Problem is that this is only apparent in hindsight. How do you tell apart Theranos and something like Color Labs[techcrunch]? Sometimes it isn't even clear in hindsight. From the outside, both are novel ideas. Both had talented workers working on novel ideas.
I don't know enough/anything about biochemistry so I don't know if the vision Theranos sold was even possible but how do I know that the all public all the time but only to someone physically nearby you photo sharing idea (of color) would work either?
As a lay person, it might be difficult. As a well funded VC, I'd expect due diligence beyond the level of 'let me see your balance sheet' before investing millions of dollars.
One particular item of fraud was the claim that their machines were on helicopters in US-led war zones. Okay, show me the contract details for this, or some kind of evidence this is actually true, and then I will verify with the counter party to ensure it's not completely bologna.
Not to mention the entire concept of 'nano-tainers' and doing blood work with a single drop of blood seemed physically improbable, and literal Nobel level scientists would need to be involved, people with decades of experience in the field, not a random college dropout.
> all public all the time but only to someone physically nearby you photo sharing idea (of color) would work either?
I can't see the appeal of that whatsoever. At least with instagram or whatever you can have followers, and then monetize those followers one way or another. On the flip side, it might be an interesting avenue for prostitutes and drug dealers to advertise their services discretely in public places.
> As a well funded VC, I'd expect due diligence beyond the level of 'let me see your balance sheet' before investing millions of dollars.
Yes. At the time it was not hard to find people who did have expertise in the relevant fields expressing skepticism. It definitely wouldn’t have been hard to kick $50k in consulting work to some postdoc to act as your advisor when the investment is orders of magnitude greater.
I don't think that Theranos had a lot of traditional VC funding. Tim Draper was the first investor and apparently neighbors with Elizabeth Holmes and pretty much the only VC I saw on the list. But he was the first investor so there may have been nothing to do due diligence on at that point. But then she got money from the DeVos family, the Waltons, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Oppenheimers, and several other huge names.
Proof that lots of money does not necessarily make one a "sophisticated" investor. But maybe the $50m-$100m that each of those investors put in wasn't enough to be worth their time to do any due diligence.
I don't know enough/anything about biochemistry so I don't know if the vision Theranos sold was even possible but how do I know that the all public all the time but only to someone physically nearby you photo sharing idea (of color) would work either?
How do you decide who to back?
[Techcrunch] https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/color-looks-to-reinvent-so...
Edit: another post on HN: what is "growth hacking"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582002