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Comment by projectramo | Hacker News Reader

Having read Bad Blood, I kind of believe it. Hear me out (also have not seen it).

I really think that she thought she could make the machines work. I think Holmes and Balwani thought that, given enough time and enough smart people they would eventually get a working version. I think they thought -- they may still think -- that it was a question of throwing more resources at the problem.

The whole thing would have lasted longer if they had not put a deadline on themselves by actually releasing it into the wild with the Walgreens deal.

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"I really think that she thought she could make the machines work. I think Holmes and Balwani thought that, given enough time and enough smart people they would eventually get a working version. "

What I got from the book was that they gave up pretty early on making real progress and instead decided to lie. By not allowing their people even to talk to each other they pretty much made it impossible to make progress. If you have a big, hairy, unsolved problem the first thing you have to do is to make sure that as many people as possible understand the extent of the problem.

They are just soulless liars and bullies and deserve no excuses.

> What I got from the book was that they gave up pretty early on making real progress and instead decided to lie.

What specifically in the book made you believe this? I'm halfway through and so far it sounds like nothing worse than any other megalomaniac start-up founder.

They fired anybody who had any doubts like the CFO at the beginning of the book. Someone who honestly wants to solve a problem doesn't do that. They also never had any real idea how their stuff should actually work other a "vision".

I wondered why they were so afraid of a third version of their machine. Seems like they stuck with the second version even after it was clear it could never work. Seems like they were just ready to use off the shelf equipment from that point on.

The problem is that physiologically the blood you get for chem-10 (stuff like Sodium/Potassium) are completely invalid using finger prick (you rupture too many cells and they leak out their intracellular fluids, messing with your results). This is basic pathology 101 and completely negates any way to work around this fundamental problem. It goes back to the example they give at the beginning where she had the idea of an antibiotic patch, but you need IV antibiotics for delivery.

Is that not the same mentality of many Ponzi scheme operators?

Or every single one of them is motivated enough to lie about it.

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