I highly doubt their sophisticated investors are any more clued in than their board / executive management, which included prominent military figures, industrial complex powerbrokers, politicos, but zero or nearly zero medical expertise.

I need to be a little less subtle with my snark I think. If there ever was a company you could have avoid investing in by looking at their board it is Theranos [1].

1. https://www.theranos.com/leadership

I'm disappointed in myself - I'm usually better at picking it up. So obvious in retrospect. :)

Go figure, right? "Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize" - and also generally considered guilty of war crimes if we're to use the rules of Nuremberg.

Oh, and Bechtel (nuclear, defense), Cargill (hedge funds on the back of deforesting rain forests to grow more soy), antitrust lawyers, Marine Corps General, ex-Armed Services Committee Senators, a Secretary of Defense, a Navy admiral - oh, and an epidemiologist and surgeon. Very unusual leadership.

The surgeon was the ex-leader of the senate. We are just left with a war cabinet and epidemiologist.

If you look through their BoD, there's not a lot of biomed representatives as I recall...

That must be the understatement of the year. The board looks like the board you would put together if you were planning a coup of some central american country.

Hype always beats science and reality, at least in the short term

Maybe the investors are not sophisticated? Similar to the ubeam (ultrasonic power transfer) where the investors don't understand physics.