I think I remember commercials of this company during the internet boom , I could be wrong but now known as a scam but in hindsight, seems like the tech wasn't there yet or many blood doctors say it's impossible
I'm seldom on this site...but did see the documentary.
I wouldn't say anything is impossible about it...just far from practical today. And doubtful at the desired dimensions Holmes demanded.
I honestly found the whole disdain for blood letting childish...but agreed with many of her ideas towards early screenings and patient involvement👍
I think she was first guilty of self-delusion.
She may have confused metaphysically impossible with incredibly difficult.
And unlike Jobs, she didnt have a Woz or a chance to have the tech catch up to the claims.
Whatever his myriad faults, Jobs had a basic understanding of technology, so he knew what was theoretically possible even if he needed Woz to actually make it happen.
Holmes is more like a number of Silicon Valley CEOs I dealt with back around the end of the dot-com boom: someone who holds executive-level positions based on connections and ambition rather than actual ability or talent.
For example, once Palm grew large enough, its board appointed Carl Yankowski as its CEO. Yankowski had just finished running Reebok, a company with no technological ambitions and no relation whatsoever to the PDA space. But he had friends on various corporate boards, and they all got each other appointed to various CEO slots based solely on their connections with each other.
Likewise, WebVan collected a ton of investment capital based on its CEO's connections as the former CEO of Borders bookstores.
I personally dealt with, and even worked for, smaller companies that were actually vanity projects for rich people and/or their kids - companies run by CEOs with no background in business or technology, but whose parents were able to scare up enough funding to let them play at running an actual company.
So yeah, that's at least one difference between Steve Jobs, who actually knew a bit about his company's technology, and Holmes who knew nothing and, worse still, expected the impossible. By that I mean that it's not actually possible to reliably test capillary blood as you would venous blood, especially when it's only a drop. Holmes was told as much by her professors at Stanford.
But CEOs like Yankowski, Borders and even Holmes treat that sort of truth as "negative thinking," and plow on ahead willy nilly.
The difference here is, she had no exit plan or plausible fallback position. Which is how she wound up faking so many tests, and likely why she may wind up in jail.
Jobs didn’t come from a wealthy connected family either, unlike Holmes.
Jobs knew the tech he needed to make his visions work and how to find people with the right expertise to make it happen. Holmes didn’t even know how to assess the tech to build on. Holmes was a Silicon Valley insider who knew how to play to that crowd.
Jobs was adopted by a wealthy family.
shareYeah, fascinating story of greed, deception, and Silicon Valley capitalist culture. The HBO Documentary did a great job, but a shame they didn’t focus in more on the points made in this article: https://newrepublic.com/article/153419/theranos-documentary-misses
shareI was following it fairly closely when the major developments were happening. One of the great cons in history. Right up there with the actual Ponzi himself. I might rate it higher than Madoff considering the industry she was in and the fact that lives were at stake. She actually got deals made with Walgreens and clinics opened that they claimed were using the new technology.
I got the book Bad Blood from the reporter who first broke the story. Looking forward to reading it.
His podcast - ‘Bad Blood: The Final Chapter’ is great too!
I also listened to ‘The Drop Out’ which obviously covers the trial too but both were equally enjoyable.
To answer the question in your subject line -- yes, I care about this. I've been reading and watching and will be following the trial.
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