<ul class="summary-list"><li>A board member at VF Corporation reportedly called Black Lives Matter "the true racists." </li><li>"I don't believe in Black Lives Matter," Veronica Wu reportedly said in emails obtained by Axios.</li><li>VF Corp is home to brands like Supreme, Vans, Timberland, Dickies, and The North Face.</li></ul><p>A Silicon Valley investor and board member at VF Corporation reportedly said last year that Black Lives Matter are "the true racists," according to a leaked email obtained by <a href="https://www.axios.com/venture-capital-investor-racism-6a76049c-3464-40c8-a69a-a6fe19fc92ac.html?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosprorata&amp;stream=topp;stream=top">Axios</a>. </p><p>"I don't believe in Black Lives Matter," Veronica Wu reportedly said in the email. "If anything I think they are the true racists trying to stir up things to make this country going to socialism or even communism potentially," Axios reports. </p><p>At the time of the email, Wu was a managing partner at Hone Capital, a US venture branch of China Science and Merchants Investment Management Group. Her email comments were reportedly in response to a message from an office manager at Hone that the company planned to mark the Juneteenth holiday in 2020, Axios reported.</p><p>Wu is no longer employed with Hone Capital, according to her LinkedIn profile, which lists her current position as the founder and managing partner at First Bight Capital, a biotech venture capital firm. </p><p>VF Corporation investigated the Wu's email and found it to be "legitimate," but the company did not remove Wu from her position on the board despite the company's stance on racism and discrimination, Axios reports.</p><p>Wu and VF Corporation did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.</p><p>VF Corporation is home to many well-known brands such as Supreme, Dickies, Timberland, Vans, The North Face, JanSport, and more.</p><p>Following the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/medical-examiner-says-george-floyd-had-no-damage-to-heart-2021-4">murder</a> of George Floyd by <a href="https://www.insider.com/derek-chauvin-sentence-george-floyd-murder-2021-6">Derek Chauvin</a>, a Minnesota police officer <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-floyd-protests-companies-responses-actions-apple-target-mcdonalds-nike-2020-6">many companies</a> began speaking out against racism, police brutality, and the push for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-floyd-protests-defining-history-politics-election-black-lives-matter-2020-6">social justice</a>.</p><p>VF's CEO sent a statement last year to all VF employees condemning racism at the company. </p><p>"Racism is not welcome at VF Corporation. It never has been and never will be," Steve Rendle said in a <a href="https://www.vfc.com/news/feature-story/71112/racism-is-another-virus-to-eradicate">statement</a> to all VF employees last June. "And while we as a company can't create a vaccine to eradicate racism from our planet, we can do our part to lead with purpose, inspire others with our actions, break down racial and ethnic barriers and be part of the solution."</p>

Leaked email from a Silicon Valley investor reportedly shows her blasting Black Lives Matter as 'the true racists' and saying racism isn't a real problem in the US

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5595ae5aeab8eae82165fac6-1270/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-tedmed 1.jpg" border="0" alt="elizabeth holmes theranos tedmed" data-mce-source="TED/Screenshot" /><p class="source"><span>TED/Screenshot</span></p><p class="caption">Elizabeth Holmes speaking at TedMed</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></p><ul><li><strong>Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou knew from his first phone call with a Theranos insider that he had a great story.</strong></li><li><strong>Comparing interview accounts and past coverage of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, Carreyrou discovered major discrepancies.</strong></li><li><strong>Holmes had not only been lying to the public, she had also been lying to her own board, Carreyrou said. </strong></li></ul><hr /><p>John Carreyrou knew he had a story on his hand the moment his first phone call ended with Alan Beam, a former laboratory director at Theranos. </p><p>Carreyrou in early 2015 had just finished the story "Medicare Unmasked" for The Wall Street Journal and was looking for a new project to work on. Theranos was a healthcare tech company that had become a startup sweetheart in both the media and Sillicon Valley. </p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"In terms of both the battle we had to wage and how multi-faceted, colorful and sheer entertaining the story has been, this has probably been the best,"</span> Carreyrou told Business Insider. His first in a series of detailed exposes about the company was published on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in October 2015. In his new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1526662080&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=bad+blood+john+carreyrou">"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup</a>," Carreyrou reveals more to the story beyond The Journal's coverage.  </p><p>Carreyrou first caught wind of skepticism around Theranos back in early 2015, when Adam Clapper, a pathologist who ran an industry blog, first approached Carreyrou about Theranos. </p><p>Clapper's tip and a handful of second-hand sources helped confirm Carreyrou's gut feeling when he read <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler">a New Yorker profile</a> on Theranos: Something was off. But Carreyrou knew that to push the story forward, he'd need to talk to someone with first-hand experience at the company. </p><p>From that point, it took him about two and a half weeks to make his first contact with Beam (a pseudonym). After one phone call, Carreyrou knew he had a great story on his hands. Beam told Carreyrou everything he knew about the company. The offenses he witnessed included cheating on proficiency tests for the technology and providing false data to patients.</p><p>"He was the biggest hero of the story, but he was also a very reluctant hero," Carreyrou said. By speaking with Carreyrou, Beam subjected himself to speculation and relentless harassment from Theranos. </p><p>After Beam's recount, Carreyrou went back and re-read past coverage on Theranos and Elizabeth. The lack of peer-reviewed data to back up the company's scientific claims, her vague descriptions about how the Theranos technology worked and the secrecy which shrouded day-to-day operations at the company stood out to Carreyrou.</p><p>It became clear to him that there was a discrepancy between what Holmes portrayed to the public and the reality, and that discrepancy was perpetuated through lies, including one regarding the nature of her relationship with Sunny Balwani - a perpetrator of terror and Holmes' confidant - to the board of Theranos. </p><p>Once Carreyrou started speaking to Beam, the story unraveled quickly. From there, he was able to reach many other ex-employee sources. Beam, along with a lot of the ex-employee sources were traumatized by what they experienced at Theranos.</p><p>"It was like a mind-warping sort of experience," Carreyrou told Business Insider. </p><p>Theranos, which at one point was valued at $9 billion, recently laid off the majority of their employees and is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-investor-letter-asking-for-funding-2018-4">pleading with investors for more cash</a> as it faces setbacks in the lab on its Zika test. </p>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/infinity-stones-avengers-infinity-war-real-science-origins-explained-2018-5">The Infinity Stones in 'Avengers: Infinity War,' explained by a Marvel science advisor</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/d4AZrCfQ-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

The reporter who broke the Theranos saga wide open pinpoints the moment he knew he had a big story on his hands

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56a0f525e6183ebe4a8babaa-1283-962/budweiser can on train tracks.png" alt="sad Budweiser can on train tracks" data-mce-source="YouTube/Scott Taipale" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlIqvC0wWlg" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlIqvC0wWlg">YouTube/Scott Taipale</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Millennials aren't usually heralded as guardians of the English language, and a new experiment didn't do them any favors.</p><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blend-group-messenger/id606291833?mt=8">Blend</a>, a San Francisco-based group texting app, turned off its spell-checker for 72 hours last week in an effort to find out which words its users bungle the most.</p><p>The app pulled data from 200,000 random users - on average between the ages of 16 and 24 - for the experiment.</p><p>According to the company, some of the most frequently misspelled words were "weird," "definitely" and "Budweiser." </p><p>In two of those cases, users were betrayed by the classic <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/common-spelling-mistakes-2014-3">classroom rule-of-thumb </a>"'i' before "e" except after 'C,'" misspelling "weird" as "wierd" and "Budweiser" as "Budwieser." Meanwhile, "definitely" often emerged as the similarly spelled adverb "defiantly."</p><p>The company also sorted the results by region and found some interesting discrepancies. Users on the West Coast of the US seemed to struggle with double letters, disproportionately dropping a "u" from "vacuum"  and an "s" from "possession," resulting in "vacum" and "possesion."</p><p>They also struggled to place the pesky "u" in "restaurant," typing "restaraunt" more often than their East Coast counterparts.</p><p>East Coasters had similar difficulties: "Embarrassing" shed an "r" to become "embarassing," while the "silicon" in "Silicon Valley" gained an extra "l" as "sillicon." They also stumbled with "Yuengling" - a Pennsylvania brewery with a German name - often spelling it phonetically as "Yingling."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56998192e6183ef15b8b6b41-1242-932/1.png" alt="typo" data-mce-source="Blend" /><p class="source"><span>Blend</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Despite their orthographic transgressions, users can point to a silver lining to shield themselves from stodgy critics. Some of English's most notorious misusages - think "your" and "you're;" "there," "their" and "they're;" and "alot" and the preferred "a lot" - were among the words most often followed by an asterisk, which texters use to acknowledge a mistake.</p><p>Users also frequently corrected "sex" to "sec" and "duck" to another particular four-letter word, the original mistake possibly made because of the proximity of those letters on small touchscreen keyboards.</p><p>According to the data, men misspelled more often than women, and users between ages 19 and 21 were the biggest culprits of them all.</p><p>Users were more likely to spell incorrectly between 8 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., perhaps suggesting they aren't as sharp when they're waking up and winding down for the night.</p><p>According to Blend, the cities with the worst spelling were Brooklyn, Dallas, San Mateo, Calif., and Fort Worth, Texas.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saying-right-hard-pronounce-words-2014-10">11 Words You're Mispronouncing All The Time</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VjdjhhcTqXojYi7lJfmZl0kfpXiIb73u" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'VjdjhhcTqXojYi7lJfmZl0kfpXiIb73u',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

A group texting app turned off its spellchecker for 72 hours - and the results revealed interesting insights about millennials

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b68bab58905f218008b4f3b-2400/clinic santa cruz address domingos de moraes street 2432.jpg" border="0" alt="(Clinic) SANTA CRUZ (address) Domingos de Moraes Street 2432_" data-mce-source="Courtesy Dr. Consulta" /><p class="source"><span>Courtesy Dr. Consulta</span></p><p class="caption">One of Dr. Consulta's clinics in Sao Paolo</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Meet Dr. Consulta, a Brazil-based healthcare company that provides set prices for healthcare services like check-ups and MRIs. </strong></li><li><strong>Founded in 2011, the company has already seen 1 million patients through its clinics and has raised $100 million with plans to raise even more. </strong></li><li><strong>The company could be a model for healthcare in the US, which has been putting pressure on patients through higher out-of-pocket costs for doctor's visits and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/insulin-prices-increase-2016-9">prescription drugs</a>. </strong></li></ul><hr /><p>Thomaz Srougi comes from a family of doctors - both his parents and his brother are in the medical field. </p><p>"I'm the ugly duckling," Srougi, who has a finance background, told Business Insider. But the entrepreneur didn't stray too far when cofounding Dr. Consulta, a Brazilian company that provides doctor's visits and healthcare services for set fees - no insurance needed.</p><p>Founded in 2011, the company has already raised $100 million from Sillicon Valley venture firms, family offices, and other global investors, and is in the process of raising another $100 million. Already, Dr. Consulta has seen 1 million patients. To put that into perspective, that's 1 out of 12 people in Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil. </p><h2>Healthcare in Brazil</h2><p>In many ways, Brazil's health system looks a lot different from the US. In <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/the-struggle-for-universal-healthcare/361854/">1988, Brazil wrote universal healthcare</a> into its constitution, saying that public healthcare had to be free to all 200 million Brazilian citizens.</p><p>For the majority of Brazilians, the public system covers everything from check-ups to hospital stays. About <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1501140">26% are</a> covered by private health insurance, usually <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gms-plan-to-tackle-healthcare-costs-lessens-role-of-insurers-2018-8">provided by their employers similar to the system in the US</a>. On both the public and private sides, there can be issues: there are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/the-struggle-for-universal-healthcare/361854/">long waits associated with the public system</a>, and <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Life-Sciences-Health-Care/gx-lshc-2015-health-care-outlook-brazil.pdf">private health insurance costs are going up</a>.</p><p>Dr. Consulta's plan is to go after the remaining 150 million Brazilians who don't have insurance who might not want to use the public system. </p><p>Dr. Consulta got off the ground in 2011 by establishing a healthcare clinic in one of the low-income neighborhoods in Sao Paulo. Srougi and the team spent three years focusing on the model there and have since expanded to more than 50 locations around the city. </p><p>Because insurance isn't a part of the picture, Dr. Consulta could build everything on its own.</p><p>"We had the courage to do that from scratch," Srougi said. </p><h2>Here's how it works</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b68bd92b354cd20008b4de2-2400/thomaz01.jpg" border="0" alt="Thomaz_01" width="771" height="579" style="color: #000000;" data-mce-source="Courtesy Dr. Consulta" data-mce-caption="Dr. Consulta founder and CEO Thomaz Srougi" /><p class="source"><span>Courtesy Dr. Consulta</span></p><p class="caption">Dr. Consulta founder and CEO Thomaz Srougi</p></div><p></p></div>All in, the company has built its own booking system, clinics, and an electronic health record to manage patient information.</p><p>The company employs 2,000 doctors, mines its data to help pharmaceutical companies find potential candidates for the clinical trials they need to run, and helps with pharmacy discounts. It's currently running seven trials for international pharmaceutical companies spanning issues like high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. More are awaiting regulatory approval to get off the ground, with hopes to grow the clinical trial market in Brazil.</p><p>But there are some healthcare elements the company won't touch.</p><p>"We're not getting into health insurance, we're not becoming a hospital, we're partnering with them," Srougi said. </p><p>At each doctor's office, prices for procedures are listed out. For example, a general practitioner visit costs roughly $30 ($110 Brazilian Real), while an MRI costs roughly $128 ($500 Brazilian Real). It's a big difference from how prices are set in the US, where it's varied and you often don't know how much you're on the hook for until a few months later. </p><p>"It's all posted almost like a McDonald's menu," Dr. Marc Garnick, an oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at the Harvard School of Medicine, who's been advising Dr. Consulta and is an investor, told Business Insider. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b71df5789c8a11d008b52d4-372/app2.png" border="0" alt="app2" data-mce-source="Courtesy Dr. Consulta" /><p class="source"><span>Courtesy Dr. Consulta</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The model - providing a service for a set fee - is one that healthcare companies have been trying to move away from in an attempt to get better healthcare outcomes at lower costs. In the US, fee-for-service systems have often led to doctors over-using resources (prescribing unnecessary tests or procedures) as a way for the health system to make more money. Srougi said that's not the case for Dr. Consulta. <strong> </strong></p><p>"We twisted the incentives so doctors aren't incentivized to prescribe more than necessary," Srougi said. That involves a series of protocols embedded into Dr. Consulta's software, which flags when doctors are going off-book. Their compensation can be docked if that happens too often. </p><p>The hope is to also work with employers in Brazil to offer Dr. Consulta as a benefit, at which point the services would be covered by the employer on a per-member, per-month basis. Srougi said there are currently employers competing to be part of the pilot. </p><p>The approach is similar to both urgent care and direct primary care, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/direct-primary-care-no-insurance-healthcare-2018-3">a small but fast-growing movement in the US of pediatricians, family-medicine physicians, and internists</a> - though those services charge a monthly fee rather than by visit. </p><h2>The public-private divide</h2><p>But targeting those who don't have insurance worries some of Brazil's policy experts, who question the impact it'll have on the public health system. </p><p>Matthew Harris, a professor at the Imperial College London's School of Public Health who worked for the Brazilian healthcare system as a doctor in the 1990s, told Business Insider that his concern is that people would feel the need to pay for care they'd otherwise get for free, weakening the public system's ability's to get a complete picture of citizens' health. </p><p>"When done well, it's second to none," Harris said about the public health system. That said, he acknowledged, the Brazilian system is <a href="http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/9/10-020910/en/">under-funded</a>, meaning the system hasn't been able to care for everyone as well and as quickly as it does in theory, even as the government has been contributing <a href="http://www.brazilgovnews.gov.br/news/2016/09/government-raises-2017-healthcare-and-education-budgets">more of its budget to healthcare.</a> </p><p>Srougi for his part sees the relationship as complementary: where the public system falls short, Dr. Consulta can be there. </p><p>"The public system fails to do primary care, and that's exactly what we're good at," Srougi said. "It's beautiful on paper, but in reality it doesn't happen. It's a false promise."</p><p>The bigger issue, as Rodrigo Soares, professor of Brazilian public policy and international and public affairs at Columbia University sees it, is that the public system is so separate from the private side that it can be inefficient. Those with insurance are directed to privately operated doctor's practices, while those using the public system are directed to public clinics and hospitals. That can become a problem when a person with private insurance needs a complicated procedure that might be better handled at a university hospital on the public system.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b71e05fb354cdbe318b5045-2400/clinic santa cruz address domingos de moraes street 2432.jpg" border="0" alt="(Clinic) SANTA CRUZ (address) Domingos de Moraes Street 2432" data-mce-source="Courtesy Dr. Consulta" /><p class="source"><span>Courtesy Dr. Consulta</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Why US investors are flocking to healthcare in Brazil</h2><p>To grow Dr. Consulta, Srougi's been coming to the US and meeting with venture capital firms as well as private equity, mutual funds, and hedge funds. The hope is to use those firms' expertise as well as their capital when expanding the company's presence in Sao Paulo as well as an entry into other major Brazilian cities like Rio de Janiero and Belo Horizonte.</p><p>"We have a solid base of partners. We don't need money for money," Srougi said. "We're looking for the best product software developers and the best skills and resources within data analysis. Most of those funds are here and in the Valley you have the usual suspects developing software."</p><p>But his US investor base isn't alone in its interest in Brazil. In 2012, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group bought Amil, the<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2017/09/12/unitedhealths-bid-for-latin-american-insurer-escalates-global-play/#5a50662759b4"> largest healthcare company in Brazil.</a> And in 2014, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/intermedica-ipo/intermdica-shareholders-raise-790-mln-in-first-brazil-ipo-of-2018-idUSL1N1RX0XM">investment firm Bain Capital acquired Grupo NotreDame Intermedica</a>, taking the company public four years later.  </p><p>For some of Dr. Consulta's investors, the draw of what the company is achieving in Brazil is in part because of where it succeeds where the US system fails. </p><p>"They've solved a lot of problems that we are constantly trying to solve in the US," Garnick, the Harvard School of Medicine professor, said.</p><p>And in a lot of ways, the technology components to Dr. Consulta's system, as well as its model, could be applied elsewhere. </p><p>"I don't think of Dr. Consulta as a Brazilian company. It's a very universal vision to how healthcare should be deployed," said Neil Day, vice president of technology at Blue Bottle Coffee and an investor in Dr. Consulta. </p><p>Ultimately, the model could be one that the American healthcare system takes cues from as it tries to keep a lid on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jama-study-on-us-healthcare-spending-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world-2018-3">rising healthcare costs</a> that are putting patients on the hook for high prices that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/23/17353284/emergency-room-doctor-out-of-network">often come as a surprise.</a></p><p>"The solution for the American healthcare system isn't coming from [the US]," Srougi said. "It's coming from other places that for many reasons fostered more possibilities in terms of new types of care models."</p><p class="tagline"><hr><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/ai-in-us-healthcare?IR=T&amp;utm_source=businessinsider&amp;utm_medium=ctgr&amp;utm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_content=dhealth_ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_campaign=dhealth_ctgr_leadgen_ai_in_us_healthcare"><img src="https://static.businessinsider.com/image/5b1988cc1ae66235008b54c1" alt="Business Insider Intelligence Exclusive FREE Report: The 5 Ways AI Will Change U.S. Healthcare" border="0" style="display: block; width: 100% !important; max-width: 640px !important; margin: 0 auto !important" /></a><hr /></hr></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-meteor-shower-perseids-orionids-leonids-2018-8">What you're really seeing during a meteor shower</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/RkKIazW9-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

US investors are pouring hundreds of millions into a healthcare company that doesn't take insurance and lists its prices like a 'McDonald's menu'

<p class="p1"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45ee-1280-960/45%20berryessa%20way_main.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_main flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p1">One of the most famous homes in San Francisco is on the market for $4.2 million - and the house looks like something out of the Prehistoric cartoon town of Bedrock.</p><p class="p1">The three-bedroom home - nicknamed "The Flintstone House" - is being&#xa0;represented by Judy&#xa0;<span>Meuschke of&#xa0;</span>Alain Pinel Realtors, <a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/09/02/peninsulas-famous-flinstone-house-hits-market-for-4-2-million/">according to San Francisco Curbed</a>.</p><p class="p1"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45ef-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_exterior_07.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_exterior_07 flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p1">It's a unique house with a long history in the Bay Area. Residents of Hillsborough, California, or anyone driving north to San Francisco are already familiar with the home, which has been alternatively dubbed The Flintstone House, The Dome House, and The Marshmallow House since it was first built in 1976, <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/flintstone-house-hillsborough">according to Atlas Obscura</a>. Back then, the home was an all white globular structure off of Highway 280, just east of the Eugene A. Doran Memorial Bridge and close to the reservoir.</p><p class="p1">And it's not just the exterior that looks like something from the popular "Flintstones" TV show - the interior pictures of the home show rounded rooms that echo the existing structure.</p><p class="p1"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45f0-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_living%20room.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_living room flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p1">Despite the house's resemblance to Fred and Wilma's domicile, there's no definitive proof that its architects were influenced&#xa0;by "The Flintstones." Instead, its curved&#xa0;architecture was inspired by the "monolithic dome construction" technique invented in <a href="http://www.monolithic.org/blogs/engineering/the-history-of-thin-shells-and-monolithic-domes">1975 by the South Brothers in Shelley, Idaho</a>. Architect William Nicholson decided to experiment on the Hillsborough house with balloons and new and innovative building materials like sprayable concrete.</p><p class="p1">The bizarre method involved Nicholson and his team spraying&#xa0;the&#xa0;concrete or "gunite" with a nozzle on top of inflated aeronautical balloons to hold the shape, though it took some time to get the system to work perfectly.</p><p class="p1"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45f1-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_conversation%20pit.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_conversation pit flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p3"><span class="s1">"We got a heavy rain, and the whole thing just collapsed," Wayne Da San Martino, the San Francisco builder who managed the project, <a href="http://forum.monolithic.org/viewtopic.php?t=1472">explained to The Wave Mag in an article archived by Monolithic.org</a>. "So we latched a frame of more sturdy half-inch rebar, put a coat of cement on that, and then shot the gunite all over. On the underside, we applied a plaster putty coat."</span></p><p class="p5">They then decorated the home with round windows and slabs of nearby rock. The tallest dome in the home was outfitted with a spiral staircase and the entire house was painted a bright white.</p><p class="p5"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45f2-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_bedroom.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_bedroom flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">But after its construction, the home fell into disrepair by the 1980s. Water runoff from the hillside caused it to sink into the ground until B.H. Daniller, an Australian architect, repaired the home - but not without the neighbors' disapproval.</p><p class="p6"><span class="s2">"Many of the neighbors thought it was an eyesore," <a href="http://forum.monolithic.org/viewtopic.php?t=1472">Daniller told The Wave Mag</a>.&#xa0;"I think they were disappointed when I repaired it and it got sold again."<span class="Apple-converted-space">&#xa0;</span></span></p><p class="p6"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e77bf3dd0895c0058b4569-929-697/house.jpg" alt="house flintstone neighborhood" data-mce-source="Bing Maps"><p class="source"><span>Bing Maps</span></p><p class="caption">A glance of the very normal neighborhood that the Flintstone House is in.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p8">The Flintstone property is quite different than its neighboring homes in the quiet neighborhood of Hillsborough. Surrounded by conservative, traditional houses, the Flintstone House already stuck out like a sore thumb when it was painted white, <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/flintstone-house-hillsborough">but by 2000</a>, the new owners who <a href="http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/45-Berryessa-Way-Hillsborough-CA-94010/15535150_zpid/">bought the property in 1996 for $800,000</a> had painted it a garish rust orange.</p><p class="p8"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebedd0895c0058b45f3-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_kitchen.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_kitchen flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">The new color may have been the result of eccentric San Francisco architect Eugene Tsui's involvement, who in addition to an "Edises Kitchen" project remodel (above) wanted to create a complementary second residence on the property. <a href="http://www.tdrinc.com/edises.html">Though numerous mock ups still exist on his website</a>, the project never came to fruition.</p><p class="p9"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e77bf3dd0895c0058b456a-926-460/plans.jpg" alt="plans for flintstone addition" data-mce-source="Tsui Design" data-link="http://www.tdrinc.com/edises.html"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.tdrinc.com/edises.html">Tsui Design</a></span></p><p class="caption">The mock up of Tsui's vision for a second structure near the Flintstone House.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p8"><a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/flintstone-house-hillsborough">According to Atlas Obscura</a>, many celebrities have been tied to the home. George Lucas, O.J. Simpson, and even a few unnamed Sillicon Valley investors have all been rumored to have either bought, lived in, or made a bid on the house.</p><p class="p8"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55e8aebfdd0895c0058b45f4-1280-853/45%20berryessa%20way_exterior_55.jpg" alt="45 Berryessa Way_exterior_55 flintstone house" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors"><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Alain Pinel Realtors</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p class="p8">And now, it's back on the market. The current anonymous owners are shopping around the three-bedroom, two-bath, and two-car garage home for $4.2 million&#xa0;that -&#xa0;given its 2,700 square feet of space and remarkable history in the area - it could actually fetch.</p><p class="p8">Then again, perhaps a nearby Hillsborgouh resident will buy it to simply knock down the "eyesore."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/swedish-crowdsourced-house-2015-8">This Swedish house was designed by 2 million people - and it is surprisingly attractive</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/MDlhYjRhYmQyMjA2NWM2Yzg4YTJkYzcz"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="pqeDV4djq6tlLbTe5fH34BAWmGxFzlba" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'pqeDV4djq6tlLbTe5fH34BAWmGxFzlba',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "sillicon valley" and got 5 results

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