From Kallia Kastani
There is an intense, unexpected emotional moment in the new documentary by the award-winning Alex Gibney and HBO ("The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley") about Holmes. This, where "Fortune" journalist Roger Parloff, who had written in 2014 a praise profile of Elizabeth Holmes and the news of the founding of the start-up Theranos, remains speechless from the violation of the code of ethics and the magnitude of the fraud that is exposed. So much so that it hardly articulates a word.
Of course, the most riveting face in the documentary screened in late January at the Sundance Film Festival is the "heroine" of the story herself. The blonde, slender figure, with the huge blue eyes - deer eyes that look straight into the lens, without ever opening and closing, as if hypnotized - and the deep, evocative voice that promises to make you part of "a story that will change the world". As it turned out, even this voice - the "siren song" that stunned dozens of serious investors, powerful men, politicians like Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch - was false. Elizabeth Holmes' real voice is finer.
And yet, everything started well. As the daughter of an esthete family of American bigwigs (her father held various management positions at the Organization for International Development and her mother was Assistant Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Defense), Elizabeth was raised - or at least so she said - with the ideal of science, of excellence, of social contribution. At 7 she tried to make her own time machine. At 9, she told her family that when she grew up, she would become a billionaire - her relatives remember that, since then, she "looked very serious and determined". That same year she wrote a letter to her father, stating: "What I really want in my life is to discover something new. "Something that humanity considers impossible to achieve."
What could this be? Since she had a pathological fear of needles, she thought it would be interesting if she could change the field of healthcare. Her goal was for all the very expensive, diagnostic tests to be done cheaply and quickly with just one drop of blood. With a painless sting.
Following the example of the entrepreneurial legends created by giant companies starting "from a garage", in 2003 19-year-old student Elizabeth Holmes, left Stanford University where she studied chemical engineering in order to invest the money from her tuition: company, which would specialize in health services. It took about a decade to implement her idea. Almost.
Theranos' Edison device has been touted as a revolutionary diagnostic tool that allows patients to cheaply test their blood at a neighborhood pharmacy with a single sting. Cheap and fast blood tests, immediately available, without visiting the doctor. A drop of blood could (within 4 hours) provide answers for at least 200 diseases. The cost was 50% of traditional blood tests.
Naturally, the value of Theranos - which started with private equity and funding of just $ 800 million - skyrocketed from zero to $ 9 billion. The magazines were crazy about the youngest self-made woman to make the Forbes list of America's "400 richest people" and published entire tributes to the quirky Elizabeth Holmes: the billionaire who - like Steve Jobs - wore only black, not she never watched TV, she learned Chinese on her own, she knew a lot about Jane Austen's books and she was the most powerful new player in health technology.
And all - but all - that, was a huge scam. In fact, Theranos' magical "product" never worked, and Holmes hid the truth from her board, associates, employees, and customers for years. She herself, lying about alleged certifications of the company's technology by public bodies and universities, "tied" the employees with suffocating confidentiality agreements that did not allow them to talk about what was happening in the company, threatened and fired people at the slightest reason and responded. dating investors, accumulating huge sums of money, which -among other things- secured her a glam, luxurious life. Villas, bodyguards, private jet travel, Birkin bags. In June 2014, Holmes was on the cover of "Fortune", entitled: "This CEO is thirsty for blood."
Sixteen months after this cover, everything started to fall apart. The Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou published an extensive, revealing article on Theranos, questioning the methods and reliability of diagnostics made with the company's machines. As it turned out, Theranos only performed about 12 tests using its own incomplete technology, and most of the tests were performed with normal blood samples, given intravenously, in other laboratories and in alarmingly unscientific conditions.
In the aftermath of the revelations, the senior executives of the company left, the Board of Directors was dissolved, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission and the Ministry of Justice intervened, the laboratories of Tehranos were closed. Holmes's 9 billion empire turned to dust overnight, leaving investors crying over their money. The "successor to Steve Jobs" now faces a mountain of charges in federal courts (for fraud, conspiracy, etc.) that could lead to 20 years in prison. "Fortune" published a bitter mea culpa letter to its readers. Carreyrou's report became a book, "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" - soon to hit theaters, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
In turn, Holmes - who declares herself a "victim" of the story - is preparing her own answer. A documentary or another book that will sell musk. A step from which "her own side, in this story" will be narrated. But that probably won't answer the only question that still plagues Silicon Valley: how is it possible for a blonde with a fake voice to deceive so many for so long….
