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Medicine Biotech

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Seeks Investors For New Company (vanityfair.com) 108

There's a new surprise from the Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou (author of the Theranos expose Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup). An anonymous reader shares Vanity Fair's summary of their newest podcast interview: According to Carreyrou, Holmes is currently waltzing around Silicon Valley, meeting with investors, hoping to raise money for an entirely new start-up idea. (My mouth dropped when I heard that, too....) I'm sure she will somehow succeed in convincing someone to hand over millions of dollars, especially if venture capitalists like Tim Draper (an early Theranos investor) are still out there saying the stories by Carreyrou were wrong (they weren't), and that Holmes was on the precipice of saving the world (she wasn't) before the media came after her.

You would think that seeing Holmes's duplicity wrapped up in a neat bow in Carreyrou's book, and in the S.E.C. settlement -- which, incidentally, mentions the term "fraud" seven times -- would force Silicon Valley to perform its own due diligence, and question whether the way C.E.O.s, investors, and the media interact should be re-evaluated. But alas, the tech world doesn't see Theranos as a tech company, but rather a biotech outlier... Of course, there is still a major criminal investigation underway by the F.B.I., one that could end with Holmes behind bars.

Carreyou tells another interviewer that Theranos "is a cautionary tale about the hubris in the Valley... there's certainly a lot of innovation there, but there's also an unbelievable amount of arrogance and pretending."
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Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Seeks Investors For New Company

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  • by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Saturday June 09, 2018 @11:37AM (#56755616)

    Why is it that every time I see "Theranos", I read it first as "Thanatos"?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I guess this is why the settlement mentions the term Freud seven times.

    • Why is it that every time I see "Theranos", I read it first as "Thanatos"?

      The first and last letters are the same, the length is the same, the "era" and "ana" are visually similar, and people don't phonetically read things that are familiar to them. You either read Greek mythology or Marvel comics for years before someone came up with a name that is so similar,it practically had to be based on Thanatos.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Why would anyone trust that person with any money whatsoever? Explain please?

  • Some people... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MiniMike ( 234881 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @11:40AM (#56755634)

    The phrase "A fool and their money are soon parted" is supposed to be a warning, not a lifestyle goal.

    • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @12:24PM (#56755834)

      The phrase "A fool and their money are soon parted" is supposed to be a warning, not a lifestyle goal.

      But you have to also consider "There's a sucker born every minute"

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Of course, this works because the fool thinks he's more clever than the fools that came before him.

      Fools aren't put off by a sharp dealer's history of path ethical lapses because they imagine that attitude being put to work for their benefit... this time.

    • "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

      Anyone who invests in her this time around only has themselves to blame.

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @11:43AM (#56755654)

    What she did was fraud, pure and simple.
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t... [cbsnews.com]

  • Why the hell not? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @11:49AM (#56755676) Journal

    It's 2018 and there's no reason why someone who has committed fraud shouldn't believe they deserve to have more people give them money.

    Crimes don't matter, fraud doesn't matter, lies don't matter. We're living in the post-truth age.

    • by chthon ( 580889 )

      This is of the same order as preachers who ask their flock to give money to buy a new airplane.

    • The sad thing is, the people she is going to 'get' this way of doing business, and probably do worse.
    • Crimes don't matter, fraud doesn't matter, lies don't matter. We're living in the post-truth age.

      Especially since Holmes was a big Clinton supporter, even going so far as to host a Hillary 2016 fundraiser at her company Theranos headquarters in Silicon Valley.

      http://fm.cnbc.com/application... [cnbc.com]

      I don't know that Holmes was particularly liberal or progressive, she probably just figured if she became a well-connected Democrat insider like her buddy Hillary Clinton, she would be safe from prosecution for whatever crimes she committed. And she's probably right.

      • Especially since Holmes was a big Clinton supporter

        So was Donald Trump.

        http://time.com/3962799/donald... [time.com]

        https://www.politico.com/story... [politico.com]

        https://www.vanityfair.com/sty... [vanityfair.com]

        • “I’m a businessman. I contribute to everybody,” Trump said. “When I needed Hillary, she was there. If I say ‘go to my wedding,’ they go to my wedding.”

          No more needs to be said about Trump's glowing statements of the Clintons. He knew they were for sale, and having powerful politicians in your pocket via legal payments is a great thing for a businessman. Trump loved the Clintons as long as they did what his money demanded. This is just proof of how corrupt the Clintons really are...

          • Trump loved the Clintons as long as they did what his money demanded. This is just proof of how corrupt the Clintons really are...

            A Trump-lover calling someone corrupt? Your tongue should swell up, turn black and fall right out your mouth.

    • It's 2018 and there's no reason why someone who has committed fraud shouldn't believe they deserve to have more people give them money.

      If you're not doing your due diligence, then you shouldn't be an investor. Part of that due diligence means looking into the entire executive team's background (google makes this easy, unless you live in places without free speech, or pretend free speech, like Europe.) If you see ANY indication of fraud among any of them, then walk away. Only the individual investors decide whether somebody gets money.

  • by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @11:51AM (#56755680)

    Interesting company she keeps. [recode.net]. It's not just the Clintons, but also other Washington power brokers, Republicans and Democrats alike. These politicians publicly denounce crony capitalism and nepotism, and privately are huge beneficiaries and promoters of it. And you can bet that every single one of her board members and political cronies made off like a bandit in her fraud. When these politicians tell you that the system is rigged, they are speaking the truth; what they don't tell you is that the very people who claim they want to fix it are the ones who are rigging it in the first place.

    And pollsters wonder why voters reject both the Democratic and the Republican establishment.

  • Anyone who gives so much as a cent to this criminal deserves to lose it. And yes, I will laugh at them. Heartily.
    • Anyone who gives so much as a cent to this criminal deserves to lose it.

      Fair enough, but unfortunately the "post-truth era" mentality PopeRatzo mentioned in his post isn't limited to investment. And you can't say "anyone who gives so much as a vote to this criminal deserves to lose it", because when this happens we all lose.

  • With all that we know about what went on there's no way this woman doesn't serve time, no matter how many well-connected people she knows.
    • If she's being charged with federal crimes, how much is she going to have to pay Trump for her pardon? Maybe that's why she's looking for funding.
  • Remember when we used to have categories? Real categories and not stuff like Medicine and Chemistry which are industries, not proper categories like we had in the old days.
  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 09, 2018 @01:59PM (#56756274)
    it's so funny to see them throwing their weight around right out in the open. They used to at least be discrete about it. I can't blame them though. The working class seems to have given up all pretense of holding them accountable. At least so long as they don't look like those "coastal elites" (read: scientists).

    Seriously, these guys were faking blood tests. People could have died. They should be in jail.
  • I'm sure she will somehow succeed in convincing someone to hand over millions of dollars, especially if venture capitalists like Tim Draper (an early Theranos investor) are still out there saying the stories by Carreyrou were wrong (they weren't), and that Holmes was on the precipice of saving the world (she wasn't) before the media came after her.

    People don't like (or want) to admit were/are wrong -- themselves or about others. example [politifact.com]

  • How come this scammer is yet to be prosecuted?
  • I thought this was really good coverage of Holmes and the Theranos story: Here [youtube.com], Nick Gillespie interviews John Carreyrou, the investigative reporter from the Wall Street Journal who broke the Theranos scam story and has a new book out about it called Bad Blood [amazon.com].

  • There's a sucker born every minute
  • ... of a public company (SEC statement [sec.gov], but I guess that doesn't mean she can't wander around and raise money for anything else as a private company representative...?

  • #theranosdemandsyourinvestment
  • Sure, I've got a million or two I can afford to throw away on this con-woman's pie-in-the-sky bullshit.

The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives. -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

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