[HN Gopher] SF poop-testing startup, once compared to Theranos, ... ___________________________________________________________________ SF poop-testing startup, once compared to Theranos, charged in $60M fraud scheme Author : ic0n0cl4st Score : 185 points Date : 2021-03-21 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com) | [deleted] | xipho wrote: | This is interesting because uBiome was at the time described | (NYT, blogs, etc.) as a way for citizen-scientists to contribute | to the scientific process, submit your poop, contribute to | science. Pre-emptively, yes there are (very) many problems with | the scientific process as it currently happens, but this is a | relativley new class of things "citizen science + private | industry" that is definitely going to take some time to smooth | out. In part the scientific community is likely somewhat ignorant | as to the promises of the startup culture, and I suspect they | will definitely become more cautious promoting these types of | collaborations as time goes on. | astrange wrote: | There are competitors to uBiome that are still going (Viome, | DayTwo) and are possibly not scams. | | I did try uBiome because I dunno, I was bored. It seemed to | give legitimate results (not the same thing every time) but the | amount of "material" you submit was so small it can't have had | much signal in it. | stephenr wrote: | Sounds like a shitty place to work. | tpmx wrote: | > received funding from Silicon Valley investors like 8VC in San | Francisco and Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, which hold 22% | and 10% stakes in uBiome, respectively | | Shouldn't we expect long-established and well-respected VCs to do | a very heavy due diligence, both initially and perhaps even more | importantly continously to ensure something like this doesn't | happen? Especially in the health field. I mean, the VC brands are | used as a stamp of approval. | Thriptic wrote: | I can't speak about any specific company, but there are several | VCs that specialize in life sciences and medicine and have | people with the requisite expertise to evaluate claims on their | team (or know the people to talk to in order to get it). The | average tech VC might not have a deep bench of life sciences | people to validate specific tech with, may not know the experts | in the field, and may not know how the industry varies from | tech. | afavour wrote: | We should expect it but it doesn't ever happen. SV VCs want | hockey stick growth and a profit, be that via going public or | selling to a larger company. All else is secondary. | tpmx wrote: | I kind of feel that the health field is special because of | the risks. I guess self-driving may eventually get there too, | in terms of risks. | | I don't remember any mainstream media reports talking about | which VCs where early/heavy investors in Theranos though. :/ | karlding wrote: | According to Bad Blood by John Carreyrou [0], the initial | investors were mostly people that Holmes had cultivated | relationships with, and thus it implies that perhaps they | were not investing based on technical merit. However, their | reputations ended up providing a signal of credibility and | legitimacy of Theranos' claims that other investors and | media later looked towards, much like a web of trust. | | She took a seminar and an Introduction to Chemical | Engineering course with Channing Robertson (at the time, | the face of Stanford's Chemical Engineering program) and | worked in his research lab, and eventually was able to | convince him to join the board as an advisor. Then she was | able to leverage her family connections to raise money and | further lend a sense of legitimacy. | | According to Carreyrou: | | _> She convinced Tim Draper, the father of her childhood | friend and former neighbor Jesse Draper, to invest $1 | million. The Draper name carried a lot of weight and helped | give Elizabeth some credibility: Tim 's grandfather had | founded Silicon Valley's first venture capital firm in the | late 1950s, and Tim's own firm, DFJ, was known for | lucrative early investments in companies like the web-based | email service Hotmail. Another family connection she tapped | for a large investment, the retired corporate turnaround | specialist Victor Palmieri, was a longtime friend of her | father's. The two had met in the late 1970s during the | Carter administration when Chris Holmes worked at the State | Department and Palmieri served as its ambassador at large | for refugee affairs. | | > [...] | | > In addition to Draper and Palmieri, she secured | investments from an aging venture capitalist named John | Bryan and from Stephen L. Feinberg, a real estate and | private equity investor who was on the board of Houston's | MD Anderson Cancer Center. She also persuaded a fellow | Stanford student named Michael Chang, whose family | controlled a multibillion-dollar distributor of high-tech | devices in Taiwan, to invest. Several members of the | extended Holmes family, including Noel Holmes's sister, | Elizabeth Dietz, chipped in too._ | | That's not to say that due diligence was completely | ignored. Certain VC firms, like MedVenture Associates, | passed on Thernaos when they asked for specifics about her | TheraPatch system and how it differed from the one they had | commercialized with Abraxis. Apparently Holmes was unable | to answer the technical questions asked during their | meeting. | | Carreyrou later summarizes: | | _> Channing Robertson, the Stanford engineering professor | whose reputation helped give her credibility when she was | just a teenager. Then there was Donald L. Lucas, the aging | venture capitalist whose backing and connections enabled | her to keep raising money. Dr. J and Wade Miquelon at | Walgreens and Safeway CEO Steve Burd were next, followed by | James Mattis, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger. David | Boies and Rupert Murdoch complete the list | | > [...] | | > Besides Theranos's supposed scientific accomplishments, | what helped win James and Grossman over was its board of | directors. In addition to Shultz and Mattis, it now | included former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former | secretary of defense William Perry, former Senate Arms | Services Committee chairman Sam Nunn, and former navy | admiral Gary Roughead. These were men with sterling, | larger-than-life reputations who gave Theranos a stamp of | legitimacy. The common denominator between all of them was | that, like Shultz, they were fellows at the Hoover | Institution. After befriending Shultz, Elizabeth had | methodically cultivated each one of them and offered them | board seats in exchange for grants of stock._ | | I recommend giving the book a read if you enjoy books about | white collar crime. | | [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood | maxcan wrote: | > Shouldn't we expect long-established and well-respected VCs | to do a very heavy due diligince, both initially and | continously to ensure something like this doesn't happen? I | mean, the VC brands are used as a stamp of approval. | | You must be new here.. _shrug_ | tpmx wrote: | New to SV VC, sure. | teraflop wrote: | The complaint says that the founders told investors that their | model had been cleared by legal counsel, when in fact their | counsel had warned them that it was "risky" and potentially | fraudulent. | | This might be a naive question, but... Shouldn't the lawyers | have been involved in the investment rounds somehow? I get that | there's attorney-client confidentiality and all, but wouldn't | you expect them to at least be able to say "yes, we've looked | at the pitch deck and confirmed that there's nothing materially | false that we know of"? And shouldn't the lack of such | assurance be an immediate red flag? | theptip wrote: | Typically an investment round will involve a rigorous due- | diligence process. There will be a data room, and technical, | legal, financial, and strategic documentation will be shared | with the investor(s). I'd expect regulatory concerns to be | top of mind with a biotech startup like this. | | I'm not sure what level of coverage is normal, but it's not | unheard of to ask for a written opinion from a legal firm | saying "this business model is legally sound". | | In this case it sounds like this was not asked for, and they | just took the founders' word for it. | | On the other hand worth noting that "taking their word for | it" happens to some degree in almost business deals; after | all, past a certain point, outright lies will probably land | you in jail (or at least with a massive fine). | | It could be a sloppy DD process was run here, or it could be | that this sort of thing happens infrequently enough that it's | not worth applying a fine-toothed comb to every single claim. | foobiekr wrote: | I have personally done a lot of DD and I will tell you | that, while I am aggressive because I assume people are | lying to me and maybe themselves, 99% of the time when I've | done a tandem DD the other technilogists onvolved basically | just feign interest and give a gut feel. I've also been on | the receiving end of DD and witnessed this. | | I think you are _dramatically_ overestimating the quality, | depth and especially the diligence of that process. | wjnc wrote: | This. One of the more fun things I've done professionally | is trying to prepare an after-action report on a deal | gone south. Reasonably small deal but 95%+ loss of value. | I couldn't even get people to come to a shared baseline | factsheet. We've done 10s of deals together, the firm | prides itself on openness and is generally relaxed. Even | with all the internal memos and external red flag reports | in hand, we couldn't get to a shared sense of what | happened, let alone if we dropped a ball. Point being: DD | is hard even for well-established teams and hindsight is | 20/20. | pas wrote: | Wow, this sounds very interesting, but I simply lack the | context to understand this. Could you perhaps explain it | a bit? What's and after-action report? How many people | you would have needed to agree on said facts? How should | one imagine this "couldn't get to a shared sense of what | happened"? This means that everyone had their own very | detailed theory that then seemed off for the others | (because some facts were excluded, interpreted | differently, weighted differently by others)? | foobiekr wrote: | I've never done one of these (except on my own company), | it sounds interesting. I can think of several companies | where I'd love to know WTF the investors were thinking, | though. | tpmx wrote: | I'm sure e.g. A16Z did a very thorough DD before investing. | But, how much time did they invest in following up this | company after every year since? Meanwhile, the VC brands | were on proud display on the company's website as a mark of | trust. | cj wrote: | Lawyers (of the company) typically don't get involved in | reviewing pitch decks for accuracy at least in the early | stages. And even if they did, the lawyers only know what the | founders tell them. Additionally, lawyers typically avoid | asking probing questions of founders. especially if there is | risk that the answer they get may be troubling - it's much | easier to defend and advise a client when you're not | explicitly aware of every dirty secret. | | But you're not totally off base. It's absolutely the | responsibility of VCs to do their own due diligence. VCs | usually are investing _other people 's_ money. It's not a | good look for VCs to invest in scams, so VCs typically do | some degree of due diligence (which could be virtually zero | diligence at seed stage / Series A, to quite a lot of | diligence at later stages as the amount of money involved | increases). | knuthsat wrote: | When you try raising money from VC in San Francisco, the people | you're pitching to are more focused on communicating with each | other (behind your back) and trying to either get you to think | you won't get any money or that you won't get as much as you | want. | | They are not really focused on the details of your business, | especially if it sounds right to some PhD that works for them | as a technical expert. | | For example, you can pitch to multiple VCs and now they can | either start a bidding war (because you either lie or tell the | truth of your existing offers, and they do not communicate with | each other) or they can communicate together and get a discount | because you're not playing the information sharing game. | | The dynamics of raising money are not really fair or focused | much on what you're doing. | tpmx wrote: | Sure, I've kinda gotten the gist of that. (Thanks for the | summary though!) | | Still: I kind of think that especially in the health area, | there's a pretty large risk of e.g. the Andreessen Horowitz | brand being tainted. It should be in their self-interest to | protect themselves against this in the future, by applying | more continous due diligence. | yalogin wrote: | The Theranos lady is yet to face consequences for her fraud and | since this is financial fraud, there is every chance she might | plead guilty and evade any jail time. In such a scenario there is | every possible incentive for copy cats to emerge. She is not the | first fraudster but feels like the first one to cheat startup | investors at such a large scale. | stefan_ wrote: | Where are the indictments for the investors on the board that had | oversight? | __michaelg wrote: | >>SF poop-testing startup, once compared to Theranos, compared to | Theranos again<< | hiyer wrote: | So it's comparable to Theranos in more ways than one. | nceqs3 wrote: | YC Backed! | ic0n0cl4st wrote: | Not too surprising. YC's more successful companies do have a | history of skirting (Uber, AirBNB). | | When I worked at PagerDuty, some of the less ethical aspects of | the company (like the product was initially developed while | interns at Amazon) were explained to me with this phrase, | verbatim: | | "Paul told us to be naughty, but not too naughty." | akavi wrote: | I think most people here would agree that working on a side | project in your free time using your own resources (Ie, not | using your employer's) is perfectly reasonable and hardly | comparable to fraud. | | (Disclaimer: happy PD employee from 2011-2015) | ic0n0cl4st wrote: | Oh hey I know you, didn't know you stayed so long. I think | of you every time I hear the phrase "fractured fricitive". | | I remember the Amazon thing .. differently. Also some | pretty shady marketing tricks, and you know, failing to | protect a female employee from a predatory creep at a | conference. | teraflop wrote: | Don't forget about that time YC funded a smuggling ring: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8199286 | ic0n0cl4st wrote: | I think every traveler has this idea, explores it, realizes | it is illegal and moves on. | tpmx wrote: | I guess it's a sign of a true startup person to see that | while it may be illegal, it will allow growth? | michaelcampbell wrote: | I had looked at PagerDuty in the Atlanta area because of | their use of Elixir, which I would really like to explore and | get good at. Is your experience there overall negative? | ic0n0cl4st wrote: | It's been 10 years, but I would find it hard to say a good | word about the founders. | | My experiences there taught me that no good deed goes | unpunished. I dropped out of the startup world and become a | "fuck you, pay me" consultant. | dang wrote: | Uber wasn't funded by YC. | staunch wrote: | Which doesn't say much, since this is (presumably) only the | case because Uber didn't offer YC the opportunity to | invest, and not because YC wouldn't have been willing to. | yumraj wrote: | YC is a VC at a mass scale, obviously profit oriented. | | They're not angels (pun intended) | tpmx wrote: | Early and with a small amount. Still, there's the brand | effect... | | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/718 (404) | | https://blog.ycombinator.com/ubiome-yc-s14-raises-4-dollars-... | sokoloff wrote: | Now twice compared to Theranos. | mastazi wrote: | I'm pretty sure that there was a Tim & Eric sketch about a poop- | testing startup... sometimes reality surpasses parody | peter_d_sherman wrote: | >SF poop-testing startup, once compared to Theranos, charged in | $60M fraud scheme | | Hmmm... | | I believe there's a joke in all of this... | | Something having to do with that old expression about when _" | something"_ hits the fan... | Delk wrote: | Not being from SV (or from the U.S.), I initially read the SF | as "science fiction". | | I don't know if their (possible) problem is just in money | handling or the service, but it would have been kind of funny | if the potential fraud had been that the service was all make- | believe. | valuearb wrote: | I feel like naming your child Sunshine is just setting them up | for some kind of delusional life choices like fraud. | mgraczyk wrote: | SEC complaint: | https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2021/comp-pr2021-4... | greenyoda wrote: | And, as noted in the SEC's press release (linked from the | SFGATE article), there are also criminal charges: | | "In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the | Northern District of California today announced criminal | charges against Richman and Apte." | | Press release from U.S. Attorney's Office: | https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/ubiome-co-founders-char... | | Criminal indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press- | release/file/1377481... | ketamine__ wrote: | What happened to this page? | | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/718 | | Archived version: https://archive.is/cbIIT | dang wrote: | I have zero inside information about this but since YC ejects | companies that break its ethics code, it's possible that we | disowned this company quite a while ago. | | Edit: I just checked an internal page that I go to when I need | info about a YC startup and it says "Removed", so I think | that's what happened, and probably rather early in whatever | process led to this outcome. | pedalpete wrote: | Wow! That's really interesting. I was typing in some random | numbers looking at what other companies were in this | directory, how large it went, etc etc, and I hit quite a few | of these missing pages. I wonder if all of those companies | got ejected for breaking the code of ethics, or if there are | other reasons? | dang wrote: | I'm afraid I have no idea--I'm pretty far removed from that | side of the business--but my guess would be that it's | probably more complicated and there are likely a lot of | different possible reasons. | | YC has funded thousands of startups, so there's inevitably | a long tail of weird cases. People tend not to take that | into account when assessing particular datapoints. | jimhi wrote: | Most favourable assumption: They have a policy to remove | companies from their network and site that violate certain | rules - like fraud. | | Least favourable assumption: They are doing damage control with | their association. This article does not even mention Y | Combinator initially funded them. | tpmx wrote: | Could also be: removed becaused the company is defunct. | jimhi wrote: | They don't remove pages for inactive companies. Check the | parent's archive link for what that looks like. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | I mean, makes sense. | | Can we get a new category for "Fraud" under | ycombinator.com/companies? | jacobsimon wrote: | Before it was announced that uBiome was committing insurance | fraud a few years back, my friend and I compared our test results | and found that our very detailed, 10-page personalized biome | reports were _completely identical_ except for our names. So I | believe they were also just completely fabricating their test | results from the beginning, and some of the employees at the | company must have known this. | cbozeman wrote: | Haha, wow... my insurance company actually paid for their test | for me years ago. I'm tempted to share mine here too, just to | see if we both had the exact same results as well. | Guest42 wrote: | Perhaps you can share the first 10 nth characters to confirm | a match? | duxup wrote: | That or the results were accurate, but like Theranos their | results were just from ... running the tests through their | competitor's machines ;) | Barrin92 wrote: | >some of the employees at the company must have known this. | | what always fascinates me isn't the people who are in on in but | the people who are kind of on the edge. From the Theranos case | I remember employees not being allowed to enter rooms, secret | chat rooms, people being followed by security etc... like, how | can you work for a company like this and have a sort of | Twilight Zone or Kafka novel experience for years and just be | okay with it? | jimkleiber wrote: | Secrecy doesn't always imply impropriety but it can, and | that's the challenge with such secrecy, is that one doesn't | know. | | I.e, I imagine a lot of Apple corporate culture has similar | restrictions, yet as far as we know, they're not committing | fraud like that. | jghn wrote: | The book Bad Blood gets into this a bit. It's a fantastic | read on the whole Theranos story, for those who have not read | it yet. | aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: | I recommend "The Dropout" podcast. Very well done, lots of | great interviews. | | https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/ | vkou wrote: | In a large company, this sort of thing is perfectly normal. | There are plenty of buildings in Google where random Googlers | working on Ads can't enter. | | Unless your work interfaces with what happens in those silos, | you generally don't have any idea about what's going on in | the Android Hardware Testing building, or the garage out of | which Project Loon ran before it was shut down. | | It's a lot stranger in a small start-up. | hellbannedguy wrote: | When it comes to money most people in every profession look | the other way. | | I just can't figure if 90%, or 99%? | | Every profession, and every job, people look the other way | on truth, and moral issues. | | I usually have more respect for the criminal who admits he | steals, and cheats, for a living. | hawk_ wrote: | I think it's like boiling the frog. If they ended up in a | situation like that abruptly, most would bail. But the little | day to day changes can lead to boiling the proverbial frog. | We all do that to some extent. Members of the FAANG group of | companies indulge in quite egregious practices from an | outsider's (wider society) perspective but insiders feel it's | normal. | heavenlyblue wrote: | > I think it's like boiling the frog. | | You can't boil a frog like that. | whoooooo123 wrote: | And ostriches don't really stick their heads in the sand, | and lemmings don't really jump off trees. Do we both get | a medal? | kbenson wrote: | > lemmings don't really jump off trees | | Trees? Isn't the traditional myth they jump off cliffs to | drown in the ocean, as exemplified by the old Disney | documentary where they filmed it, but in reality it was a | river they were crossing, and the species depicted isn't | even known to migrate?[1] | | Not trying to be pedantic, it's just interesting how | these things shift and mutate over time and culture. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)# | Contro... | celticninja wrote: | But the saying is the saying regardless. | hawk_ wrote: | sure, but don't throw away the baby with the bathwater. | Y_Y wrote: | You just need to secure the lid. | taurath wrote: | They also are sitting around listening to leaderships | carefully crafted justification day in and day out. I've | had otherwise smart engineers who work in advertising tell | me that people enjoy looking them, and any criticism of | "user engagement at any cost" is met with bewilderment. | canadianfella wrote: | Looking them? | wonnage wrote: | I worked at a place that had a top secret "spam team" | shrouded in secrecy. Secret meetings, separate code repo, | iirc even a dedicated meeting room, etc. The official reason | was that they didn't want their spam detection algorithms to | be leaked. Coincidentally there was a lot of outside | speculation about whether being in the free vs. paying tier | of customer would affect this spam detection. | | One can only wonder! | p1necone wrote: | This is actually sort of reasonable. The details of | automatic moderation tools need to remain secret otherwise | they can be gamed really easily. Even manual moderation | strategies generally work better if they're not explained | (see - HN itself). | fisherjeff wrote: | I think it's all about the narrative. If you believe deeply | enough in the long-term outcome, there's a lot that a person | can overlook along the way. | fortran77 wrote: | Also people really want to believe the story of a "female | Steve Jobs." | tpmx wrote: | Stock options. Personal gain is a hell of a drug. Remember | that these people are self-selected to go for money - that's | why people go to SV. | standardUser wrote: | I hope that most start up employees view equity as a low- | stakes gamble and not a money-making scheme, because the | odds of getting rich, or getting anything at all, are very | slim. I know that's how I've viewed my equity at the | startups I've worked for. Besides, there are way more | tangible and guaranteed benefits to working for small | companies and companies in interesting spaces. | mavelikara wrote: | > employees not being allowed to enter rooms, secret chat | rooms, | | This is providing employees only as much information as | needed to do their job. Apple, for instance, seems to do | this. So it might not ring any alarm bells with the employee. | Judgmentality wrote: | > like, how can you work for a company like this and have a | sort of Twilight Zone or Kafka novel experience for years and | just be okay with it? | | Realistically, the best and brightest left early and it's the | people afraid of losing their jobs that feel compelled to | shut up and toe the line. | [deleted] | kbenson wrote: | It would be easier to identify these places if it was the | best and the brightest that left. Those with confidence | and/or the financial stability to not worry about it can | leave. There are plenty of very good and very bright people | that don't fall into those categories for one reason or | another (young, external factors making it risky to leave, | etc). | Judgmentality wrote: | If you work in tech and you're very bright, it's trivial | to see the signs of a bad workplace and be unable to find | work elsewhere. I do not believe anyone would choose to | stay if they were very talented, because it should have | been obvious there were problems and it should have been | easy to leave. | | Everybody I know in tech that's any good has no problem | finding a new job on short notice, including people with | less than one year of experience. | minitoar wrote: | A generation of tech employees that have never worked | through a recession. | Judgmentality wrote: | That doesn't change the fact that in the current job | market they can trivially find a new job. That may not be | true in the future but there's no reason not to take | advantage of it now. | an_opabinia wrote: | They hired a lot of people who were vulnerable in ways that | are difficult to control, like being H1Bs. | tpmx wrote: | Source? | busymom0 wrote: | https://www.computerworld.com/article/3195957/us-law- | allows-... | | https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-11-26.pdf#page56 | | https://reclaimthenet.org/silicon-valley-hib-visas- | instituti... | tpmx wrote: | None of those links are specific to this company, so | they're not really relevant. | golemiprague wrote: | You need the money, people pretends like changing jobs is | easy, it is not the case for most people. Also, if the | leaders cheat why the employees at the bottom should care for | it? are they paid enough to care? they are not going to earn | so much from the success of the company and not loose so much | from the failure. They are just employees | azinman2 wrote: | Could it be that you did have comparable results? The thing | about ubiome was that the results were so high up the | evolutionary tree (or at least when I did it in 2014 or so). So | it would be like comparing a fish to a tree. | | That said, it told me my composition was like that of an East | African, which I am not. That wouldn't surprise me as I have | gut issues. My big hope for the next 30 years is we | meaningfully crack the nut on microbiomes and can bring the | next major evolution in medicine to a reality. We need these | kinds of companies as a step 1. | ficklepickle wrote: | It's a poop-scapade! Did you both have newspaper and wolf hair | in your excrement? | macjohnmcc wrote: | People can justify all kinds of things if they are making | money. I knew one of the programmers who was caught up in the | Madoff Ponzi scheme. He went along with it for a long time and | enriched himself. He had to have known what was going on. | tttioo12345 wrote: | Early employee, AMA! | staunch wrote: | Was the technology real? | duxup wrote: | >Richman was even named an "innovator" winner in Goop's "The | Greater goop Awards" and at its peak, uBiome was valued at $600 | million. | | Considering how questionable Goop is that the fraud seems about | right. | | In the meantime the whole medical start up where they suddenly | can test, for cheaper, better, etc seems to regularly come up | short on the actual testing, results, or even just valid use | cases. | | Much like Theranos nobody ever seems to explain how these kind of | companies can just suddenly test for more so easily where the | existing medical industry just hasn't been able to. | | Of all the things that the start up ... "system" can do well I | kinda question their ability to suddenly become amazing complex | medical device inventors / scientists. I recall some folks who | work in that industry and they noted that creating new tests and | diagnostics and equipment is often incredibly slow and iterative. | That doesn't seem very start up-ish. The magical breakthroughs | are rare. | twic wrote: | I note we didn't get any SARS-CoV-2 vaccines from startups. | | Well, kind of except Radvac: | | https://radvac.org/vaccine/ | | https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/8/radvac-scrut/ | | But if you had the choice between radvac and Pfizer or AZ, | which would you take? | duxup wrote: | Yeah I'm not sure I'm in the mood to have my vaccine ... | disrupted. | astrange wrote: | Moderna and BioNTech were both startuppy, neither of them had | any products and they were working on cancer moonshots. They | happened to have already gone public, but it seems like | that's because they ran out of runway. | vkou wrote: | > In the meantime the whole medical start up where they | suddenly can test, for cheaper, better, etc seems to regularly | come up short on the actual testing, results, or even just | valid use cases. | | That's because medical testing is hard, more testing doesn't | always lead to better treatment, and the people who have | devised existing testing processes weren't so stupid that a | 20-year old with no background in medicine can just come in and | upend the entire system on their first try. | | You end up trying to build a startup to solve a decades-old- | problem that already has reasonably-good-solutions, in a field | where R&D takes decades, costs hundreds of millions of dollars, | and where you will have to figure out an in into an established | old-boys-network in order to actually sell your product, if you | get it built. All in an industry that's both cost sensitive, | and highly cost-insensitive at the same time. | | If you actually think <some modern medical procedure> is | overpriced, and wasteful, it would probably be good for you to | work a few years on optimizing an existing lab's processes, | before you jump straight from college into trying to optimize a | novel process that hasn't even been invented yet. | bsder wrote: | > That doesn't seem very start up-ish. | | The "innovation" in the medical start-up space would be | "indemnification". | | Take a startup that has real results and fund them through FDA | approval and backstop them when they get sued because the | device isn't 100% (no device ever is). | | I had a long talk at CES about 5 years ago with a doctor who | created an asthma monitoring device for his daughter that would | notify him and the school nurse when his daughter had an | attack. I _guarantee_ that device worked pretty damn well due | to self-interest. | | He couldn't get _anybody_ to touch it. Everybody knew that you | were going to get sued the moment some child died and a message | didn 't get delivered. Nobody would indemnify him even if he | somehow managed to get through full FDA approval. | | Want innovation in bio? Backstop the little people who have | real devices and real results rather than funding well- | connected, turtleneck-clad marketing charlatans. | ketamine__ wrote: | Scientists don't know what this number means. Doctors don't | either. And yet this number from a test result from a company | in SF means something to someone in SF. And no one can figure | out why. | bioinformatics wrote: | We (scientists) know this number, be Academia, clinical, etc. | After all, we have grants and budgets to follow and we are | skeptic of anything too expensive or cheap. | hellbannedguy wrote: | I think we didn't think a certain type of person could lie like | most people when it comes to their money? | | I remember seeing Holmes in that Job's get up, and knew | something didn't smell right, but was embarrassed to even bring | it up----knowing their would be the backlash. | | Looking back I don't think I have ever met a truthful wealthy | person? They seemed to make their wad on lies? | jamiek88 wrote: | Behind every great fortune lies a great crime is the old | saying, seems apropos. | rexreed wrote: | Remember the wave of all those "smart" Silicon Valley CEOs who | were so convinced they could build a better ventilator at the | height of the COVID ventilator shortage? All those folks who | thought they could just throw together their engineering | knowledge and hacking skills without ever having experience | building a medical device? | | This sort of tech hubris is all over the tech ecosystem. Folks | who believe their startup prowess means they can tackle any | medical device with fake-it-till-you-make-it or fail-fast- | break-often mentality that often fails in reality. | duxup wrote: | The ventilator thing was kinda scary. Like ventilators I | assume are kinda expensive more than just say that the | medical system is wonky ... | | It was kinda terrifying the idea that we'd run through COVID | with hordes of people hooked up to equipment someone came up | with by dorking with a 3D printer and some old parts from a | vacuum... | | It was telling when you didn't see established ventilator | makers coming up with their own ad hoc cheap-o designs... | much like you didn't see Theranos's competitors make wild | claims of their own similar device ... probably for reasons. | mnky9800n wrote: | Like when moocs were going to replace the University and now | that University has been online everywhere for more than a | year nobody even mentions the old moocs that were supposed to | cause this shift when instead a pandemic did it. | duxup wrote: | A few years ago I went to a coding bootcamp. I had very | mixed feelings at the experience. | | It was 'run' by the local university, but really was just a | package deal they bought from another company. | | I gave the university some feedback that they have all the | resources at the university to do WAY better than these | commercial bootcamps... but the folks involved bought the | package deal and are invested in it. | | It's sad, the university IMO could do better, if they | tried. | | Meanwhile the traditional unversity system does work, but | is a huge time investment, and the bootcamp system works | 'kinda' for some folks ... but fails most IMO. | hypersoar wrote: | A book, "Failure to Disrupt Why Technology Alone Can't | Transform Education", recently came out about exactly this. | In an interview, the author, Justin Reich, explained that | schools perform so many different functions in so many | different ways that MOOCs neve had a shot at replacing it. | Instead, it got swallowed up and and integrated with our | existing educational system. | | [0]https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=97806740890 | 44 | treis wrote: | They have to a certain extent. As an example, half of med | students attend class "rarely" or "never" preferring online | prep material. The fundamental problem is that the utility | of universities is more about credentialing and signalling | than actual learning. The Moocs are fine for learning but | have 0 credential value. Until that changes they won't | replace universities. | dd36 wrote: | I learned a lot in university. My professors were | amazing. | dgellow wrote: | I learned a lot via MOOCs, professors (who are often also | university professors) are amazing. | giantrobot wrote: | But they'll 3D print some blockchain IoT NoSQL! Made with in | SF. It will disrupt Big Ventilator. | raverbashing wrote: | And the patient will die if their wifi goes down because | it's a piece of crap that listens on a websocket for a | stream of commands to inflate or deflate. | duxup wrote: | Well that's just <insert open source package>'s fault! | ljm wrote: | Powered by Kafka so if the patient dies they can just | open up Kibana to scour the logs, patch the life support | microservice cleverly nicknamed Lazarus by the engineers, | and then replay the state with the fix in place to bring | them back online. I mean back to life. | Zhenya wrote: | Lazarus. Amazing. | ljm wrote: | Probably a good thing when you look at the prior art. Imagine | a Juicero style ventilator that only accepts DRM'd oxygen | tanks on a monthly sub and barely works better than a foot | pump for an air bed. Or another medical device sold to an | advertising heavyweight, like Fitbit. | quercusa wrote: | Still compared to Theranos! | happycube wrote: | Nah, $60mil is nothing by comparison. | duxup wrote: | My first thought was "well at least it was only 60 million". | duxup wrote: | They were right all along... sadly. | jeffgreco wrote: | Adult Swim had the best take on Silicon Valley poop tech: | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ | rexreed wrote: | Fraud in the startup world is a lot more prevalent than might be | well known. NS8, Communiclique, Lordstown Motors, Trustify, and | so many have come to light in the last year. | | Investors don't do enough due diligence and trust their own gut | too much. | | [0] https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-162 | | [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/10/29/fraud- | sof... | | [2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/california-business- | man... | | [3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/lordstown- | motors-a... | | [4] https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdal/pr/founder-lee-county- | base... | | [5] https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/sentencing-set- | alabama-m... | rsj_hn wrote: | People lie about having a startup all the time , or perhaps | they incorporate somewhere but lie about having | customers/products/employees - all those pesky ingredients | necessary to actually have a business. I wouldn't exactly call | that fraud in the "startup world", but rather fraud in the | _investment_ world, as the goal is to bilk investors. This type | of fraud is very common whenever something reaches the public | consciousness, but the swarm of conmen selling X doesn 't have | much to do with the real startup eco-system anymore than | someone selling you a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge is a fraud | in the bridge world. | zeruch wrote: | " I wouldn't exactly call that fraud in the "startup world", | but rather fraud in the investment world, as the goal is to | bilk investors." | | A noteworthy (and mostly overlooked) distinction. | atian wrote: | The numbers are usually unintelligible until after series A-B. | bsder wrote: | > Fraud in the startup world is a lot more prevalent than might | be well known. | | This is quite true. I'd actually estimate it north of 50% given | my discussions with various people over the years. | | I would argue that its probably better than this in the | "bootstrapped" arena rather than the VC-funded arena. VC | lottery tickets seem to attract fraudsters like flies. | | > Investors don't do enough due diligence and trust their own | gut too much. | | This is probably true, but one of the real problems is that | serial fraudsters really don't get punished. In addition, the | bottom-feeding lawyers that enable them also don't get | punished. | | A successful lawsuit against one of these fraudsters will cost | you at least a megabuck. It's almost always more cost-effective | to walk away with whatever payment you can threaten out of them | than to actually file a lawsuit. | xyzzy21 wrote: | Here's a hint: if you are starting up ANY company involving any | type of biotech or medical application and there are no people | with STEM degrees running it or on the board, 90% chance it's | fraudulent. STEM smarts is not something you get out of a | crackerjack box. And especially NOT with biotech or medical. | | Exactly like with Theranos, ANYONE who invested in this and | didn't see this coming or do enough due diligence to, simply | deserves to be fleeced!! No sympathy. | Thriptic wrote: | Similarly, if the company won't validate their tech in peer | reviewed journals, they are full of shit. I strongly suspected | fraud years before it was acknowledged because Theranos was | citing "trade secrets" for why they couldn't release any data | about their tech. We don't do trade secrets in medicine or | science, and this is precisely why. | brianwawok wrote: | There's no trade secret anywhere in US medicine? I can just | walk in the factory and get a tour? | Thriptic wrote: | You are of course allowed to employ SOME obfuscation in | research process, but you aren't allowed to shield your | product and claims from scrutiny behind them. At the end of | the day you have to validate that your product can do what | you say it can do publicly through independent analysis, | you have to run public trials against existing tech, and | you have to explain how your tech works, which Theranos | never did. They fought against scrutiny from the greater | scientific community from day one; "just trust me it works" | is not sufficient proof in science. | | This is one reason why we have the patent structure, so | people can publicly disclose data for validation purposes | and still make a substantial profit. | nknealk wrote: | The FDA can (and will) audit anything and everything you do | for approved drugs/treatments. There are no trade secrets | in medicine. This is why companies patent things. You | literally can't hide information about something that's | about to be FDA approved. | | As a result, the medical industry is less competitive than | other industries. Also, it's seen as ethically dubious to | compete on saving lives. Instead, there's a lot if in- | licensing deals (see above re patents) as opposed to trade | secrets. | huitzitziltzin wrote: | You can't walk into the factory but certainly you can look | at a patented drug and get a formula, for example. The | Wikipedia article about Sovaldi (sofosbuvir - a Hepatitis C | drug) contains the exact chemical formula. | | Plus the clinical trial process is extensive. It would be | much harder in the present regulatory regime to have a new | BS prescription drug than a new BS testing startup, like | this one or Theranos. ( _Old_ drugs are a little different | - some were grandfathered into the current testing regime | and evidence for their effectiveness is in some cases | limited.) | | Certainly there are trade secrets in medicine, but not | everywhere. | beambot wrote: | Chemical formula != Steps to synthesize... | pedalpete wrote: | Zach has a PhD in Biophysics and is a professor in Biophysics | and Biochemistry. | standardUser wrote: | If anything, this is the exact opposite. | | This was a science company founded and run by scientists with | little-to-no private sector experience. | orthecreedence wrote: | This is why I don't trust my feces with anybody but Smart Pipe | [0]. | | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ | trhway wrote: | >Apte and Richman married in 2019 | | so Theranos. Having a couple in the leadership is among the worst | things for the business. Any chance for even minimum reality | check is gone, and instead there is synergetic self-misleadings- | amplification and mutually reinforced bubble detached from | reality. We had at some point an SVP and a chief architect couple | - it was just a twilight, there was completely no way to subject | business decisions to technical reality cross-check and vice- | verse, and it was a hilarious show how the | managers/PMs/directors/etc. were bowing down to that chief | architect ... | | I though wonder - how and why would one do a scam in poop | testing. I mean - why not just collect the poop and test it. | Profit! Sprinkle some social on top and you have a fat unicorn. | igammarays wrote: | They should've claimed to be AI-powered, then nobody would've | called their shit. Things get especially murky with AI, as no one | understands it, and it's hard to prove outright fraud. I've seen | this firsthand: a YC-backed startup I worked for which advertised | an "AI-powered" background check literally was a bunch of if- | statements and pseudo-random guesses which didn't even provide | the same results for identical inputs. | kergonath wrote: | Powered by AI in the blockchain. | osrec wrote: | Don't forget to throw in a bit of machine learning and deep | learning. And issue some sort of cryptocurrency while you're | at it. That'll really bring in the investors. | | /s | tmpz22 wrote: | _cough_ Triblebyte _cough_ "AI-driven" recruiting ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-21 23:00 UTC)