Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud, but don't forget about her VC enablers

Re:Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud, but don't forget ... by andi999 on Friday October 22, 2021 @07:48AM (#28956098)

"Their own greed and incompetency to listen to experts put them in that position" Maybe, but the article does not provide good evidence for that. In hindsight everything is obvious. One argument that it would have problems with regulations might also not be valid, since if you really manage to build something everybody wants to buy often regulation follows suite to allow for that.

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Re:Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud, but don't forget ... by sschueller on Friday October 22, 2021 @07:59AM (#28956171)

There were a lot of warning signs and even if the VC had invested already the could have killed it before it all collapsed in a giant media scandal.

Same goes for SpaceX's point to point travel. It will never happen and there are many warning signs pointing to this fact. For example in their presentation they list a large list of cities, many of those are completely out of the question. So in essence a blatant lie.

Sure SpaceX probably wont go under because they have some real projects but it is quite questionable for a company to make such claims knowing it will never meet them.

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Re:Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud, but don't forget ... by andi999 on Friday October 22, 2021 @09:06AM (#28956747)

Yes. But let's say the investor thinks: sure the point to point is silly, but the real market is to compute with the Ariane programm, and space x will win; it is still justified to invest. Of course if the space x launches so far were in reality all cgi rendered, then that is fraud, but one shdnt say that this could have been obvious since there were warning signs.

Maybe I am wrong but such announcements which clearly will never happen are just PR, like Ryanair announcing every couple of years that they either charge for toilets or remove the seats, both which will probably not happen in any near future but it gives them free press coverage.

So what were the warning signs before investors invested?

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Re:Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for fraud, but don't forget ... by sschueller on Friday October 22, 2021 @09:38AM (#28957052)

To me that is way beyond some PR. Saying the rocket will be red and then it's blue, that might be PR, it doesn't affect the overall business and in the larger of things is irrelevant. Clamming you will be providing p2p travel to many destinations in the world is a whole other segment.

These announcements go beyond PR, they are borderline fraud.

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