> That is a pretty stunning board of directors as well. I don't doubt their CEO can get an introduction to, and lunch with, nearly anyone on the planet.
> This board seems heavily geared to do deals for defense-related applications. That's fine; getting deals with the Armed Forces and VA is feasible and quite rewarding. What they overtly lack is connections to the healthcare world. I'm surprised they aren't publicly roped into Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic or Kaiser, as they to support novel technologies in this space. I suppose you can argue that the business model is fundamentally incompatible, but I've seen Mayo and Kaiser go in anyway; they can acquire these labs and roll them into operations pretty easily.
> That BOD is stunning with heavy national security/ military operations. I almost thought it was a CIA cover company.
> So, it's a health testing company that will keep all my blood-related health information and make it "actionable", with the backing of James Mattis, William Perry and none other than Henry Kissinger. There are more soldiers in that board there than doctors. The only way I'd give them my blood would be to infect them with a disease.
> Wow. She must be a pretty amazing woman to have collected such strong allies. I'd have lunch with her.
[This last one was downvoted, but is probably the sort of reaction Theranos was hoping to engineer.]
* They tie big names into the firm to get credibility. Hire them into the board, or pay them good money for short term consulting gigs.
Examples:
1) Gen. James Mattis was in Theranos board. So was Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.
2) Enron paid Paul Krugman $50,000 to attend at least two times in advisory board meetings, nothing related to Enron business. What Enron really bought was the ability to say Paul Krugman was in the advisory board. https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/enron.html