The young woman was often compared to Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple due to the way she dressed for conferences (black blouses around her neck), but also for the fast ascent.
Her company, Theranos, was supposed to revolutionize blood testing labs, but it turned out to be a scam.
Witness hearings in San Jose will begin on Wednesday, September 8, in the lawsuit filed against the former billionaire.
The “woman in black” of the healthcare industry
Elizabeth Holmes has “grown” her company since she was 20 years old. She had that unshakable sense of purpose in life, a feeling that characterizes any other entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
The young woman gave up her engineering studies at Stanford to start her own company.
“Theranos” is little known, but private investors bought shares that in 2014 were valued at an incredible $ 9 billion. Elizabeth Holmes, the main shareholder, then became a billionaire with a fortune valued at $ 3.6 billion.
Seen as a “pure-blooded” Silicon Valley product, it was named in 2015 by Forbes as the youngest millionaire to make her fortune on her own. Without benefiting from an inheritance, he succeeded on his own, with his own means, in just a few years.
Described as a hard worker, she did not go on vacation and did not appear to have a private life. Invited to TED conferences at the Clinton Foundation, the young woman was welcomed everywhere and even claimed to have collaborated with the Pentagon.
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How the genius in chemistry fell
In 2015, a journalist from The Wall Street Journal published an investigation into Theranos’ difficulties in exploiting the promised technology. The investigation revealed that the device created by the company was not, in fact, able to provide exact results of the analyzes and, therefore, the employees used the same methods as in conventional laboratories.
The US Food and Drug Administration is taking a closer look at Theranos. In 2016, Elizabeth Holmes was banned from working in the laboratory industry for two years, and the Theranos center was suspended.
“Forbes” magazine reviews the estimate made on the net worth of the young woman’s fortune, and Fortune magazine nominates her in the top “The most disappointing leaders in the world”.
In March 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission officially charged both Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes with fraud. The young entrepreneur resigns from the position of general manager of the company she founded. He is not allowed to run a listed company until 2028.
The company was officially closed in September 2018. In the same year, in June, the former chief operating officer of the company, Ramesh Balwani, was also charged: nine counts of electronic fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit electronic fraud by distributing to customers blood tests with falsified results.
He had an affair with Elizabeth Holmes since 2003, and in 2005 they moved in together.
Holmes and Balwani ran the company together, cultivating a corporate style characterized by “secrecy and fear.” Their romantic relationship was largely hidden from the time they ran the company together.
Balwani left Theranos in 2016 after authorities began investigations.
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