Way too many unicorns out there....all that extra fun money from the printing press had to go somewhere and some of it went to Theranos....ooops
That then can be construed as FOMO investing or SILO thinking. Of-course this happens on Wall St too.
In fact the term "real options" is used quite a bit in that industry and the thinking is very much as you describe. Heck, your analogy is good on a couple levels because the industry is also full of brilliant people you can learn from who can be unnecessarily arrogant, obnoxious assholes at times!
I am not familiar with this company but are you sure their products did not work? Perhaps they just did not work well consistently or did not work in all cases? Is it that different from a FDA approved cancer drugs that could extend life by a few weeks or months for selected patients only?
I followed the story very closely as I love such rare success stories. But it was all fraud. She claimed to invent the device that could run all kind of blood test from just a little bit of blood drawn from finger tip. They ended up producing hoards of incorrect results, and then tried to cover it up by doing conventional blood test, all along lying to everyone about their "fake" product. It baffles me that she is not in jail.