
Theranos Reaches Settlement with Walgreens - kqr2
https://news.theranos.com/2017/08/01/theranos-reaches-settlement-walgreens/
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taneem
I suspect we are going to see Theranos pivot to becoming a conventional
medical technology company, probably focusing on lab tech for blood work
analysis etc. They are likely to disappear from public consciousness until we
hear about an acquisition by a Siemens type company.

They got here through hype, smoke and mirrors, but they now have the capital,
social network and core organizational processes in place to do this and it is
a rational path to recouping time and $ investments from everyone involved.

However it will be difficult/impossible for this to pivot to happen without
Elizabeth Holmes' resignation.

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jacquesm
There is damaged and there is zombie state. I suspect Theranos is in the
zombie state, too wealthy to fold but it is really no longer alive. Damage you
can recover from Theranos as a brand is so tainted that no other company with
a successful line of medical devices will ever want to be associated with them
for fear of getting contaminated by proximity, and no customers will sign on
for fear of being used as a stooge in the next round of fraud.

Any acquisition of Theranos will be after the book is closed and the assets
are sold off. People working there will likely have a big hole in their
resume's that they'd rather not talk about.

~~~
dbcooper
From John Carreyou on June 22:

[https://twitter.com/JohnCarreyrou/status/877499269191782402](https://twitter.com/JohnCarreyrou/status/877499269191782402)

>Theranos burning $10 mln a month, will have less than $30 mln left after
Walgreens settlement. You do the math...

Liquidating office equipment:

[https://twitter.com/startuplqdtr/status/873385484860313600](https://twitter.com/startuplqdtr/status/873385484860313600)

~~~
mathattack
Is @startuplqdtr a Twitter parody site?

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readhn
Theranos is clearly a failure. 14 years of wasting investors money, 700million
(?) down the drain, nothing to show for it except bad publicity, FBI and FDA
investigations and major compliance issues.

At what point do investors pull the plug / fire CEO and move on?

~~~
readhn
686.3million in 9 rounds (!!) to be exact. this is like a bad soap opera.

they were seeking to raise additional 200million. These VCs are insane.

IF (!!!) this ever worked they would be - 1billion before shipping any
product. Whoever puts anymore money into this should ask for at this point
majority of the equity no questions asked.

~~~
raverbashing
I think Color was worse, no?

(Edit: actually no, they raised "only" 41Mi)

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SomeStupidPoint
So, for someone not following this particularly closely -- what _is_ next for
Theranos?

I know settling with Walgreens was a big goal of theirs, but I don't remember
if that was the end of their legal troubles. Similarly, they mention their
investors, which makes me wonder if they have issues on that front as well.
(eg, did they lie when they sold shares?)

Even after the settlement though, they probably have a huge pile of cash --
and at least some investors are willing to let them try something with it.

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melling
Does their technology actually work, or will it soon? Doesn't their future
depend on shipping what they promised?

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i_am_nomad
That's the problem - there is no technology.

~~~
yourapostasy
If the investors aren't shutting down Theranos, then there is a possibility
their due diligence on Holmes' patents held out hope of patent trolling
someone with deep pockets in the future, or some other similar hope pinned
upon those patents. My limited layman's understanding of their microfluidics-
based claims is they violated currently-known assaying principles. Hope
someone with deeper knowledge about this can pipe in, I've only seen some
rants from claimed clinicians when they first announced way back, with terms
that went way over my head, and they summed up the rant's TL;DR as, if she
really figured it out, she'd be publishing and collecting a Nobel or two, as
she would've upended a century of what we believe is statistically possible.

However, if instead of using their "nanotainer", a fancy name for a very small
blood sample container, some future microfluidics implementation used _in
vivo_ implanted chips, and can build up a sampling profile over time say, and
some of her patents stand smack in the road of that deployment, then they
could recoup some of their money.

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dbcooper
Last time I looked, their patents were vague to the point of being worthless.

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yourapostasy
There were a number of patents assigned this year. Surprisingly many, for a
company in seemingly so much trouble [1]; this display makes it easier to see
the assignment dates [2]. Perhaps this is staying the hand of the investors
for now, and they're performing some independent due diligence.

[1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Theranos&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT)

[2] [http://patents.justia.com/assignee/theranos-
inc](http://patents.justia.com/assignee/theranos-inc)

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saagarjha
Unrelated, but that website had around 100 words of actual article, and a
bunch of unnecessary other information. The date, for example, was repeated
_twice_ , and there was a link to Theranos's website (not to mention a short
"about" paragraph) _on their own website_.

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ncallaway
It's a press release. The expectation is that this will get picked up and
placed into a number of different sources.

They don't expect a particularly high volume of traffic visiting this page
directly.

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jotjotzzz
How are they still in existence?

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readhn
Personal connections of the current CEO. "Old boys club" fell head over heels
for her.

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trendia
"""One of her earliest investors, Timothy Draper, was an old neighbor from
childhood. Another, Don Lucas, was the friend of her father's college
classmate. (Lucas brought on Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison, according to The
Times.)

Holmes' father's family "moved in powerful circles," and he himself is a
longtime public servant who held "a number of senior government positions in
Washington," Abelson and Creswell report. Her mother was a congressional aide.

But despite those Washington connections, The Times report suggests that
Theranos' powerful board — which includes two former senators and two former
Secretaries of State — is at least in large part a credit to Holmes' power of
persuasion.

According to the Times, she met George P. Schultz, Ronald Reagan's Secretary
of State and one of the company's first high-powered board members, at a
conference."""

[http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-
new...](http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-new-york-
times-family-2015-12)

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joshmarinacci
When I first read this I thought it said "Thanos Reaches Settlement with
Walgreens". :)

