[hjk05]

That sounds like a horrible suggestion when considering the stories of most successful start ups. Look at Theranos, it would have died a quick death like this, but ended up being a hugely successful business right up to the point of collapse. And had someone with the tons money and resources solved the core issue a month before the collapse Theranos would be a gigantic success overall. The one mistake of Theranos was committing outright fraud instead of just doing legal bullshiting and being honest about potential critical failings.

The key to building and idea is to ensuring the resources are there to build it, not to kill it while it’s still in the idea phase. No one ever became the founder of a billion dollar company by being cynical early on.

And sure you might think that you save yourself from “wasting 5 years of your life”. It my experience is that founders who work 5 years on establishing a vc backed company that ultimately fail just walk straight on to another leadership role in another company, and they had a great sallery and job for those five years, so what is really wasted?

[labster]

Oh wow, a Theranos apologist! I can't believe I actually saw one of those in the wild, I'll record it in my logbook.

There's a big difference between "fake it till you make it" and "crime it till you climb it". You can have blind faith in your product, but you can't lie just lie about your business constantly in the hope that maybe one day your lies will be true.

[hjk05]

I’m in no way a Theranos apologist. What they did was evil and crimininal because they pushed far ahead of what any moral startup would do. But they weren’t evil solely because their leadership had blind faith in their product. And for all intents and purposes emulating everything at Theranos that made them Successfull, minus the criminal parts, is a good idea. No one was saying “I wouldn’t invest in them, they believe touch in their product” back in the early phases when they where booming forwards. At the same time, if you skip the blind faith, Bill Gates would just be a regular boring rich kid today, never having bought DOS after already sellling IBM, he would have just told them cynically that he weren’t even sure if it would work out and they would have passed him up.

[rhizome]

>Look at Theranos, it would have died a quick death like this, but ended up being a hugely successful business right up to the point of collapse.

Your mistake is in conflating "successful business" and "fraud." It was not a successful business until the collapse, it was a successful fraud. In this way, I believe you're promoting a poor ethical standard, one that valorizes crime as long as you get away with it.

[Fricken]

Well, consider the Catholic Church, it's been able to keep the story alive for 1500 years without ever, once, demoing a working product to it's investors. Sometimes people just want something to believe in, and old white guys Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch weren't looking for a product, or an ROI, they were looking for a savior. While Holmes will never unlock the gates of heaven, she demonstrated clearly that she will fight at all costs to keep that dream alive, she made her value proposition and she delivers, she is still fighting.

You can declare that kind of religiosity unethical, but it comes off sounding slightly disingenuous when that kind of religiosity was instrumental in forming the ethical foundations of western civilization.

The traditional religions, of course, aren't super compatible with the modern world and we're moving away from them. Still, people need things to believe in as much as they ever did so it shouldn't be surprising that non-traditional religions such as Musk or Theranos will emerge.

With the most deeply held beliefs it's essential that they can never be proven true, because they'll stop being beliefs and become facts, which don't serve the intended purpose. For Theranos to fulfill it's mission, that blood testing device can never materialize.

For most startups it's about having blind faith that an idea can be turned into a meaningful service or product. With Theranos blind faith is the product, and it's the most meaningful product of all.

[abhinai]

Have you or someone you know successfully ran a company for 5 years on an idea that you/they simply had a blind trust on? My goal is not to insult your intelligence. I merely want to point out that this is the strategy I have seen most experienced entrepreneurs around me use.

[bernardlunn]

Steve Jobs and Apple is a much better example. Any blue ocean idea is easy to shoot down