If you ask 10 people why Amyris failed, then you might get 10 unique answers. Many speak and write authoritatively about the subject to broadcast the lessons learned and how their company or VC investment will avoid the same pitfalls. It's adorable.

But almost all obituaries are wrong.

Amyris didn't implode because it chose the wrong molecules, or chose the wrong markets, or pursued the wrong B2B vs. B2C composition for its business model, or failed to scale, or built large-scale manufacturing facilities in Brazil, or many of the other reasons you can find on a noisy internet.

Amyris failed because there was no accountability.

It was enabled by many individual failures. The media failed to hold the business and its executives accountable, prioritizing pageviews and innovation porn over competent and critical reporting. Institutional investors failed to conduct proper due diligence in the business, extending legitimacy to an incompetent management team. The board of directors failed to remove a chief executive officer who has mismanaged the company for over a decade, delivering an all-time share loss of 99%. Securities regulators and financial investigators sat idle through it all.

The company's inevitable bankruptcy wasn't driven by the difficulty of bringing new technologies to market, or the inability to forecast the future with perfect accuracy. Amyris knowingly and intentionally misled investors for years and, at times, manipulated financial numbers and markets.