The biggest takeaway from Theranos is that investigative Journalism is not dead. John Careryu (sp?) single handedly dug up the truth in a non disparaging factual manner and went up against a team of ruthless lawyers threatening to utterly destroy him, the Journal, and his source. That source was a 24 year old hero whose parents put up their house as collateral just to help their son do the right thing when he had no monetary gain from it. After learning so much about the bullshit Theranos did, every nail that pushes it further into the ground has given me a justice euphoria high. I'll be following this until it's end
The story of Theranos makes me think about where the "great filter" lines for startups are.
My prior company - who I was with from ~20 people to the current 300+ - has been going through some shakeups that make me wonder. This adds to my thinking.
I'd have thought that both were past those lines - hundreds of people, multiple offices? Seems like it'd be solid at that point.
The common factor is that both have yet to release their "flagship" product, although they've released products.
Then you can think about small products with small teams - Sidekiq, Cards Against Humanity - that achieve substantial success.
It seems like this is the most telling "filter" - did you release your core product?
The filter line is typically execution risk, which is to say that once you've demonstrated that people will pay enough money for the product that you can fund the business, growing the company to the point where it is net cash flow positive flips the switch.
The thing about Theranos was, as we found out, that they had yet to prove their fundamental thesis which was that you could do a useful number of diagnostic tests with a small amount of blood to the same confidence levels as the same test done the existing way. Fundamentally they could not show that to be true.
So in a more critical (or perhaps skeptical) investing environment, they should have stalled out several years ago when they couldn't demonstrate to new investors that they had a viable blood diagnostic process[1]. But for what ever reason that didn't happen.
[1] And yes there are stories that they simply lied about what was happening.
You could say Theranos' core product was "released" - they were doing blood testing. Maybe badly. Maybe clandestinely on other equipment. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned it was "working".
Plus you have to define what "core product" means. Is it the bit that makes money? A lot of startups have slotted the money making bit in later and gone alright; others never really could figure that out.
And... relatively boring companies with real business can transform themselves into "house of cards built on lies" type businesses pretty easily, too. Think about Enron, or any financial firm that went heavily in on the subprime mortgages.
Maybe their core product, but not their flagship product.
Theranos was built on the promise of an amazing new tech for blood testing, not on the promise of blood testing.
By "flagship product" I mean the thing you're basing your corporate identity on. Like the stereotypical waiter in LA, they're actually an actor; their identity (flagship product) is actor, but their day job (released/core products) is something else.
It kinds of depends what your goals are: if your goals are to make a card game? sure, a small team should suffice.
But if your goals are to make rockets ? well having 500+ employees and having your product fail, as it happen to spaceX in 2008, maybe not so bad ?
And it could be that for theranos, in order to sell laboratory services(assuming their competitors bundle stuff), they have to offer the whole service array , meaning thousands of tests, so it takes a lot of work for their core product - altough they did already have product based on the same tech for pharma r&d.
How do you scale to 300+ employees in multiple offices without having released a product?
It sounds like both companies were just money-burning machines, where the only thing keeping them afloat is VC funding. If you aren't selling something for more than it costs you to make (or deliver, in the case of services), you're not going to have anywhere to sit when the music stops.
I remember thinking Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes was too good to be true from the very first time I read about it, no lie. Was it really plausible that this young woman could come up with an idea that the whole medical industry had missed? I can't quite articulate why, but it just didn't seem like medicine would be ripe for disruption in the same way as other industries that we've seen turned upside down. It takes decades for advances in cancer etc. Had Theranos really managed to stumble on something the entrenched players had missed? Such a strange story, so much money apparently squandered, and yet the zombie still stumbles on. How long before it's finally put out of its misery?!
To my disgust, the biggest thing most people seem to take away from it is "Yup, that's what happens when a woman is in charge of a business."
I'm a woman. I am fine with her burning. But, geez, I hate the idea that there is lava-like splash back spattering all other women in the world who are trying to be taken seriously.
I think when this broke, her connection to Hillary and the Clinton Foundation kept being played. Also during that same week, news broke that Marissa Mayer hid the huge yahoo data breech from users for years and purposefully didn't take ethical actions addresssing known vulnerabilities. These are three of the most powerful self made women all of whom were heavily publicized for years. The anti-Clinton sentiment along with valid criticism against Holmes and Mayer very well could have burgeoned into an anti-women sentiment.
As for the sexism, I felt like it was more of a backlash against the unrelenting positive press Holmes received for years, right or not partly due to her gender. Every time someone commented on why they thought something was wrong with Theranos they were drowned out by voices telling them to stop being sexist and you want her to fail due to her gender. Justified or not, plenty were happy to see her fail after all the praise she had recieved and I am not surprised at all if some of the blowback was sexist.
That being said, the majority of the discussion was anti-Theranos though I do agree with you there were a fair bit of anti-woman backlash though like I said much of it I feel was prompted by the positive praise she received.
At what point does positive press become "unrelenting"?
This is just stupid.
Are you saying that Theranos was over-hyped?
If that's what you mean then just say it.
This is really survivor bias talking. If something actually succeeds at delivering the moon, then there's no unrelenting positive press. There was an accurate depiction of what was going on. It's only in hindsight that you can call it hype or unrelenting.
And the schadenfreude is doubletime now because not only did the hype fail, but she was also a woman.
i have never seen this feeling expressed, her gender has never come into any criticism I have read of Theranos, it is clearly focussed on the failure of the technology, the compartmentalisation of information and their attempts to fill the board with people who can further their business contracts rather than their expertise in medical technology.
And, yet, her catastrophe and the fact that it is founded by a woman gets vastly more press than any female successes.
So, one must wonder why that is. And my feeling is that it is a form of sexism and the subtext is "See, this is why you shouldn't put a woman in charge."
Also, at this point, there are six comments refuting what I said. Why is that? If I am so wrong, crazy and stupid, why do so very many people need to step up and inform me of my error? <-- Methinks thou doth protest too much.
Her success also got more press than anyone else, males included. She was a darling of the media for a long time. Here's her gracing the cover of Fortune magazine, with some puff piece inside: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CF09f1LVEAAG-oL.jpg
Also, "Silicon Valley unicorn is essentially a fraud" is inherently more interesting (in a click-bait / gossipy kind of way), then just a random success story. Rajat Gupta is one of the few Goldman Sachs partners I'm aware of, and it's because he went to jail.
"If I am so wrong, crazy and stupid, why do so very many people need to step up and inform me of my error?"
You're putting words into peoples' mouths - no one has called you crazy or stupid.
In fact, most people are not even saying you are wrong, hence that they are prefacing their responses with "Really?" or "Interesting..." because their experiences have been different.
I think a large part of the initial hype and optimism about Theranos was that its founder was female. People were excited to have a female Steve Jobs type figure, and saw her as an inspiration. I think those same people are now disappointed. But personally I haven't seen anyone blaming her femininity for this happening. There's certainly plenty of instances of men doing this. To the extent that her gender has any fault in this, its in creating an additional layer of premature hype/attention around her company.
But, geez, I hate the idea that there is lava-like splash back spattering all other women in the world who are trying to be taken seriously.
Why is this such a terrible thing to express that so many people need to come down on me for feeling this way? If you were, say, a black guy concerned about some black guy getting enormous bad press and how that impacts blacks, would that merit this kind of dismissive pile on and massive downvoting?
And if it did, would you think it only proved your point that racism and bad press is a real concern?
And I apologize for aiming this at you. I am doing so because you seem to have the most evenhanded reply here so far. So it isn't intended to be ugly to you per se.
> Why is this such a terrible thing to express that so many people need to come down on me for feeling this way? If you were, say, a black guy concerned about some black guy getting enormous bad press and how that impacts blacks, would that merit this kind of dismissive pile on and massive downvoting?
I'm not sure exactly how to respond to that. I'm slightly confused I guess as to why you feel people are coming down on you or dismissing you. To me, HN is a place where we all discuss our ideas about things and try to achieve a sort of collective consensus about the world. We certainly don't (and shouldn't!) all agree about everything, but we expose our ideas to one another in an attempt to improve our collective comprehension of the world around us.
When I respond to a comment like yours, i'm not (usually) intending to attack it or tear it down - at least not in an aggressive way. I thought your point of view was interesting and worth responding to with my own. By this mechanism of back and forth, ideally we'd come to a shared understanding of what's happening in this situation. I find that process to be enjoyable and enlightening, which is why I responded to your comment.
> And if it did, would you think it only proved your point that racism and bad press is a real concern?
I think sexism is absolutely real and is absolutely a real concern. It's just that I have not perceived sexism in the response to this particular situation. However, part of my reason for replying to your comment was to try to better understand why it is that you do perceive it that way. There may be some article or set of comments you've seen that I have not that might change my view. Or maybe we simply saw the same things and interpreted them differently. Either way, i'm curious to understand that divergence, and ultimately to change my own opinion if it needs changing.
You can't just decide to put reprehensible words in someones mouth and accuse them of bad behavior based on what you (wrongly) assume is in their head. I think you would protest if someone did that to you, no?
Also, nobody called you crazy or stupid. Telling someone that they are wrong is not telling them that they are crazy or stupid.
Why is it that you cannot simply be wrong on one particular comment, rather than be wrong, vitriolic, hysterical, ovsersensitive, and incapable of any valid point?
You're imposing a false dichotomy here. Being wrong doesn't include all of these offensive insults for anybody else. Why is it different for you?
If I say you are racist, and 10 people tell me I'm wrong and that nothing you said is racist, by your logic that means you are racist, because why else would so many people say I'm wrong? If I'm so wrong, crazy, and stupid I mean.
Interesting, because most of the comments I've heard from friends and relatives is "Snake Oil seller updated for Silicon Valley". Looks has been brought up, but that goes both ways as you don't find many hucksters who are on the ugly side regardless of gender.
True. Zuck, Page-Brin, Evan Spiegel all are pretty good looking. PG once said , "I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg" (though he claims it was a joke)[1]. I think good looking people have a natural advantage when it comes to persuading VCs or getting the media interested in their companies.
Eh, there's plenty of ugly looking founders out there (Certainly circa 1980's Bill Gates was no ones idea of a cover-model).
Plus I suspect there's a confounding factor in there. Here's a picture of Musk and Thiel[1] around the time Paypal was started. Its pretty clear that personal trainers, chefs, tailored clothing and whatever the hell treatment Musk got for his hair can go along way to making successful people better looking than they were when they first started earning the big bucks.
I don't mean to rag on him, but I don't think Zuckerberg is generally viewed as good looking. I also think you are likely misinterpreting PG's quote; I'm guessing he meant that he has a heuristic that anyone Zuck-like (vs. good looking) will be successful.
I would love to find the person that doesn't think being "good looking" for the current standard is an advantage. Heck, Hollywood does a TV show about a person who is "Ugly" and even the ugly person is amazing looking.
Being taller is an advantage. Never mind the articles that crop up about people having plastic surgery to look younger so they have a better shot at being a CEO.
Height and looks are such an advantage. It's interesting because I actually notice myself being affected by their looks or their height and even then I'm likely not able to completely separate out this effect.
There where two major signs that the company was full of it. First advertising a mostly Business to Business product like blood testing. Second, there have been years of research into getting pinprick glucose testing to work and that's known to have poor accuracy. Doing this accurately for a wide range of tests fails the product smell test.
Now, a lot of people feel validated that it was snake oil so yea they will dump on the company, but IMO it has little to do with the founder. It's their board that I found really suspicious.
I have literally never seen that sentiment in a single post here (maybe it's different in person walking the streets somewhere?), and I'm a pretty hopeless HN addict who's read at least 10+ Theranos threads here and hundreds of posts.
But if you say you've encountered it, I'm inclined to believe you. Which websites do you see this sentiment in? HN? Reddit? FB comments? WSJ comments? Or do you see it in the workplace?
I don't think anyone sane would say Theranos problem was that the CEO was a woman. I feel like men are much more likely to pull off this kind of fraud than women, but all genders are equally capable.
Really? I have discussed Theranos with a lot of people, both on HN and elsewhere, and nobody ever referred to her gender. Not as if there's any dearth of unethical male executives. Fraud is an equal opportunity employer.
I don't know why the rest of YC is downvoting and claiming this isn't the case. If you search previous Theranos threads, you will find questionable comments extrapolating a blanket view on women in tech.
So it happened? I mean geez, "welcome to the internet," but are any of them credible? It seems just as unfair to extrapolate a blanket view on commentary about Theranos if it's just random shitposters.
Well I just find it hypocritical that the mods would censor dubious and subjective criteria for what's considered unsubstantial a.k.a. whoever the HN elite circles dislike or feels like a threat to their narrative.
There are two mods on HN: 'dang and 'sctb. It's not clear to me if you're referring to the two of them in particular or using mod in a more general sense to refer to anyone who is voting or flagging. If the latter, I'd recommend not using the term mod this way on HN. If the former and you believe you have legitimate concerns about their activity (which they're quite open about), I recommend contacting them via the Contact link in the footer and raising the issues you see. In my experience they're very forthcoming.
In my experience, people often have a (completely understandable and human) selective view of downvoting and flagging activity. There's a wide variety of opinions and perspectives on HN and I've seen all of them downvoted or flagged at one time or another, just as I've seen commenters of all persuasions be civil, well-reasoned, and, unfortunately, egregiously trollish and ranty.
No problem. As someone who is a firm believer in social equality across gender, orientation, race, culture and religious identity., it irks to me see the subtle and cleverly veiled micro-aggressions that women face in this environment where logic regardless of it's merit dominates all else, even empathy.
It's also the result of being around highly technocentric where we've erroneously optimized for logic as the driver in all debates. Unfortunately, dialectics aren't very popular.
For example, I regularly see transphobic statements that simply go undownvoted/unflagged on HN. I was even downvoted for adding Chelsea Manning, a transgender whistleblower, had full rights to be the correct gender because it was a human right.
Ever since Trump got elected, I find HN picked up a bit of intolerance.
I'm sorry this is getting downvoted so heavily, but there's a legitimate point here about the way things are talked about here. When Uber breaks the law and does really bad things and endangers people's lives, it's questionable at best. It's fighting outdated regulations that haven't kept up with the times, artificial monopoly busting, etc.
Theranos tries to apply the same kinds of tactics, and people are literally calling for Holmes to go to jail.
If you don't think there's a gender variable about how this is reported and perceived, you're nuts.
Most of you in this thread are approaching this the same way my ancient dad talks about women getting involved in the war effort during WW2.
Are women able to be as good at being men as men are? No? Then they have no place in x.
The conversation typically ends there because we have all these set phrases that we use to protect ourselves from our biases. "Decisions are decisions. Doesn't matter who makes them." Yeah right. It does matter who makes them, fellas. Marissa Mayer eliminates work from home at yahoo. The world freaks out. Jeff Bezos does the same thing at amazon: he's smart. This is good for the culture.
Or people say, "Code doesn't care who you are. It's either good or it's not. Doesn't matter who wrote it." Which is also bullshit because whether or not it compiles is the bare minimum for getting code into a review to begin with. It's everything after it compiles that's subjective.
The problem here is the implicit standard we have ingrained in us. When we interview a guy, it makes sense. Are you as good at being me as I am? Yes? Great. Hired.
The issue should be obvious by now, but I'll make clear: if you only hire people exactly like you, you only get products that are exactly like what you want.
Diversity in the workplace isn't about diversity because it's fair. It's because we need it to produce real products that people want to use. It's because being a man in the world isn't the only thing worth doing, and we need to have our minds changed and our perspectives altered some times.
We are refusing to value anything different from ourselves. Which stupid. The idea that any of us really know it all is really fucked in the head.
I currently work at a company with a female CEO. She makes different decisions and places priorities than any male I've ever met would.
And I could not be happier. It's totally different from any job I've ever had in the tech world, and it's fantastic.
you people downvoting the thread need to grow up and take a closer look at yourselves and your lives. You are a big part of the problem with gender and racial bias in our industry.
>Theranos tries to apply the same kinds of tactics, and people are literally calling for Holmes to go to jail.
The difference is Holmes was endangering people's health and lives.
<Marissa Mayer eliminates work from home at yahoo. The world freaks out. Jeff Bezos does the same thing at amazon: he's smart. This is good for the culture.
Didn't Mayer build a nursery next to her office?
>you people downvoting the thread need to grow up and take a closer look at yourselves and your lives. You are a big part of the problem with gender and racial bias in our industry.
Seriously? Calling out people as sexist when it's not there doesn't help.
Uber putting unlicensed self-driven cars that run stop lights puts people in danger. Has Theranos falsified tests that people need to survive? I don't think so.
Maybe back up on that endangering people's lives, or--if I'm wrong about Theranos--at least place them as equals.
Does it matter that Mayer built a nursery? I can't see how that's not a total non sequitur.
Calling out latent sexism where people think they are being completely normal--because sexism is completely normalized in the tech community right now is exactly what I will keep doing.
I disagree with your takeaway, but I agree with the point that much of the talk about Theranos is really about gender.
That company just doesn't get covered without people talking about how Elizabeth Holmes is, in fact, a woman, and how she tries to channel a Steve Jobs persona, and how it's not working.
If Travis Kaladick or whatever his name is were running the company, the narrative would be very different.
I don't know how or if there is splashback against women trying to be taken seriously. But if there is, I wish you the best.
How would the narrative be different? Travis Kalanick has been absolutely shit on by the press, and the HN crowd in general, and what he has done is arguably much less egregious than what Elizabeth Holmes has done.
The press is creaming their pants over the Uber scandals for the same reason they creamed their collective pants over Trump. It gets clicks. But the coverage for Uber is mostly positive in sentiment.
The stories about sexism at Uber are couched in the overall story about a great company doing great things, led by a great leader, and this is a setback that needs to be dealt with.
Look at any of the recent stories about Theranos. It's a bad company doing bad things, and Holmes is probably a criminal.
And if you don't think that irresponsibly deploying unlicensed driverless cars is as bad as outsourcing your tests because you aren't quite there yet with your technology, I beg you to reconsider.
One of those is worse than the other. To my knowledge so far, Holmes is not responsible for acts that genuinely put people's lives in danger. Uber is.
You think a glorified taxi company has put more peoples' lives in danger than a company that knowingly sold, deployed, and signed off on an health instrument and lab work that simply did not work?
An instrument and lab work that people relied on to accurately assess the contents of their blood?
An instrument and lab work that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said "did not comply with certificate requirements and performance standards"
and deemed a:
"immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety"
The reason that the stories about Theranos are about a "bad company doing bad things and Holmes is probably a criminal" is because they are exactly that!
Uber is a taxi company that most people enjoy using, has not fraudulently screwed people over, has at least on a surface level removed a level of racism (my roommate no longer has to ask me to flag a cab down for him btw), and can be linked to a reduction in drunk driving. Yes, their CEO is a douche, and they have a horrible company culture, but they are not systemically screwing people over like Theranos was.
One of the differences is that men (as a group) get vastly more positive press about actual accomplishments. One insidious form of sexism, racism etc is the degree to which we mostly talk about certain groups when there is something negative to say.
"If Travis Kaladick or whatever his name is were running the company, the narrative would be very different."
Now, given that Uber and Travis have been disparaged by both the press and HN on a regular basis, how would the narrative be different if he was running Theranos?
Do you actually believe that if Travis was in Elizabeth's shoes, we would speak more positively about the general situation?
I don't see how that's true, given that we speak very negatively about him already, and what he has done (behaved like a douche, promoted a bad culture) is, arguably, less egregious than what she has done (committed outright fraud, stolen investors money, possibly killed or at very least jeopardized peoples' health).
One of the differences is that men (as a group) get vastly more positive press about actual accomplishments
Well, of course they do - there are many more men founding startups overall, so they'll get most of the press even if the publications were actually more likely to report women's accomplishments.
With less than 20% of startups having one woman founder (Crunchbase, 2014), what do you expect the press to do?
White males commit more murders than black males. Black males typically do more time on average.
It is a little like that. It isn't proportional.
Jessica Livingston is one of the two people who dreamed up YC. Paul Graham soon wrangled his previous confounders in on it. I hear vastly more about the three male cofounders than I do about the one female cofounder. Nor do I ever here her get credit proportional to PG. He was the front man. He was replaced by Sam Altman. Sam now gets most of the press.
Maybe this is Jessica being savvy and sidestepping the sexist bs in the world by trying to avoid press. Maybe she is way smarter than me. But I think YC is probably more "her baby" than Paul's or Sam's, yet I never see it framed that way.
If women are 2% of founders and get 1% of the credit, they are still being shorted.
