Whipped Cream Difficulties

Sometimes, the warning signs are lit up with neon and searchlights, and people still miss them.

A married pair of San Francisco entrepreneurs were indicted Thursday on multiple federal charges, the latest twist in the saga of a once trendy, now bankrupt fecal matter-testing startup.
Zachary Schulz Apte and Jessica Sunshine Richman, co-founders of defunct microbiome testing company uBiome, are accused of bilking their investors and health insurance providers, federal prosecutors said. They were indicted Thursday on multiple federal charges, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud and money laundering.

Now, I’m just a poor dumb white boy from Hampden, but I feel like there’s at least two big warning signs that were missed here.

1.

San Francisco-based uBiome was founded in 2012, and kicked off the company in an unusual way for a biotech startup: via a Kickstarter campaign. Its offering was an at-home test to sequence the DNA of its customers gut microbiome, which could then in turn purportedly be used to improve health.

I’m an absolute believer that you should avoid – indeed, run away from – any crowd funding campaign that is medical or health care related.

2.

In 2018, Richman was even named an “innovator” winner in Goop’s “The Greater goop Awards” and at its peak, uBiome was valued at $600 million.

Goop? Seriously? No s–t.. Again: anything that’s recieved an award from Goop, is promoted on Goop, or has any involvement with Goop: run like hell in the other direction.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2021 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Geek, Law, Stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.