Theranos

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• bearish criticism Jason Calacanis

  he is convinced that you know uh from his reporting that Elizabeth Holmes and uh Bwani are sunny president Sunonny Bani the president of Theronos vice chair of the board Elizabeth CEO and chairman of the board chairperson uh they were in cahoots to commit a huge fraud.

• neutral fact_claim Billy Chasen

  Um and in the wake of Theranos failing, very few people have tried to do something incredibly ambitious in that space.

• bullish endorsement Billy Chasen

  I found Elizabeth's mission mission incredibly compelling as I hope you all do. The idea that diagnostics are broken today, they're way too expensive and we want to make it more accessible and cheaper.

• bullish fact_claim Unattributed

  they had contractual obligations with Walgreens to pay them that amount of money. And then when bad press came out, then they defaulted on those obligations and then the business didn't fulfill those revenue obligations. So, then they missed it by a large number, but it wasn't like a made-up number.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  But I think a lot of the things that are kind of most litigated in the press at least and most described uh this is not like the machinations of a woman of a single person. This was hundreds of employees working tirelessly for 16 years to solve a really difficult problem.

• bearish prediction Unattributed

  I think this is going to be Bernie made off and round level fraud that's my belief for a company that wanted to be public putting it in Wall Street terms it now has a difficult story

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  Jean Lis gases which is Monday note.com if you want to read it he went and he did the test and after two failed attempts I'm quoting now to establish Theos account I gained access to my numbers platelets 430 which given his condition is high uh hem toit 44.1 a passing grade but uncomfortably close to the 45% limits and then Stanford hemat olog disagrees platelets 320 no concerns come back in two 3 months hemat critic 41.1 ditto the differences are disquieting theosis numbers are an alarming 34%

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  the Theos numbers have two problems they and I believe inside the journal story they found in one case a potassium level you'd have to be a dead guy to achieve

• bearish criticism Quentin Hardy

  they gave no evidence of this of course

• bearish endorsement Quentin Hardy

  it looks like very systemic work where he looks at a claim he talks to a guy Theos on their website today has a big takedown they say of it and at the end of it say he came in with an agenda it was going to be a hit piece from the start he found what he wanted they gave no evidence of this of course right you know so I would like to really know what they mean by that with some you know a lot of attacks but not a lot of facts and his piece had a lot of facts

• neutral criticism Unattributed

  the Theos team had a series of bizarre rebuttal on Twitter where they were basically calling into question the ethics of the journalist and showing um John McCain giving the thumbs up on the technology

• bearish fact_claim Unattributed

  one in 200 40 tests seem to work

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  this is a complete and utter uh disaster right now the Wall Street Journal which does not um publish investigative pieces lightly and I think the person who um actually wrote the story I'm forgetting his name right now um has a pullitzer under his belt um they basically just broke the company down as a complete fraud basically previous employees obviously are calling them out for their blood test not working and for them doing the blood tests on other people's equipment equipment while somewhat

• neutral assessment Tim Draper

  business has been booming in Arizona really so more people finding out

• bullish prediction Tim Draper

  this company is going to be one of the greatest companies on the earth

• bullish fact_claim Tim Draper

  it's has approved one test which is the herpes test

• bullish assessment Tim Draper

  this company is really transforming the world

• bullish assessment Tim Draper

  this is going to be one of the great companies of the world no question in my mind

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  It only none has happened here. None of that's happened.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  I have heard them say um several times since my first October story that they were going to release data that they were going to do peerreview studies and publish them in medical journals and it's been several months now that Elizabeth Palms has asserted that she would do this and uh nothing has happened.

• bearish prediction Unattributed

  I think Veronos is um ultimately going to come apart and go to zero. I think there's probably nothing there.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  you didn't have the savvy medical investors from the valley and elsewhere and you didn't have a board with really any much of any medical experience and especially not any diagnostics or laboratory science uh experience

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  if the chief scientist says nothing is working to their spouse and the spouse tells that to a journalist, this to me it just feels like that is the beginning and the end of the story

• bullish endorsement John Carreyrou

  Tim Draper... said explicitly like I think the journalists are just upset that they miss this company and that it's... he believes that they're going to show everybody in the world how amazing they are.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  the VC firms and the investment firms that specialize in this kind of investing were not present among the investors at this company

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  the board of directors was made up of non-technically savvy people

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  investors were not allowed to look at the technology

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the company authorized a C3 round... series 3 round of shares... 3 days before our story was published in October that... would have valued the company at between 10 and 11 billion. ... it's unclear really whether the last funding round was the round in 2014 or if it was a round that occurred 3 days before our story was published in October.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the last valuation... nine billion... the last round that we know of for sure... started in February 2014 and the share value per share was $17 and that valued the company at approximately $9 billion.

• neutral assessment John Carreyrou

  I think it's fair to say that that she doesn't see her husband's suicide and his work for the company as unrelated. ... did I find her a credible source? Absolutely.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  She told me that he had told her on numerous occasions before his death that things were not working. Nothing is working was her quote.

• bearish prediction John Carreyrou

  I believe, you know, it's all pointing towards an eventual end similar to those companies.

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  I would say that within 3 weeks, 3 to four weeks, I became convinced that this was a story.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  if you're a partner of the company he's representing and you're bound by a contract and you're considering, uh, ending it, then, uh, you know, uh, the fact that he's their lawyer is not to be trifled with.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the reason they've been careful until now is one that that that contract uh was not ideally negotiated by someone who no longer works for them and the the other is that they know that uh if they don't get their legal ducks in a row they're facing David Boy on the other side.

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  we're also hearing that um even given that now that that you know the the these government findings are out and that they're uh very serious and grave that Walgreens is is absolutely reconsidering the whole thing.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  that contract was is not uh favorable to Walgreens and uh put uh the company at a disadvantage in in many ways and makes it very difficult for Walgreens to get out of that contract.

• bearish fact_claim Unattributed

  Walgreens is still apparently, you know, willing to let them stay in their wellness centers in Arizona. If you read today's statement that just came out, the action only concerns the the shuttering of the wellness center that Theronos is operating in the store in in PaloAlto and uh a a sort of um uh you know order to Theronos not to test any patient samples from Walgreens stores in that Newark lab, but it's not yet a a complete uh cutting of the ties.

• bearish fact_claim Unattributed

  It released a letter. It made public a letter that it had it had already sent to Theronos informing it that it found grave uh infractions at its Newark uh California laboratory across uh San Francisco Bay from its PaloAlto headquarters. Um and that one of these uh major infractions actually uh uh put patients in immediate jeopardy to use the the agency immediate words doing this test that Elizabeth Holmes is famous in Silicon Valley for creating could threaten people's lives.

• bearish fact_claim Unattributed

  the only test that they're running with proprietary technology that enables them uh to you know test just a drop of blood is a herpes test that the FDA approved um uh last year in July. And if you talk to uh people who know a thing or two in in laboratory circles, that's a pretty easy test to do. Um so there's there's quite a contrast between the reality uh right now of what they're doing and what they assert they can do.

• neutral fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  we have their biggest partner, Walgreens. And this was something that they were sort of trumpeting as, hey, we have Walgreens. Walgreens would not set up this number of clinics with us to actually draw blood.

• bearish fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  Walgreens... has said that it's uh closing down its wellness center, the Theranos Wellness Center rather, in its Walgreens in Palo Alto, California. and that it's also uh suspending uh Theranos's ability to to test any patient samples collected at Walgreens stores whether in California or Arizona at that new work facility and that uh these actions are uh effective immediately and and will be uh in effect until uh the the issues that were pointed out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servi

• bearish criticism Jason Calacanis

  the company was literally attacking you and the journal basically saying you're liars and that you had it in for them, that you were jealous of them, just really weird um attacks.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  when I tried to ask for uh an interview the first time uh in April of last year, I was uh more or less ignored. And then I continued to ask repeatedly... they just continued to decline. And it became surreal because... the intensity of her public appearances if anything picked up... she was just not willing to talk to the Wall Street Journal and to to face up to and and answer some of the questions that I was asking.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  a very aggressive stance that the uh the company took toward us and toward sources and toward the the whole notion that the Wall Street Journal was going to write about them.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  a story like this uh which was a complex story with a you know, a company that isn't uh very open uh by its nature is a difficult story to to do and to pull off in the first place.

• bearish criticism Jason Calacanis

  about two years ago, I started hearing rumblings that there was something wrong at Theranos. And what I had heard was, hey, people who were considering investing weren't allowed to look at the technology. And then a year ago, people started laughing about the company behind closed doors, uh you know, at industry events that I was at and starting to speculate like this is a little bit crazy. Henry Kissinger is joining the board and there's something up.

• neutral fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  Theranos is a unicorn here in Silicon Valley that was going to change everything about testing with nano vials of blood that would be able to diagnose people without having to draw blood. This was an incredible vision at the time. people thought that this could change everything and hundreds of millions of dollars was put into this company.

• bearish assessment Jason Calacanis

  I believe the company's gone and I believe that there's probably some level of malason fraud or delusional behavior that the end result of is any other reasonable person would say that's fraudulent

• neutral fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  daros wasn't really a Silicon Valley company even though it feels like a Silicon Valley company because no Silicon Valley investors except for Tim draer who put up the initial money nobody else really put the money in after that it was all these like weird private Equity firms and they were kind of like playing off of the Stamford you know Elizabeth dropped out of College kind of situation

• bearish criticism Jason Calacanis

  Theos seem to have the same issue the people who are investing and the people who are on the board were like Henry kingers of the world bit of a red flag

• bearish criticism Nellie Bowles

  disrupting blood tests yeah when it comes to biotech I mean the smoke and mirrors don't work like it it's these are human lives

• bearish fact_claim Molly Wood

  the FDA did raise concerns when they visited thanos's labs and Theos went ahead

• bearish prediction Molly Wood

  I think Theos goes away forever

• bearish prediction Katie Benner

  I mean I don't think I don't see how it survives

• bearish assessment Eric Newcomer

  the media played a huge role The Venture Capital industry played a huge role everybody sort of wanted to believe the story and you know now we're just going to watch it slowly unravel I mean this partnership was by far their most important it's I mean everybody's talking about the company like it's over and I think that's fair at this point

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the board couldn't even reach a quorum without her. ... the board tried to fire her, the early board. And she talked her way out of it.

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  it was a partnership of equals. They were running this fraud together. And ultimately she always had the last say.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the Siemens machines had been hacked.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  to convince investors that they really did have groundbreaking new technology, they would stage these demos with not just investors but board members, even media members where they would have the mini lab prototype. They would prick the visiting VIP's finger. They would put the blood in cartridge slot slot the cartridge into the mini lab. Turn it on, you know, it start whirring and then they would say, 'Oh, it's going to take a little while. Why don't you come and either visit the lab or go talk

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  the third generation of the technology was called the mini lab. And that was supposed to be a box that did it was a bigger box and it was supposed to do more than just one class of blood test. When they went live with the blood tests in Walgreens stores in the fall of 2013, the mini lab was a prototype that didn't work at all.

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  the Edison refers to the second generation of the technology which was just an immuno assay machine so it could only do one class of blood tests and it it didn't do them reliably.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  Theranos would get potassium test results for patients that were so high that they only made sense if the patients had been dead.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  They were lucky that the the part their partnership with Theranos fell apart before Theranos ever went live with its tests in Safeway stores.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  I spoke to this um woman who who was a high-ranking executive at at Safeway and who who came to have suspicions about um the the accuracy of the Theranos technology

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  if you heard her at the height of her fame in her various interviews she likened you know, getting a blood draw with the the hypodermic needle to a medieval torture mechanism. Which is ridiculous.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  There have been a lot of researchers for the past 20 years in academia and industry who have been trying to crack that nut. Um namely running a bunch of tests on just a tiny sample of blood.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  this gives you an idea of the lengths to which to which Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos went to to try to to suppress my reporting.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  Tyler had been introduced to Elizabeth at his grandfather's house and had gone to work there for a summer as an intern and then upon graduating the next year in the fall of 2013 had gone to work there full time and had spent eight months at the company and become convinced that the company was built on a series of lies and was essentially a fraud.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  I find their behavior reprehensible... They would use any means necessary to try to get the story killed.

• bearish criticism John Carreyrou

  I don't think he realized the shenanigans that were going on in the lab. I don't think he realized that fewer than 12 of the tests were being done with Theranos technology.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  how many of the blood tests on the menu how many of the 250 tests are done with actual Theranos technology and how many are done with commercial machines that you've hacked.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  she then used it to to claim that that's why he was fired and to deny him stock options.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  he confronted her... said to her, 'Elizabeth, we can't do this anymore. You know, it's it's crossing a line.' ... she turned ice cold and said... 'you're not a team player and I think you should leave right now.'

• bearish fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  had this startup that had become worth a billion dollars that wouldn't let investors see the technology.

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  one of the ways that they hacked the machine and adapted it to small samples was to dilute the blood in a saline solution uh to create more volume because of course these commercial machines were used to handling regular sized blood samples. Right. So a lot more volume. And so to create more volume to make the machine work, they diluted it and when you dilute the blood, that creates problems. There's already a dilution step in the Siemens machine's protocol. Right. So now diluting dilution. You'

• bearish fact_claim John Carreyrou

  Theranos uh had a device named the Edison that actually handled only a a small fraction of the 250 blood tests on its menu and that uh 200 about 240 of the 250 tests were done with just regular commercial machines bought from third-party manufacturers with one twist, which was that a lot of those other 240 tests were done on on a one particular Siemens machine that Theranos had hacked to uphold the myth that it could test tiny samples of blood

• bearish assessment Jason Calacanis

  the biggest fraud in the history of Silicon Valley

• bearish assessment Jason Calacanis

  it turned out that this vision was indeed too good to be true.

• neutral fact_claim John Carreyrou

  that her allegation uh was that the the son of Richard Fuisz had stolen her provisional patents, funneled them to his father, and that he had then used that information to file his own patent which, after a lot of reporting and looking at the legal record, I found to be completely untrue and fabricated.

• bearish assessment Jason Calacanis

  it was clear to me and many people in Silicon Valley that this was a complete utter fraud.

• bearish assessment John Carreyrou

  I thought immediately there's something off about this and and the main thing I thought was off was this notion that this 19-year-old college dropout, you know, had left Stanford with just a semester or two of chemical engineering under her belt and gone on to to pioneer and to develop groundbreaking new medical science. Um I I didn't think that was possible.

• bearish assessment Zach Coelius

  I had to add a personal experience with like a almost like a cold poker read where I was at a like sort of a celebratory banquet and they were honoring Elizabeth Holmes and she got up to talk and I remember it like it like hit me like a bolt of lightning I don't even know she said but I turned to my now ex and I was like that woman's a fraud

• bearish fact_claim Garry Tan

  I remember my old partner harge tagger who hired me at Y Combinator he was starting a start-up in the health space he heard about there as he went to Walgreens in Palo Alto after the announced saying hey you can do a one one drop of blood blood test now and he could not get them to do a single one