
To See the Elephant - tosh
http://kylerussell.today/blog/2019/3/15
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smacktoward
Side note: the Gold Rush idiom of "seeing the elephant" had spread nationally
by the 1860s; Civil War soldiers on both sides used the phrase to mean they
had direct combat experience. A veteran who had been shot at and lived would
be said to have "seen the elephant."

 _> What blew my mind watching the Theranos doc was that Holmes would have had
an easier time of it by just doing the hard work of actually solving the
problems in her way._

This assumes the problems are _actually solvable,_ though, which becomes less
likely the grander the vision gets. And when you're chasing the types of
investors Theranos was, there's little incentive for you to keep your vision
moored to reality; these investors are all looking for Big Hits, so the more
anchored your pitch is to nitty-gritty things like what is actually possible,
the less appealing it will be to them.

~~~
maxxxxx
Exactly. Reducing the amount of blood needed would have been useful but
Theranos had no special knowledge for achieving this so either they had to
admit that that or start lying.

It's like starting a company to develop a gas engine that achieves 95% fuel
efficiency. Great idea but without knowing how to do that it's useless.

