I doubt we disagree strongly. Also, all I know about this story I know from Carreyrou's book; you might know a lot more than me. Unsurprisingly given my source, I have the impression that Theranos might have survived the FDA stuff, had the WSJ debacle not occurred.
But if it wasn’t consumer testing, then I don’t think it would have been news, and the fallout wouldn’t have been as big.
So, we possibly agree. The fact that they started doing consumer testing with a device that didn’t work made this news.
However, similar kinds of lies/misinformation gets told to investors in biotech startups all the time. That they actually did consumer testing is what made this news.
How does the start of consumer testing mesh with the investment timeline? Unless testing only started after the last investment was committed, the two are the opposite of unrelated.
But I don’t believe it was quite clear that the consumer testing was a fraud until just before the last round of “investment”.
I put “investment” in quotes because the last 100MUSD was kind of a loan, based by their parent portfolio... so they’ve effectively sold what assets they have.
So yea, consumer testing appears to have been fraudulent, and after that became clear publicly there wasn’t much further investment.
