[headmelted]

I would expect the truth exists somewhere in between. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that:

* Holmes started with the best of intentions

* Theranos raised capital from starry-eyed investors that didn't carry out proper due diligence

* Realization set in early on that it wasn't going to work out

* Theranos got scared as so much of their time and other people's money had been invested

* The questions mounted

* Stalling became outright deception

* The realization of the consequences after the WSJ article became starkly obvious

* Theranos got spooked and doubled-down on covering up out of fear

.. but this is all speculation, and we'll never really know.

It does seem though that this didn't turn into fraud (which by the end it's quite clear it was) until late on.

It's a bit tragic, really. It seems Holmes could have come clean early on and avoided the worst of the fallout (but for whatever reason that didn't happen).

[ianstallings]

That part about due diligence is what gets me. How do you sink $700M into a company without going over it all with a fine-toothed comb? Where were the scientists and skeptics for the investors? They fell for the "here's a single customer saying it's good, and here's us in the news" routine. I could understand if this was a seed round for a few million in some software venture, but $700M for healthcare tech? This is incredibly negligent.

[ethbro]

If things working out better are predicated on rising tech stars admitting they're wrong and forgoing the accolades and adulation that accompany the identifier... I can see why things went the way they did.

That said, from a personal perspective, I honestly hope Ms. Holmes is either a sociopath or was actually in the dark about how bad things were (e.g. her direct reports were lying to her).

It seems like it would be a pretty excruciating mental burden to go into work every day for an extended period of time, knowing your company was inevitably failing, and just trying to keep the plates spinning. Ugh.

[tinymollusk]

Madoff said he is happier in prison than he was while fearing his scheme would be discovered. [0]

That doesn't really make me any more sympathetic to his criminal and unethical activities.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-madoff-happiest-ive-been...

[Sangermaine]

Yeah, committing fraud is pretty nerve-wracking. Won't anyone think of the con men?

[ethbro]

Let's not assume the VCs weren't somewhat complicit here. At best through lack of due diligence and thereby messaging their ongoing support for the enterprise.

At worst active or passive concealment because they had a large financial incentive that the fraud remain undiscovered.

Given that Theranos didn't IPO, I have a hard time feeling bad for investors (hopefully) taking a loss on this one.

[Nomentatus]

If you want completeness, there may be another possibility: we know that venture capitalists (who spend other people's money, for the most part) have used their positions to improve their sex lives (#metoo) contrary to the interests of their investors. It's just assumed none of them have ever actually handed over millions of other people's money to hairbrained projects in order to accomplish this. I very much hope that's so. But this is a risk of having too many male (or worse, bro) VC executives.

[subpixel]

Well, that line of thinking opens up a whole other angle of speculation (and of course that's all it is, so I won't detail it) regarding how events may have unfolded in this debacle.

[headmelted]

If the implication in this is that in some way investment was made in exchange for anything "else" from Elizabeth Holmes, then I have to say that I haven't seen any reason to think that and it's offensive to suggest that any kind of sex-for-investment scenario was happening without any basis for believing that.

I may have completely misunderstood what was being suggested here though..

[Nomentatus]

Not sure what you mean by "won't detail". Do you mean "won't include in the list"? Since you've tried to list all the possible speculative causes of this sort of debacle, without committing to any of them... it would surely be odd to omit one because, like the others, it's speculation. But I'm not sure what else you could mean, since no elaboration of the concept is required.

Granted, I've raised an especially unpleasant possibility (as no more than that), especially for consideration going forward; but fraud from other causes is also unpleasant and has to be considered despite being unpleasant and, according to the article, not necessarily an act of commission. To quote: "But the fact that Theranos was a gigantic fraud doesn't quite mean that it committed fraud." You've considered it, nonetheless, and I think that's reasonable - as speculation.