[sjg007]

Would you please qualify Peter Thiel's approach here? and why it would have been a better model? Palantir is pure software company. Theranos is a suite of biomedical tests. This has a major lab/hardware component.

Theranos exists in a regulated industry where at a minimum as a lab developed test you have to abide by CLIA regulations. In addition you have to have validation, verification, design history and a whole bunch of documentation to prove that what you developed does what it should do and actually works.

The thing about Theranos is that the rules are well established.. You just have to follow them. If you don't know the rules you have to be a quick study or you have to hire experienced folks who know the rules and how to guide you through the process.

[MathsOX]

I'm not equating them absolutely, however I'm pointing out the Planatir began utilizing existing tech to make in roads into national defence while using that cash flow to create more proprietary technology that, once released, allowed the company to grow much quicker and that tech became it's mainstay. Presumably initial funding rounds and contracts were predicated on this being the strategy, not novel tech being utilized immediately (which is inline with what Theranos has done). The comparison stops there, at a macro level not micro level as you're describing, thus why only a sentence was devoted to it.