What's successful about 23andMe so far? (I'm asking genuinely, as the company is new, and I wonder what the benchmark for success that you have in mind is.)
They created a product/service that people willingly pay for and they do it on a large scale.
A clueless company looks like the guy that sent me a kickstarter link last week with copy that says, "The Next Big Thing" and it was a photo sharing application.
The leadership from Exhibit A tend to build companies like Google, McDonald's and Walgreens. You would have to be daft to consider them clueless.
The leadership from Exhibit B don't build anything of significance but do occasionally luck out, reinforcing a massive selection bias that fuels the next 100 startups that are just like it.
I just think that rhetoric is important on a site like HN. Calling someone clueless that did what we all want to do with our own endeavors seems pretty harsh. I know I personally feel for the management team tonight. It has to be hard to spend so many years building something great only to be smashed down by regulators.
