It doesn't feel that much more skeptical than typical HN threads about new companies. And skepticism/confusion was going to be more prevalent given how few HN users (relatively speaking) are in the health field.
Funny enough, if you scroll down far enough, you run into a comment that sounds like it came from a prophet. Or someone experienced in the field:
> The company is all hot air. They have a board full of retired military figure heads that have no experience in medical devices or retail services. Additionally, they do not have any products to show. Look at their patents. They are all very general and broad. There has been NO FDA CLEARANCE for anything they are doing, which raises legal questions. Speaking of legal, search for lawsuits they are involved in. Their core technology is not even theirs. They stole it from someone else.
That the board was heavy DC/military was well-known, or at least public. But I don't think it was well known that Theranos was heavily reliant on using other technology.
Sadly, that Theranos critique came from a one-use throwaway account. So likely an insider (or jealous competitor)?
Filing 'broad' patents is pretty typical. I see that they have 119 patents under the Theranos name. To think of all the work and cooperation that obtaining those patents required, is pretty mind-boggling if in fact it was all bogus. If this is the massive fraud that is being alleged by journalists (and the SEC), then it would require a massive conspiracy to effectuate it. To only hold the CEO accountable in a case like this seems to be lacking resolution. There are other bad actors here that need to be held accountable, much as in Enron. I'm sure many (guilty & innocent) employees are paying a financial price but it appears that more could be done on the consequences side of things.
I'm not there comment you referene, but for around three or four years I have been using theranos' board as a teaching tool in undergraduate entrepreneurship courses.
Once you've got a company with no product and you're committing fraud to stay alive, what would the point be of staffing a board to tell you to kill yourself? What would you get out of that?
Do you think Theranos just didn't realize anything was wrong because the board didn't tell them?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349349
It doesn't feel that much more skeptical than typical HN threads about new companies. And skepticism/confusion was going to be more prevalent given how few HN users (relatively speaking) are in the health field.
Funny enough, if you scroll down far enough, you run into a comment that sounds like it came from a prophet. Or someone experienced in the field:
> The company is all hot air. They have a board full of retired military figure heads that have no experience in medical devices or retail services. Additionally, they do not have any products to show. Look at their patents. They are all very general and broad. There has been NO FDA CLEARANCE for anything they are doing, which raises legal questions. Speaking of legal, search for lawsuits they are involved in. Their core technology is not even theirs. They stole it from someone else.
That the board was heavy DC/military was well-known, or at least public. But I don't think it was well known that Theranos was heavily reliant on using other technology.
Sadly, that Theranos critique came from a one-use throwaway account. So likely an insider (or jealous competitor)?