Chutzpah with a capital C
Today while insiders we’re selling Livongo CEO Glen Tullman, who was among the sellers, appeared on CNBC. According to the CNBC website “Glen Tullman, executive chairman and founder of Livongo Health, joins “Squawk on the Street” to discuss how his company is working to monitor coronavirus patients from home.” Yet during the interview which can be found at https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/30/livongo-health-founder-glen-tullman-on-fighting-coronavirus-with-remote-monitoring.html, Mr. Tullman failed to mention one specific thing Livongo was doing that is related to the coronavirus.
Now we understand that Glen will do just about anything to promote Livongo and shameless self-promotion is part of the package. Glen being the smart guy that he is knows full well that any company even remotely related to the current crisis will get a nice bump by merely saying they are working on a solution. It really doesn’t matter if these solutions are real as they are for Abbott or Medtronic or imagined as they are with Livongo.
We hate to bring up those pesky facts but Livongo in no way whatsoever has anything of substance when it comes to the coronavirus. About the only coronavirus connection Livongo has is the fact that patients with diabetes are at increased risk of getting the virus. The programs Livongo offers don’t change this fact nor do they do anything that will prevent these patients from possibly getting the virus.
Livongo is a diabetes coaching platform, a platform that is dependent on patients signing up for the program. Something which is becoming increasingly difficult to do these days given that people are now working from home and have more important things to worry about. But when it comes to shameless self-promotion let’s not let the facts get in the way of pumping your share price so that insiders can cash out at a higher price.
Over the past 20 plus years we have seen many acts of pure unmitigated chutzpah, but this interview tops them all. This isn’t chutzpah this is CHUTZPAH on steroids and quite frankly CNBC should be ashamed of themselves for promoting this bullshit.
