Let’s settle this the old-fashioned way
It has come to our attention that Livongo founder Glen Tullman isn’t the least bit pleased with what we’ve been saying. Naturally we are concerned about this displeasure although we aren’t exactly shocked. Glen is not the first diabetes executive to express his displeasure with Diabetic Investor far from it. Glen is just joining a long and select list. Like so many before him Glen is having trouble dealing with some pesky facts.
Now to be fair Glen’s displeasure has yet to crack the top ten list of diabetes executives who would like nothing better than for Diabetic Investor to disappear from existence. Just to review let’s take a trip down memory lane and see who else is contributing to Glen’s newest venture aptly called “Let’s shut up Diabetic Investor.” According to documents obtained by Diabetic Investor the list of contributors include the following;
1. Andy Rasdal the former CEO of Dexcom, yep before Dexcom became the well run extraordinarily well managed company that it is today Andy was at Dexcom. Andy’s displeasure steams from a post we wrote years ago during an ADA conference in our nation’s capital.
As often happens we came across credible information that Dexcom was about to issue a recall. Naturally in the interest in fairness we attempted to illicit a comment from Andy. Given this is a family publication we cannot print what he said let’s just say we believe what he wanted us to do is pretty much physically impossible.
Anyway we ran the story, which as it turned out was accurate and low and behold Andy was eventually shown the door at Dexcom. Thankfully Terry Gregg took over and the rest as they say is history.
2. Now who could forget our good buddy Serge and his partner in crime Olivia Brandicourt. Although it’s a fair statement to say that few executives at Sanofi hold Diabetic Investor is high esteem.
3. The same can said for the old team at Roche another less than happy group of individuals.
4. We should also throw in our good friends at Abbott who have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Diabetic Investor.
Now before going any further we should point out that Sanofi, Roche and Abbott share some commonalities other than wanting Diabetic Investor to stop publishing. Each in their own way have committed some the biggest blunders combined with acts of stupidity in diabetes. Given the list is long let’s just cover the highlights;
Other than Lantus Sanofi has consistently demonstrated their uncanny ability to turn gold into sand. With so many blunders it’s difficult to pick out one that stands above the rest but believing lunch bags were a great marketing tool does stand out. On the bright side we should thank Sanofi for providing some of the greatest copy ever.
Roche has the distinction of running not one but two insulin pump companies into the ground. First paying over a billion for Disetronic then paying a few hundred million for Medingo yet running both directly into the ground.
Although Abbott has a hit on their hands with Libre and perhaps one day the Libre2 will get here but their history in glucose monitoring hasn’t exactly been filled with success. Abbott has the distinction of running not one but two BGM companies into the ground. The first being Medisense and the next Therasense. For a while we thought any diabetes company with sense as part of their name would be bought by Abbott and then run into the ground.
5. Perhaps one of the more ironic comments made to Diabetic Investor came from none other than Hooman Hakami the now departed head of Medtronic Diabetes who commented that the halo over his head was only six inches from becoming a noose around his neck. Little did he realize how prophetic his comments would be for after writing some very nice things about Medtronic, Diabetic Investor has beaten this beleaguered franchise like a rug. So we have to add Bevis and Butthead to the long and growing list of people who want us gone.
6. Not sure if this is a trend or not but another insulin pump executive Duane DeSisto the former CEO of Insulet is also on the list. Like Medtronic way back in the day we had some nice things to say about Insulet that was until Duane and his handpicked team began to screw things up, so badly that his replacement Pat Sullivan summarily threw this departed team under the bus whenever he could. Thankfully we were wrong about Pat as after some early missteps he got it together, got the company moving in the right direction and had the good sense to leave the company in very capable hands.
7. And who could forget our great friend that crusading cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissan, who loved to blast Diabetic Investor yet was stupid enough to express his unhappiness via emails which we of course published.
8. Of course this list would not be complete without including the members of the West Coast Mafia lead by the wicked witch. Now being the politically correct folks they are they don’t express their unhappiness with Diabetic Investor directly. No being the children that they are they prefer instead to say some very nasty things behind our back.
We on the other hand have no problem being direct as being from the great city of Chicago we believe in the Chicago way. As eloquently stated by Sean Conroy in the great movie the Untouchables; “You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way”
We’re pretty sure this is not a complete list of folks who aren’t thrilled with Diabetic Investor and our belief in reporting the facts. To wit we remind them of something Momma Kliff said long ago, if you want a friend get a firkin dog. As everyone has learned over the years Mom was well ahead of her time and very smart.
Anyway rather than have Glen stew over mean and nasty ways to get rid of Diabetic Investor we have instead decided to be a gentleman about this and settle this dispute the old-fashioned way. Therefore we are challenging Glen to a duel, that’s right a good old-fashioned duel. Even better we let him chose the place and weapons. Now we’d say that we could both come armed with facts the only problem being that we’d have a decided advantage as we have them and Glen doesn’t.
