TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? THE RISE AND FALL OF THERANOS
Kelli Corona
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/11620036/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmess-five-best-cover-story-appearances
mentor to come aboard the project, but more
In March 2004, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, a sophomore at Stanford University at the time studying chemical engineering, dropped out of school to found Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize the future of diagnostics and healthcare. The name is a clever blend of the two words “therapy” and “diagnosis.”
impressively, attracted $400 million from venture capitalists. She further assembled an all-star board of support that included former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz, former President Bill Clinton, and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, among others, which helped Theranos’ value soar to a staggering $9+ billion at its peak. Holmes’ stake in it was worth
Motivated by her own phobia of needles, Holmes created Theranos with the purpose of offering an inexpensive, effective, and less painful alternative to the traditional blood test, claiming to be able to screen for a wide array of ailments such as cancer and diabetes with just a few small drops of blood, essentially reproducing effects of a full-scale laboratory. There is a plethora of Silicon Valley companies claiming to make world-changing products, so what made Theranos in particular stand out? One might argue its remarkable origin story-- painting Holmes to be a fearless trailblazer and an innovative force to be reckoned with within the male-dominated tech industry-- was responsible for its initial success. Theranos also vowed to solve a problem that was relatable, taking into consideration that most people will get a blood test at some point in their life. Based on this framework, it wasn’t a surprise that Holmes was often found at the center of beneficial press, emanating the image of Steve Jobs by wearing black turtlenecks on the covers of Forbes and Fortune Magazines. Spanning the next decade, Holmes rallied her own Stanford professor and
half of that, making her one of the youngest selfmade billionaires in history. She was named “the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire” by Forbes, “America’s Coolest Billionaire” by Inc. Magazine, and even made Time Magazine’s list of the “100 most influential people”. Her pledge to revolutionize the billion-dollar lab industry that she believed was swindling people with expensive, antiquated, and needlessly painful needle jabs resonated with both customers and investors. The Theranos method required “99.9 percent less blood,” according to Holmes and would be taken from the prick of your finger instead of a vein. The sample would be sent to a lab in a “nanotainer” and tested using Theranos’s patented technology, the “Edison Machine”. Theranos also claimed it would be able to deliver results in 4 to 24 hours, which would reduce anxiety associated with waiting. According to Holmes, the tests would also cost about half of current Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates for blood tests.
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