Theranos has finally responded, at exhaustive length, to the accusations leveled in John Carreyrou’s deeply reported piece (paywall) questioning the blood testing firm’s business model, and the validity of its tests.
Growth at Chipotle is slowing down and the company plans to change that by speeding things up behind the counter and in its customer lines.
Public fury over astronomical drug price hikes was directed at Turing Pharmaceuticals in September, when CEO Martin Shkreli raised the price of a drug used to treat AIDS patients and others with depressed immune systems by 5000%. But the company most affected by the backlash may actually be another drug maker, called Valeant.
When Google announced it was dramatically changing its structure to form a conglomerate called Alphabet, many thought immediately of Warren Buffett’s long-lived and hugely profitable Berkshire Hathaway.
Theranos, a Palo Alto-based blood testing company now valued at roughly $9 billion dollars, has become something of a Silicon Valley darling since its founding 12 years ago, thanks in part to a great backstory and a charismatic female CEO. But beyond its glossy public image, its work may not live up to the rapturous press coverage and billions of dollars in fundraising.
As with most things Elon Musk does, interest in Tesla’s Gigafactory, which will be the world’s largest lithium-ion battery plant and is being built in Nevada, has been feverish. Last week, that fascination may have gone too far. Two employees of the Reno Gazette-Journal (RGJ) allegedly trespassed on the factory site and were taking pictures, according to a Tesla blog post. It went seriously south from there.
Twitter’s announcement that it would be letting go several hundred staffers went public very quickly, with a long memo from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and the level of news coverage one might expect for social-media platform at an important crossroads in its life as a public company. But at least one employee affected by the cuts apparently found out in a rather surprising way—first by seeing a push notification, and then discovering that he was locked out of his work email.
This post has been updated with comments from Pimco and Gross’s legal representation.
This post has been updated
There’s plenty of research out there on the benefits of remote and flexible work. It’s been shown to lead to increased productivity, and has an undeniable benefit for work-life balance. But what does it do to everyone back at the office?
Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which brought artisanal java from its Portland, Oregon, roots to mainstream American caffeine consumers, is being acquired by Peet’s Coffee & Tea, an older, larger, and decidedly less hip competitor.
After two rather miserable weeks for the biotechnology industry, one company got a pretty excellent piece of news: Spark Therapeutics, a Philadelphia based biotechnology company that went public earlier this year, announced that its experimental treatment for a rare form of blindness significantly improved patients’ sight in an essential phase 3 clinical trial with no serious side effects.
The term “activist investor” usually summons the image of someone who buys huge stakes in a firm and demands the heads of current management on a plate. But Nelson Peltz’s $2.5 billion investment in General Electric is not that.
While Turing Pharmaceutical’s 5000% price increase of a drug was particularly eye popping and led to significant outrage directed at CEO Martin Shkreli, this is an industrywide phenomenon. Firms raise prices frequently as they try to make as much money as possible before patents expire, recoup their investments, and make up for the high failure rate of pharmaceutical research.
At more than half a million dollars for a year’s treatment, the medicine Soliris is one of the most expensive drugs in the world—and it costs even more in Canada. It treats rare blood diseases, and many patients must take it for a lifetime, meaning the cost can be truly astronomical.
The Volkswagen crisis is going to have some legs, both for the company and for its recently departed CEO, Martin Winterkorn. The ex-chief is under investigation for alleged fraud by prosecutors in Germany, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, two German newspapers report that engineers and a supplier appear to have complained two years ago about the so-called “defeat device” used to fool emissions tests.
Behind the organized chaos of a Chipotle mid-lunch rush is a sophisticated management ethos, of a type more often associated with tech giants or august industrial conglomerates than fast casual burrito restaurants. And while founder Steve Ells is the famous champion of Chipotle’s natural and sustainable food focus, it’s the lesser-known co-CEO Monty Moran who devised the company’s intense management system.
A day after Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned in the aftermath of the automaker’s shocking emissions scandal, the company has a replacement in Matthias Müller, according to multiple reports. He’s currently head of the Porsche luxury brand at the company. The official announcement will come after a board meeting Friday.
The entire biotech industry took rather negatively to Hillary Clinton’s announcement earlier this week that the presidential candidate would float a plan to combat drug prices—as evidenced by a drop in the biggest biotech index in the country.
In August, Turing Pharmaceuticals, a startup biotech firm founded by controversial ex-hedge funder Martin Shkreli, bought a 62-year-old drug that mostly treats infections in AIDS patients and others with suppressed immune systems. Overnight, its cost increased from $13.50 a pill to $750.
In a statement this morning, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein announced that he has a “highly curable” form of lymphoma, confirmed by a biopsy last week. He will be undergoing chemotherapy over the next few months, and plans to work and lead the firm “substantially as normal,” though he will curtail some planned travel.
Kickstarter joined other tech darlings like Warby Parker and Etsy in 2014 in becoming a “B-Corporation,” which means committing to doing something that helps the public at large (in this case, helping make home-conceived gadgets and other projects a reality) and including that in your corporate charter. Board members take the mission into account, and B-Corps report on their social impact.
Volkswagen has been ordered to recall (paywall) some 482,000 diesel vehicles for allegedly installing software designed to undermine emissions inspections.
Fear of failure is often baked into workplace culture in a way that makes people either unwilling to take risks, inclined towards hiding mistakes, or too ready to blame others. Etsy, the recently public craft-focused e-commerce site, has made a concerted effort to change that.
