Theranos committed outright fraud. It seems like fast didn’t lie about anything but was overvalued. Are you really confused about the difference?

I refuse to believe that people don't understand this difference.

People who try to make Fast sound like theranos are evil-minded.

Fast had good early traction. Then, the traction stopped. They didn't lie about the numbers and couldn't raise more money.

Theranos didn't get actual traction, lied about almost everything, and successfully raised even more money.

Big difference.

Easy to ascribe pure malevolence when the rank incompetence is so glaring. How does a half-billion dollar company collapse overnight? How many layers of VC bureaucracies of aides and accountants failed to foresee this?

If you understand that VC returns are usually made from 1 or 2 out of every 10 investments this is no surprise.

Its a market after all, VCs have the option to say no. And every smart person with financial analysis skills is welcome join the industry and beat the rank incompetence with an 80% failure rate, can't be difficult can it?

There’s a difference between a business declining over time with a clear downwards trajectory, and suddenly dropping from the sky and crashing. The latter is why this is so shocking.

Not sure if this happened to Fast, but this tend to happen when startups run out of runway/funding.

100% agree. I wanted to scream at my computer everytime I read some bullshit article about how "Theranos was playing by the Silicon Valley 'fake it til you make it' ethos".

Bullshit. Theranos told investors clear falsehoods they knew to be false in order to get funding. Fast sold a vision they couldn't deliver on, and unless more info comes out I didn't see anything that said they committed fraud.

Right, uBiome is a better example of that. Featuring actual Silicon Valley investors, too.