridiculous outcomes.  Nortel may have been a shade worse about it than the rest.

And, IIRC, one of the accounting frauds was booking orders that weren't bookable, on a fairly massive scale, which departs somewhat from the usual "accounting fraud."

 

[Deej 76796]

Telecoms weren't fucking with people's health via shady blood testing. That's a pretty big difference, IMO.

[Dbeasy 15051]

An accountant can provide better perspective but booking an order is a non-accounting event. They were simply counting multi year contracts as part of their “order” book and those contracts had out terms. It was definitely misleading to investors, but not financial fraud.

[Guest Lobo]

She looks like she makes sandwiches, cuts the crust off, then just stares at the sun while eating only the crust.  Throws the main part of the sandwich away and curses the poor.

[Nueces River Rat 5539]

In wonder if she finally got laid?

[Dbeasy 15051]

She lives a few places down from my buddy in SF. He says she and her dumbass fiancé are the talk of the neighborhood due to their profligate lifestyle.

[Trey3216 15346]

13 hours ago, Nueces River Rat said:

In wonder if she finally got laid?

You know psychotic folks like her fuck like racehorses 

[MAUFRAIS 6629]

Standing in a stall with a bunch of rich people watching?

[Trey3216 15346]

Interesting read from Bloomberg this morning.  

 

Fighting Theranos Charges, Holmes Blames Advocacy Journalism 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/fighting-theranos-charges-holmes-blames-advocacy-journalism

[Pato del Muerto 52499]

Your honor, the conduct of this man is reprehensible!  He found people that knew about our fraud, ensured that those people reported our fraud to the proper oversight agencies, and then made sure those agencies acted upon the reports to shut down our fraud!

[Beau Vine 54230]

5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Your honor, the conduct of this man is reprehensible!  He found people that knew about our fraud, ensured that those people reported our fraud to the proper oversight agencies, and then made sure those agencies acted upon the reports to shut down our fraud!

[smokebomb 357]

2 hours ago, Trey3216 said:

Interesting read from Bloomberg this morning.  

 

Fighting Theranos Charges, Holmes Blames Advocacy Journalism 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/fighting-theranos-charges-holmes-blames-advocacy-journalism

[Buzzrock 14920]

Interesting read from Bloomberg this morning.  
 
Fighting Theranos Charges, Holmes Blames Advocacy Journalism 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/fighting-theranos-charges-holmes-blames-advocacy-journalism

“If I were the government, I would argue that none of this is relevant, and it is likely to distract the jury from the real issue in the case,” McQuade added. “The case is about the conduct of Theranos, not Carreyrou.”

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

even if Carreyrou was 100% out to get Theranos, as in a personal vendetta, how he "got" them was revealing documented fraud Theranos committed

if I expose Lincoln Riley to the NCAA as a cheat and OU gets hauled in to the Infractions Committee, the fact that I wasn't acting altruistically doesn't mitigate the cheating in any way