This woman is really amazing!

[randomep]

 

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.

 

ScottHall, what you said makes no sense to me. All progress of society is about incremental improvements, in technology and math and science. When was there ever a giant leap forward?  Let's take physics for an example, I guess Newton's principles of physics is groundbreaking (though it was replaced centuries later). But calculus, which Newton gets 90% of credit, was being discovered at the same time in Germany.  Also maybe Einstein's papers on relativity.  And things like vaccine for polio were known ideas with competing implementations.  All these people had tons of help, people help each other with experiments and sharing ideas.

 

The biggest exception I can find right now is the wright brothers.

 

Society makes great improvements based on time and lots of hard work.  Nobody is indispensible. If any past great scientist or mathematican was run over by a truck at 8yrs old, society will have the same technology today, with a few exceptions. And those exceptions probably just means that we will reach some point a few years later.

 

Now lets go back and look at Holmes. She is making something she is doing very public, but she is keeping the details very secret, which means lots of very dedicated and smart people cannot share ideas with her. Which actually increases her chance of failure.  With your idea of great leap forward, are you saying that if she died tomorrow this potential technology is not going to be able to benefit society and die with her?

 

Now suppose she can bring the cost of blood testing down from $100 to $7, that's great for society, it will reduce the cost of medical care and decrease our debt burden. But as soon as she gets traction and proves herself there will be a hundred copycats. How does she even legally protect her technology?  If not then how can her investors make money with her?

 

This is a money forum and so I am primarily focused on her investors.  What were her last round of financiers thinking!  I bet with more and more details the optimists will think she is going for the moonshot, like you are saying.  So, say she has a 1/10 chance of success. Even if she somehow gets a monopoly on her business after she proves it works, they must expect it to be worth $90 to rationally make an investment.

 

Of course Holmes is a businesswoman, she is here to make a buck.  And society has given her vastly more reward than 99.9% of successful scientists before her, society has made her a paper billionaire despite her being so tight lipped and NOT proving that she can do blood tests for $7.  The only greater encouragement we can give her is let her go IPO w/o lockup window so she can be a real billionaire.

 

If you want to encourage progress, I think we should reward more grad students who are toiling away getting not even minimum wage,  with no hope of immediate financial reward.

 

 

[TheAiGuy]

 

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

+2

[TheAiGuy]

If you want to encourage progress, I think we should reward more grad students who are toiling away getting not even minimum wage,  with no hope of immediate financial reward.

 

As a grad student toiling away in science for what can easily be described as a living wage, I'm excited for Theranos and wish them the best.

 

As for that stuff about collaboration sharing of ideas, peer review is a mess. Its very slow and its sometimes useful, on a case-by-case basis. If they have something they think is close to production-ready, it seems fine to me that they've opted to forgo it. They gold standard is replication anyway.

 

Oh, and I'm super skeptical their machines works.

[ERICOPOLY]

 

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'm not troubled by any hint of fraud.  Look at the deeply respected people involved with the board.  These are lightweights who don't turn over stones with tough questions such as yours?  They would stake their reputations on this without better information than you've been given?

 

 

“With three former cabinet secretaries, two former senators, and retired military brass, it’s a board like no other.”

 

"We have former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist (who, it should be noted, is a surgeon), former Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, former Marine Corps General James Mattis, and former CEOs Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo and Riley Bechtel of Bechtel. There is also one former epidemiologist—William Foege, and, in addition to Holmes, one current executive, Sunny Balwani, who is Theranos’ president and CEO."

http://fortune.com/2015/10/15/theranos-board-leadership/

 

[Jurgis]

First of all, big +1 for randomep. :)

 

I'm excited for Theranos and wish them the best.

 

Agree with that. I think we all do.

 

As for that stuff about collaboration sharing of ideas, peer review is a mess.

 

And yet is there anything better?

 

If they have something they think is close to production-ready, it seems fine to me that they've opted to forgo it. They gold standard is replication anyway.

 

Yes, but not if they decide to go Volkswagen and discard the data that shows issues in replication.

 

We will have to see how this works out. She's definitely not a martyr that bulls try to depict her: she has tons of money, great backers, contracts. So really Theranos should show results. Should not be tough with X$B warchest, no?

[TheAiGuy]

 

As for that stuff about collaboration sharing of ideas, peer review is a mess.

 

And yet is there anything better?

 

That's a constant topic of debate. Its unclear, although there are some serious (i.e. well funded) attempts at reform. The big benefits of peer review is that you can 1) share your work and 2) be vetted. Theranos obviously doesn't want to do 1) and all sort of bullshit gets through peer review, so "publishing" its as high of a bar as it could be. Reviewers typically do not have access to raw data, inspect the process or have any other means of directly detecting fraud -- its a system based on trust.

 

 

If they have something they think is close to production-ready, it seems fine to me that they've opted to forgo it. They gold standard is replication anyway.

 

Yes, but not if they decide to go Volkswagen and discard the data that shows issues in replication.

 

We will have to see how this works out. She's definitely not a martyr that bulls try to depict her: she has tons of money, great backers, contracts. So really Theranos should show results. Should not be tough with X$B warchest, no?

 

Yeah, by replication I mean independent replication. Its tricky with their lack of transparency but it is doable.

[Grenville]

Listening to Holmes rebuttal on Mad Money is worthwhile. Also Ericopoly, thanks for listing the board members and good point.

 

I'm a bit disappointed with the Journal's reporting…it seems like its hard to find a news source where hidden agendas don't purposefully or inadvertently color the reporting. You also won't ever see a news source ante up to their mistake if they did make one with a full page article.

 

 

[merkhet]

Listening to Holmes rebuttal on Mad Money is worthwhile. Also Ericopoly, thanks for listing the board members and good point.

 

I'm a bit disappointed with the Journal's reporting…it seems like its hard to find a news source where hidden agendas don't purposefully or inadvertently color the reporting. You also won't ever see a news source ante up to their mistake if they did make one with a full page article.

 

I had the exact opposite reaction to the Mad Money interview.

 

Listen to her response to Cramer starting at 4:08 when he asked "Why didn't you just speak with the Journal reporter months ago?" Her response was basically "well, the Journal wrote a good piece a year ago, I published an op-ed on the Journal, but in this case the sources focused on detractors who said I would never succeed." She then offers a pretty weak response that the Journal only provided a "three day window" in which she was unavailable before the Journal had to publish.

 

So, that's a bit of a dissembling response in my book. She basically didn't respond for months because she didn't like the article that was being written. Then she says that she finally decided to respond after months of inquiries but by the time she decided to respond, the schedules didn't match up. These are things that wouldn't hold up w/ a cross-examination, but that's not really Cramer's job.

 

No opinion on fraud or anything like that, but I found her answers to Cramer to be questionable.

[DCG]

She sure has a deep voice.

[Picasso]

Listening to Holmes rebuttal on Mad Money is worthwhile. Also Ericopoly, thanks for listing the board members and good point.

 

I'm a bit disappointed with the Journal's reporting…it seems like its hard to find a news source where hidden agendas don't purposefully or inadvertently color the reporting. You also won't ever see a news source ante up to their mistake if they did make one with a full page article.

 

I had the exact opposite reaction to the Mad Money interview.

 

Listen to her response to Cramer starting at 4:08 when he asked "Why didn't you just speak with the Journal reporter months ago?" Her response was basically "well, the Journal wrote a good piece a year ago, I published an op-ed on the Journal, but in this case the sources focused on detractors who said I would never succeed." She then offers a pretty weak response that the Journal only provided a "three day window" in which she was unavailable before the Journal had to publish.

 

So, that's a bit of a dissembling response in my book. She basically didn't respond for months because she didn't like the article that was being written. Then she says that she finally decided to respond after months of inquiries but by the time she decided to respond, the schedules didn't match up. These are things that wouldn't hold up w/ a cross-examination, but that's not really Cramer's job.

 

No opinion on fraud or anything like that, but I found her answers to Cramer to be questionable.

 

+1

 

Nevermind that she's had time to do many, many media appearances and since the article came out she's been out in the media left and right. 

[ScottHall]

 

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.

 

ScottHall, what you said makes no sense to me. All progress of society is about incremental improvements, in technology and math and science. When was there ever a giant leap forward?  Let's take physics for an example, I guess Newton's principles of physics is groundbreaking (though it was replaced centuries later). But calculus, which Newton gets 90% of credit, was being discovered at the same time in Germany.  Also maybe Einstein's papers on relativity.  And things like vaccine for polio were known ideas with competing implementations.  All these people had tons of help, people help each other with experiments and sharing ideas.

 

The biggest exception I can find right now is the wright brothers.

 

To be clear, I'm not talking about incrementally improving the inputs to inventions here. I'm talking about the output. Technically speaking, of course almost all progress builds incrementally on work done/discovered by others, and must conform to the world's natural laws. That much is obvious, so it doesn't merit talking about. That's my fault, I suppose, for not being clear and assuming people would take my use of the word "incremental" to mean "small improvement."

 

What I'm referring to when I talk about incremental improvements is more along the lines of figuring out how to breed horses that are 2% faster vs. figuring out how to produce cheap automobiles. One of those two had orders of magnitude more benefit to society than the other, and was probably much more difficult to pull off. So what I'm really talking about is basically successfully hitting a tipping point where the benefits of a product or service increase exponentially vs. the status quo.

 

The same is true for air travel, electric power, communications, the internet, and so on. They may have built on existing technology or known theories, but when implemented, they punched so far above the weight class of the status quo that they were game changing. And society was a huge beneficiary.

 

One thing to remember is that the reward of an effort isn't necessary related to how much effort was put in... it is probably much harder to implement world changing technologies than it is to refine existing ones, but that doesn't mean the reward (to society and shareholders) won't be much higher still. It also doesn't mean shareholders are necessarily entitled to anything if they can't defend the market.

 

Now lets go back and look at Holmes. She is making something she is doing very public, but she is keeping the details very secret, which means lots of very dedicated and smart people cannot share ideas with her. Which actually increases her chance of failure.  With your idea of great leap forward, are you saying that if she died tomorrow this potential technology is not going to be able to benefit society and die with her?

 

Now suppose she can bring the cost of blood testing down from $100 to $7, that's great for society, it will reduce the cost of medical care and decrease our debt burden. But as soon as she gets traction and proves herself there will be a hundred copycats. How does she even legally protect her technology?  If not then how can her investors make money with her?

 

This is a money forum and so I am primarily focused on her investors.  What were her last round of financiers thinking!  I bet with more and more details the optimists will think she is going for the moonshot, like you are saying.  So, say she has a 1/10 chance of success. Even if she somehow gets a monopoly on her business after she proves it works, they must expect it to be worth $90 to rationally make an investment.

 

Of course Holmes is a businesswoman, she is here to make a buck.  And society has given her vastly more reward than 99.9% of successful scientists before her, society has made her a paper billionaire despite her being so tight lipped and NOT proving that she can do blood tests for $7.  The only greater encouragement we can give her is let her go IPO w/o lockup window so she can be a real billionaire.

 

I don't want to be a dick, but this really comes across as sour grapes. "A real billionaire," seriously? I see a lot of people criticizing Holmes, and yeah she's not beyond reproach, but the tone here is really telling.

 

I don't know if it's career jealousy, people feeling threatened or inadequate because a young woman is smarter & more successful than they are, or what, but Holmes had the conviction in herself to develop her technology outside the walls of one of the existing medical technology powerhouses. That was a big risk to take, so of course she deserves a commensurate reward if it takes off.

 

Maybe more scientists who believe in their skill sets should strike out independently. I don't know. It's a risk; you lose that guaranteed paycheck, but if you hit a blockbuster product, the payoff can be huge.

 

What were her financiers thinking? It takes two to tango. They willing gave her the capital to do this, and these aren't unsophisticated mom-and-pop investors we're talking about. Failure is always going to be a huge part of venture capital investing, and they know this. Ultimately the market sets the price, so if they set the wrong price, that's really their own fault.

 

I'm not saying Holmes will be successful, by the way. Failure is probably the expectation. What I am saying is that I think a lot of her detractors are coming from a very ugly place within their own minds & hearts. Not that you are, necessarily.

[randomep]

ScottHall I think you are really misunderstand what I said. Some of it was my ineffectual explanation. I may not be correct in what I said but I just wish you can attack what I said after you understood what I meant. And what you misunderstood can really be explained very simply.

 

Firstly, great leaps can be made in our end result, like the polio vaccine. But I don't think it is through breakthrough in understanding, it is like what Newton said, if I have done great things it is that I stood on the backs of giants. He (no doubt a great man) i saying his contribution is a small part of many. If holmes succeeds in what she claims it is a great leap but it is one of many advancements.  She is a small part of a big huge train, that is progress. To me, you make it sound like without her, this technology would die or we would not have it for another decade. I simply believe that if this is possible (and that is a big if) someone else would come along and make it happen if holmes was run over by a truck tomorrow. 

 

Secondly, I thought what you said earlier was nonsensical.  I am paraphrasing here,

 

ScottHall: if anything, she should get more hype and glory that what she is getting because it would encourage others to follow in her footsteps.....

 

Ok so this would be my sarcastic response: so a paper billionaire isn't enough glory?

 

My imagined response from ScottHall: no

 

me: ok so you think she should go IPO and get 1 billion cash?

 

You see my condenscending statement had nothing to do with holme but it has everything to do with your statement that $1B isn't enough profit motive to encourage people to further mankind. I know you'll say money isn't everything, but I was just my insulting way of reminding you that society has made her a billionaire, paper or real, it is a BIG DEAL. 

 

I should have a picture of that guy beating a dead horse here. Honestly tell me, what should we give her, financial or recognition or otherwise, that would make you think is sufficient for her potential contribution?

 

 

 

 

 

[randomep]

 

On a different topic.

 

I am surprised that no one has mentioned we are all debating an interview by Jim Cramer. I've always thought his show was drivel and I haven't even glanced at it for half a decade, is he always doing this kind of interviews now without the clown act? I really hope he sees the way and becomes an honest news person.

[ScottHall]

ScottHall I think you are really misunderstand what I said. Some of it was my ineffectual explanation. I may not be correct in what I said but I just wish you can attack what I said after you understood what I meant. And what you misunderstood can really be explained very simply.

 

...

 

Secondly, I thought what you said earlier was nonsensical.  I am paraphrasing here,

 

ScottHall: if anything, she should get more hype and glory that what she is getting because it would encourage others to follow in her footsteps.....

 

Ok so this would be my sarcastic response: so a paper billionaire isn't enough glory?

 

My imagined response from ScottHall: no

 

me: ok so you think she should go IPO and get 1 billion cash?

 

You see my condenscending statement had nothing to do with holme but it has everything to do with your statement that $1B isn't enough profit motive to encourage people to further mankind. I know you'll say money isn't everything, but I was just my insulting way of reminding you that society has made her a billionaire, paper or real, it is a BIG DEAL. 

 

I should have a picture of that guy beating a dead horse here. Honestly tell me, what should we give her, financial or recognition or otherwise, that would make you think is sufficient for her potential contribution?

 

Uh, what? I don't think I said any of this. When I say we should encourage her, I don't mean with a higher valuation or whatever else. I mean we shouldn't be jerks on the internet & press who seem to get off to the idea of her failing.

 

Also, if you're going to be "condescending" in your own words, then good bye and have a nice day.

 

I'm not going to say I don't have time to argue with you,  because I do, but doing so is not worth my time if you're coming at this from a self-admitted negative and "insulting" place. I don't want or need internet drama in my life. It's entirely unproductive.

 

That said, I hope you have a nice day and that you find it in yourself not to be a jerk just because you disagree with people on the internet. I was like this not too long ago, and I came to realize it really didn't do me or anyone else any favors. It just made everyone involved upset and less willing to see the other side of things.

 

Farewell.

[randomep]

 

Here is another interview about theranos. Steve Jurvetson is the first investor in Theranos. He is very supportive and very impressed with Holmes, 11 years ago and to this day. But when asked is it a fraud? He says, "that's a great question that I cannot answer, I just don't [know]"

 

Wow, that is quite profound, your first investor cannot vouch for you.... many different people can read that different ways..... if anything it is another datapoint...

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-10-19/early-theranos-investor-remains-supportive-even-without-answers

[Grenville]

Listening to Holmes rebuttal on Mad Money is worthwhile. Also Ericopoly, thanks for listing the board members and good point.

 

I'm a bit disappointed with the Journal's reporting…it seems like its hard to find a news source where hidden agendas don't purposefully or inadvertently color the reporting. You also won't ever see a news source ante up to their mistake if they did make one with a full page article.

 

I had the exact opposite reaction to the Mad Money interview.

 

Listen to her response to Cramer starting at 4:08 when he asked "Why didn't you just speak with the Journal reporter months ago?" Her response was basically "well, the Journal wrote a good piece a year ago, I published an op-ed on the Journal, but in this case the sources focused on detractors who said I would never succeed." She then offers a pretty weak response that the Journal only provided a "three day window" in which she was unavailable before the Journal had to publish.

 

So, that's a bit of a dissembling response in my book. She basically didn't respond for months because she didn't like the article that was being written. Then she says that she finally decided to respond after months of inquiries but by the time she decided to respond, the schedules didn't match up. These are things that wouldn't hold up w/ a cross-examination, but that's not really Cramer's job.

 

No opinion on fraud or anything like that, but I found her answers to Cramer to be questionable.

 

Thanks for sharing your take. I've been wanting to re-listen to the interview, but haven't gotten around to it. I thought I remember other comments but I'll have to confirm that once I listen to it again.

 

 

Here is another interview about theranos. Steve Jurvetson is the first investor in Theranos. He is very supportive and very impressed with Holmes, 11 years ago and to this day. But when asked is it a fraud? He says, "that's a great question that I cannot answer, I just don't [know]"

 

Wow, that is quite profound, your first investor cannot vouch for you.... many different people can read that different ways..... if anything it is another datapoint...

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-10-19/early-theranos-investor-remains-supportive-even-without-answers

Thanks for posting! I haven't heard Jurvetson speak before. His comments are interesting but he does point to Holmes being independent. Did they just invest 500k and that's it?

[randomep]

Thanks for posting! I haven't heard Jurvetson speak before. His comments are interesting but he does point to Holmes being independent. Did they just invest 500k and that's it?

 

 

 

 

Well I never heard of this angel investor till now.  It seems like he just invested that $500k and he thinks oh well good luck to her she is a lottery ticket.  Did you notice that the first question was do you stand behind theranos and would you invest again in them? And jumped on the first part, ya we stand behind them, we love her....  but he never answered the latter question except to say "that's a good question!"

 

So the thing I gather from this is, if the first investor doesn't know if it is a fraud, then the new investors in the last round of financing don't know either. Because how can potential investors be privy to information that existing shareholders don't have.  So if all these shareholders don't know, then does Henry Kissinger and the rest of the board know something that the shareholders don't?  possibly, or possibly nobody knows if this is all smoke and mirrors.....

 

 

 

[Picasso]

http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-maris-explains-why-gv-didnt-invest-in-theranos-2015-10

[bigbadwolf]

She really could end up in jail on this one...

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/05/theranos-corrects-blood-test-results.html

[Picasso]

She's going to need a new collection of orange turtlenecks. 

[opihiman2]

LoL!  I just read this entire thread.  I really wonder about this board lately.  They say hindsight is 20/20, but I thought the few detractors and skeptics were right on. 

 

The thing number one thing I've learned in life is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! 

[Foreign Tuffett]

What a cluster****

 

Also, this:

 

http://www.vendoralley.com.php5-10.dfw1-1.websitetestlink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ex_unicorn.jpg?w=300

 

[Mephistopheles]

Don't you guys have anything better to do than pick on random people on the Internet? We all make mistakes, and unless we have a complete track record from you and from the one you called out, what's the purpose?

[Vish_ram]

This is what is so sinister about Holmes:

 

She carefully cultivated this image of Steve Jobs 2.0, and broadened the use of her product all the while knowing fully well that it doesn't work as expected. She was playing with so many lives. Just amazing how she fooled so many for so long.

 

Such ambition coupled with incompetence may work in hedge fund industry, but not in hard sciences.

[randomep]

 

 

At this point I wonder.... what did Holmes get out of it?  Her 15min of fame?  I would have more respect for her if she at least embezzled $5M or so into buying her a nice mansion or she has some gold bars buried in her back yard.  If she didn't then it is totally a waste of close to a $1B cash.

 

I guess we can't expect a rationale explanation.  It takes a sociopath to carry on a charade for close to 11yrs.