Scientist doing assay development from Jan ‘12 to Sep ‘13.
Did you feel like your technology had a real chance? Did you feel like you were making progress? Were the assays going on with standard market equipment at that point (probably public knowledge by now) and was it widely known internally (your experience)?
Yes. The chemistry did work. A lot of t was simply using existing assays and making them work on a smaller scale. They simply tried to do too much right away, looking for a home run instead of doing a few things well and growing from there. I think you’re asking if I knew that the tests were being done at theranos with other company’s hardware (Siemens analyzers), which I definitely knew. I was intimately involved in validating our wetware (chemistry) on both our the analyzers we were trying to make (which were awful and could not be used for anything when I was there) and with other companies hardware.
Tell us more about the romance between the blonde and the bald Indian man.
Yes, how can I be him?
Ugh. People like you are why I hate dating in SF
Holy shit this is juicy. Keep it comin'...
What were the signs that the company was going to hell? How did you know when to jump ship?
Isn’t Sunny like 60 years old??!
More like 51-52
What always bugged me with the tech, and why I thought it was BS when I heard about it, was that in small volumes, blood doesn’t behave like a liquid. It’s like a viscous gel. Was there a way they worked around that?
Talk a little about Elizabeth Holmes. Is she getting what she deserves? Does she deserve worse? Was she always a terrible person or did she become one with the influx of money and attention?
I'm surprised people didn't know that the CEO and COO were a couple. I copied the below from a news article. He's 52, btw Mr Balwani, who lives in California, was the president and Chief Operating Officer of Theranos from September 2009 to May 2016. In 2009, as Theranos was on the verge of running out of money, Holmes turned to her then-boyfriend Balwani, who guaranteed a line of credit for the company. Mr Balwani joined the company and became its president and Chief Operating Officer that same year, the SEC said.
'then-boyfriend' or 'boyfriend then' ?
Sure sounds like a relationship of convenience if I ever heard one.
Was the board—a collection of aging white dudes with an awful lot of political experience—under the impression that they’d eventually be able to bang Holmes? Why wasn’t there any serious science representation on the board? Like, did they not even want to fake this? Most of us are probably just dying to hear more sordid tales about Holmes. Not to be a prurient or anything.
If anything, old geezers are money motivated. What they thought is that if theranos makes it, they’ll make a ton of money, if it doesn’t and pharma lobby digs in, they can take kickbacks and throw the company to the wolves.its a win win for them
Yeah, that was my impression mostly. Moderately wealthy elders seeking more wealth and power. Holmes looked like a good vehicle to get it.
What was the culture like? Were people excited or looking to jump?
They weren’t there for the fall, numbnuts.
The rise was crazy. We went from about 80 employees to over 300 in the time I was there. Constant interviewing. We moved buildings 3 times in a year because we grew so fast. Obscene amounts of money wasted. I left when I saw the writing on the wall, well before the fall. Sunny was an absolute madman and I believe both him and Holmes were taking a lot of stimulants (amphetamines most likely). Something most people don’t know is they were also living together (I think they got engaged even). Crusty old Indian dude banging the blonde darling of Silicon Valley.