Indeed. Post FTX, Sequoia not only scrubbed the hagiography of SBF from their site, they also scrubbed a story about how they went from meeting to funding company in 48 hours. Not sure how much due diligence you can do in that time frame.

"Update: CNET's Caroline McCarthy tweets at us: "Sounds like a good theory, except that a Color exec told me Sequoia's $$ was nearly triple Bain's." So we're back to: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"

So Sequoia put in nearly triple what Bain put in. The article was just guessing before the update.

Restricting Theranos to +/1 testing (STDs and other infectious diseases, maybe some cancer genes) would be FAR less profitable than taking over the blood testing industry, which is probably why Theranos didn't go in that direction. Regardless, even cursory due diligence would have revealed all that.

Maybe they did? The ones that actually did invest are the ones that also are waiting for a Nigerian prince to finally do his bank transfer.

I can think of two incentives for the vigilant to stay silent in the face of a scam.

One, in the case of a company especially, they may want their competitors to walk into the trap.

Two, the risk of accusing somebody of being a scammer (that you haven't fallen for) is too great, you get nothing out of it, and risk being sued.

Although, in this case, where peoples' health was put at risk, it would be especially awful to not speak up.