
Theranos Agrees to Pay $4.65M in Arizona Refunds - radnam
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-18/theranos-agrees-to-pay-4-65-million-in-arizona-refunds
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propman
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

~~~
jzebedee
That's John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal's investigative reporting
team. [1]

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/news/author/1282](http://www.wsj.com/news/author/1282)

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RangerScience
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?

Thoughts?

~~~
JimboOmega
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.

~~~
RangerScience
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.

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blizkreeg
How long would this have gone on if not for the investigative piece? Would it
have eventually cost someone their life? That's the scary part.

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martin1975
where's fu*kedcompany.com when you need it...

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Boothroid
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?!

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user5994461
Could we have a summary for people like me who are not familiar with them?

What's the case on Theranos? what did they do and sale? What happened?

~~~
protomyth
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Theranos&sort=byPopularity&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Theranos&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
user5994461
It's clearly evil and bad judging by the title.

Opened two random articles... and they were two WSJ paywalled articles. OMG.

~~~
protomyth
The Wall Street Journal did the initial, in depth reporting.

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Mz
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.

~~~
propman
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.

~~~
ianamartin
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.

