re: The Inventor - Hbo Documentary

Just watched the whole thing.

God, what a sociopath.

a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

Her best friends in H.S. were books, doesn't blink and doesn't give a frick she's screwing over people.

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doesn't blink

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There is a clip where she's asked a kind of damning question in some interview and she started blinking morse code at about 240 hertz. She basically bought into her own fabricated persona and it devoured her.

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What was the deal with the guy who had a beard covering left side of his face but nothing on the right ? If you could only grow half a beard wouldn't you be better off with no beard at all?

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Can’t believe you were the first to mention it.
What was that economists beard about. It was weird. I thought it was lighting at first.

I don't know if it was all just an act.

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It’s all a big con

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Plus you have to be unhinged to believe and try and pull off such a big con.

No rational person goes forward soliciting the money and advice of some of the most powerful people in the country on a bullshite idea unless they are sociopaths.

I mean you don't go and try to sell a bridge in Brooklyn to Warren Buffett unles you're a crazy person.

You HAVE to be crazy to fake it at such a large-scale ridiculous and insane level...and think you're going to get away with it just because you are aping Steve Jobs or whatnot.



This is only a con that crazy people pull off because they have mental issues and push it to boundaries no rational person would.

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It's unbelievable to think no one asked to see the inner workings of the box. As one engineer said, it defied the laws of physics to think so much hardware could fit into that small space, and still, no one questioned how they did it. Amazing to see how willingly gullible people can be if they think they're going to get rich of a scheme.

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It was pretty telling that no one in biotech (outside of the people working for Theranos) was apparently a believer.

For people outside of the industry you can understand the ignorance. What is bewildering is how far they got - including to the actual use of their product by members of the general public without being properly vetted. Many of us don't like government obstruction in the form of obtrusive regulations - but I am appalled that they could release a product which claimed to do hundreds of diagnostics when they had only received FDA approval for the herpes simplex testing (apparently the only diagnostic for which they actually had a CLIA waiver).

This really is a fascinating story because there are so many elements to how fraud developed and was perpetuated. Members of the media were obviously eager to treat her as a new Steve Jobs because the absence of a female at the helm of a Silicon Valley unicorn was a perceived problem. The members of her board were highly prestigious, but possibly now senile, men who had almost no ability to perform due diligence as board members but commanded too much respect to be easily questioned (Schultz, Frist, Perry, Kissinger, Nunn). EH is being made out to be a pure quack and sociopath but she is obviously highly intelligent and has an ability to manipulate people around her at a level that very few people enjoy. The question of whether she deliberately targeted older men that she could manipulate more easily is also intriguing.

It also seems likely to me that she viewed the medical device field as being similar to the social media and software fields - but failed to appreciate (or at least act on her understanding of) the difference between the two. It is more than a beta test annoyance if someone receives bad medical test data that results in either failure to be treated or inappropriate disease treatment when they were not ill.

Barring the presence of undisclosed recordings or diaries it will be very hard to parse out EH's intent or the intent of some of the other major actors who seem to have been involved in outright fraud. That doesn't strike me as entirely trivial - but whatever the intent I do think she and some others should serve time in prison and forfeit all economic gains from their fraudulent behaviors.

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A Tale of Two CEOs: Elizabeth Holmes and Martin Shkreli

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Martin Shkreli is an epitome of what is wrong in America. He is the picture perfect profile of a Public Enemy. He joins the long line of criminals who rob people in the name of market economy. He is made of the same substance as Bernie Madoff and other crooks.

Elizabeth Holmes represents the tradition of great scientists and leaders. Elizabeth Holmes is an inventor, entrepreneur, business executive and a compassionate women, who is challenging the way business is done. She sets a great example for younger generation that you can do what you are passionate about and become wealthy too.

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Huffpost

Just saw the doc. Holmes is so creepy with the bizarro voice and unblinking eyes. I have a good BS detector, there's no way I could have worked in that company. There were a lot of competent people who knew better but just wanted to believe in the project so badly that they ignored their own common sense.

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The members of her board were highly prestigious, but possibly now senile, men who had almost no ability to perform due diligence as board members but commanded too much respect to be easily questioned (Schultz, Frist, Perry, Kissinger, Nunn).

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When the controversy first became public, I looked at the list of the board of directors, and my first thought was that she assembled this group purely for the political connections (e.g., for help getting by regulators, that sort of thing). Later came the idea that she was eyeing DOD contracts. But no CEOs and no clinical experts on the board. The board made no sense to me and I figured that should have been a red flag for investors. But everyone wanted to believe so badly that this would work and they would make unbelievable amounts of money. Greed makes people lose their minds.

And I'm disappointed George Schultz sided with Holmes over his own grandson, even when Tyler was under legal threat. If George didn't understand the information Tyler had and couldn't trust his judgment because of his youth, he should have found someone he could trust to evaluate the info. But he just wanted to believe in Holmes. It was a freaking cult, like the cult of Steve Jobs.

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Watching the doc I can't understand how she got any funding to begin with?? There are people who have actual working prototypes of products that have trouble getting funding.

Other than maybe reducing costs, I don't really see the problem they are solving for either. Why would people go to Walgreens to get blood work done vs doing at their PCP.

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Okay, so I have to strongly disagree with this. The idea was brilliant. Just not feasible.

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The story is fricking nuts. Holmes is a complete sociopath.

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Aren't most CEOs