rohitc99 Posted July 16, 2015 Posted July 16, 2015 another FDA approval to do tests outside the lab http://fortune.com/2015/07/16/fda-clears-theranos-to-do-test-outside-lab/
giofranchi Posted September 16, 2015 Author Posted September 16, 2015 How Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire http://www.inc.com/magazine/201510/kimberly-weisul/the-longest-game.html?cid=sf01001 Cheers, Gio
cogitator8 Posted September 16, 2015 Posted September 16, 2015 Indeed she is, I am a physician and follow her achievement very closely, she has asperger's and one of incredibly gifted human being, if I can call her human. Theranos is already operating in some walgreen's in SF and Arizona, they will be expanding.
Liberty Posted September 16, 2015 Posted September 16, 2015 Indeed she is, I am a physician and follow her achievement very closely, she has asperger's and one of incredibly gifted human being, if I can call her human. Theranos is already operating in some walgreen's in SF and Arizona, they will be expanding. Out of curiosity, what is your source for saying she has Aspergers? I don't remember seeing that anywhere.
Liberty Posted September 21, 2015 Posted September 21, 2015 New piece: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201510/kimberly-weisul/the-longest-game.html
giofranchi Posted September 21, 2015 Author Posted September 21, 2015 New piece: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201510/kimberly-weisul/the-longest-game.html ??? ;D Cheers, Gio
Liberty Posted September 21, 2015 Posted September 21, 2015 Why the raised eyebrow, Gio? Did I miss something? ???
giofranchi Posted September 21, 2015 Author Posted September 21, 2015 Why the raised eyebrow, Gio? Did I miss something? ??? Isn't your article the same one I had just posted? Am I wrong? Cheers, Gio
Liberty Posted September 21, 2015 Posted September 21, 2015 Indeed it is. I had not seen it. Sorry about that.
Liberty Posted October 10, 2015 Posted October 10, 2015 Elizabeth Holmes interviewed by Maria Shriver at the Vanity Fair conference: http://youtu.be/Qeb_OVOX0NQ Looks like the incumbents (looks like) are playing rough. She says that they had to send legal letters to certain people pretending to be physicians and talking to the media about Theranos, talking about tests that they have no records of ever doing... If you go to the VF youtube page, you can see other videos from the same event (Elon Musk, John Malone, etc).
dcollon Posted October 12, 2015 Posted October 12, 2015 Thanks for posting Liberty. Like you said, there are some other really good interviews from Vanity Fair.
Gamecock-YT Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 Theranos Has Struggled With Blood Tests .. But Theranos has struggled behind the scenes to turn the excitement over its technology into reality. At the end of 2014, the lab instrument developed as the linchpin of its strategy handled just a small fraction of the tests then sold to consumers, according to four former employees. One former senior employee says Theranos was routinely using the device, named Edison after the prolific inventor, for only 15 tests in December 2014. Some employees were leery about the machine’s accuracy, according to the former employees and emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In a complaint to regulators, one Theranos employee accused the company of failing to report test results that raised questions about the precision of the Edison system. Such a failure could be a violation of federal rules for laboratories, the former employee said. Theranos also hasn’t disclosed publicly that it does the vast majority of its tests with traditional machines bought from companies like Siemens AG. .. Former employees say diluting blood drawn from fingers contributed to accuracy problems early last year with a test to measure potassium. Lab experts say finger-pricked blood samples can be less pure than those drawn from a vein because finger-pricked blood often mixes with fluids from tissue and cells that can interfere with tests. Some of the potassium results at Theranos were so high that patients would have to be dead for the results to be correct, according to one former employee. Whoops!
DCG Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Seems like this company has the potential of being the poster child for a VC bubble.
Liberty Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 The company's response: https://theranos.com/news/posts/statement-from-theranos We'll have to wait and see if there's really something rotten with the company or if this is just attacks by the incumbents who can expect their revenues to evaporate if Theranos is successful in the long-term...
Picasso Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Sort of interesting to pair this with the Glassdoor reviews which seem barbelled between fabricated positive stories and negative hype. Just seems like a very bizarre story and Theranos has responded very poorly so far. Something seems really off about this whole thing.
DCG Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 Has Theranos' revenue numbers ever been posted anywhere?
Morgan Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 From the statement: https://theranos.com/news/posts/statement-from-theranos "The Journal even declined an opportunity to experience the technology themselves by turning down our offer to send proprietary Theranos devices to their offices so they could have a demonstration of tests conducted themselves, and compare the results to those of other testing providers." If that is true, the Journal may have messed up pretty big. It may be an attempt to draw out how Theranos does their work by essentially forcing them to show more details the processes. If Theranos is actually able to do what they state, and I hope they can, they will make the world much, much better.
Liberty Posted October 15, 2015 Posted October 15, 2015 I'm pretty sure that even if Holmes was a quarter as smart as she seems, she would have made sure to calibrate her tests against other already established tests from other labs. It seems unlikely that all her tests are so bad that everything is completely outside of normal ranges (and far into unbelievable levels on some tests, like the piece claims), even after thousands, of not millions of tests done. And if that was the case, they wouldn't have come out of stealth mode, submitted tests to the FDA, etc, they'd have kept tweaking things. The more time passes, the more I realize that business is war. There are billions on the line, and the media is one of many weapons to be used to attack. I can't know if what Theranos claims is true, but they seem to be attacked by anonymous sources and quotes by fake doctors, their data and offers for demonstrations seem to be ignored, etc. Maybe that's all false, but it's not so hard to believe that many journalists won't let facts stand in the way of a good story, or are friendly with businesses they've been covering for years and are receptive to these "tips". It's like some of the things that I'm seeing in the Valeant attacks. Some journalist wrote with a straight face, and little context, that "Since 2007, Valeant’s drug prices have grown by a compounded annual rate of 48%". Really? 48% CAGR for 8 years? So VRX's drugs now cost 23x what they did? I don't know, maybe Theranos is all a big fraud. Or maybe the incumbents are trying to damage it and slow it down, because if Theranos can do what they claim, any time the old guard can gain, any doubt they place in the minds of potential customers will be worth billions over time...
Liberty Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 Holmes was on CNBC talking about the WSJ piece: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/15/theranos-ceo-fires-back-at-wsj-i-was-shocked.html
merkhet Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 http://fortune.com/2015/10/15/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-wsj/ Some more responses by Theranos
TheAiGuy Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 I don't know, maybe Theranos is all a big fraud. Or maybe the incumbents are trying to damage it and slow it down, because if Theranos can do what they claim, any time the old guard can gain, any doubt they place in the minds of potential customers will be worth billions over time... I hate hearing "fraud" thrown around so loosely. It would be unsurprising if Theranos can't deliver what they claim they can -- doesn't mean its a fraud. Science is hard and everybody, the scientists at Theranos and the reporters at the WSJ, have an economic and repetitional interest in their particular narrative. I would be very, very surprised if anyone but a very small fraction of the scientists and executives at Theranos don't fully believe they can and will deliver what they say they will. On one hand, they could very easily be wrong and seeing their data in a way that allows them to convince themselves they are on the right path. On the other, breakthroughs of this magnitude have happened repeatedly in biology.
randomep Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 I would be shocked that Theranos delivers even a fraction of what they claim. The little that I know about the company makes me very suspicious. Here is a company worth $9B and I cannot wrap my head around what is their competitive advantage let alone what is their secret technology. They have machine(s) that will revolutionize blood testing....... no one is on to this? consider health care is 20% of our economy..... Why is it that I have no clue how they do it from what I have read? do they just keep their product's blueprint a secret? if so how easy is it for the former employees in that article to spill the beans to someone who'll pay money for the knowledge? Do they have patents? if so what are they, let's take a look and have scientists do a peer review...... with patents of course they should then advertise their technology blueprint to quell all doubts...... If find it very troubling the fact that we can even speculate that it is a "fraud"......
ScottHall Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 I would be shocked that Theranos delivers even a fraction of what they claim. The little that I know about the company makes me very suspicious. Here is a company worth $9B and I cannot wrap my head around what is their competitive advantage let alone what is their secret technology. They have machine(s) that will revolutionize blood testing....... no one is on to this? consider health care is 20% of our economy..... Why is it that I have no clue how they do it from what I have read? do they just keep their product's blueprint a secret? if so how easy is it for the former employees in that article to spill the beans to someone who'll pay money for the knowledge? Do they have patents? if so what are they, let's take a look and have scientists do a peer review...... with patents of course they should then advertise their technology blueprint to quell all doubts...... If find it very troubling the fact that we can even speculate that it is a "fraud"...... I agree with AI Guy, jumping to fraud is a bit much. I think the most likely scenario is that Holmes is attempting to do something very hard and is having to deal with all of the hurdles & stumbling blocks in the way. Anything that wasn't hard wouldn't have them. And if this is true, we shouldn't be pointing figures and going "na na I told you so," we should be encouraging her. Because that is how major societal progress comes about, challenging very difficult problems and accepting that there's a large chance of failure. Failure should be the expectation in these sorts of situations... it doesn't mean Holmes/Musk/whoever aren't smart and aren't doing the right thing. If anything these sorts of bets deserve more hype & glory than they get, because it encourages other people to avoid spending their lives working on incremental improvements in favor of lower probability moonshots that can really help drive society forward.
feynmanresearch Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 I would be shocked that Theranos delivers even a fraction of what they claim. The little that I know about the company makes me very suspicious. Here is a company worth $9B and I cannot wrap my head around what is their competitive advantage let alone what is their secret technology. They have machine(s) that will revolutionize blood testing....... no one is on to this? consider health care is 20% of our economy..... Why is it that I have no clue how they do it from what I have read? do they just keep their product's blueprint a secret? if so how easy is it for the former employees in that article to spill the beans to someone who'll pay money for the knowledge? Do they have patents? if so what are they, let's take a look and have scientists do a peer review...... with patents of course they should then advertise their technology blueprint to quell all doubts...... If find it very troubling the fact that we can even speculate that it is a "fraud"...... I agree with AI Guy, jumping to fraud is a bit much. I think the most likely scenario is that Holmes is attempting to do something very hard and is having to deal with all of the hurdles & stumbling blocks in the way. Anything that wasn't hard wouldn't have them. And if this is true, we shouldn't be pointing figures and going "na na I told you so," we should be encouraging her. Because that is how major societal progress comes about, challenging very difficult problems and accepting that there's a large chance of failure. Failure should be the expectation in these sorts of situations... it doesn't mean Holmes/Musk/whoever aren't smart and aren't doing the right thing. If anything these sorts of bets deserve more hype & glory than they get, because it encourages other people to avoid spending their lives working on incremental improvements in favor of lower probability moonshots that can really help drive society forward. +1
Picasso Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 http://www.wsj.com/articles/hot-startup-theranos-dials-back-lab-tests-at-fdas-behest-1444961864 Hey, at least we can get tested for the hippity herps using their nanotainers. I'm all for rooting for people doing extraordinary things, but she's been hand waiving the accusations away as if they're completely baseless. At least Elon Musk can explain the physics behind why his ideas work. We're just seeing Theranos try to attack the credibility of their accusers. That's not exactly a good argument. I'm withholding my judgement since she's obviously under a lot of pressure to make this work, and the cause is noble.. After all, she's supposed to be the next Steve Jobs or something. Whatever that means.... But it sure looks like she's torching VC money to create a profitless business based on blackbox trademarks and marketing hype. Ack! There I go again passing judgement... So hard... When is the Wall Street Journal going to take down Intrexon? That's worth like $4B or something last I looked, amazing board members, dna.com, etc etc....
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