I’m a medical laboratory professional, and I can tell you that not everyone was taken in by Elizabeth Holmes. The medical laboratory community was crying foul from the very beginning.
agreed, my father worked in the medical field his whole life. the first time he heard about Theranos was in a NYTimes article, and he pinned it on his fridge and wrote the words "Fraud" in red marker on it, circling the word Theranos. it was a wonderful point of conversation with everyone who saw it. He had worked his whole life in blood related fields and knew it was bullshit from the first moment. He still loves to pull that article out and use it as "point no.1" about how little the press understands science.
she should've gone into politics. She had a thirst for power, a disgusting and inhuman disregard for the well-being of others, a near-superhuman ability to charm and deceive people, and an outstanding talent for gathering the support of political string-pullers. If she'd had the patience to wait until she was 35, she would've been president.
When i first heard of Theranos as a science teacher, I had my doubts. i asked my wife, who works in pathology (blood testing) she literally scoffed in laughter, because it is impossible. You see, some of the tests they were claiming require such low concentrations that you absolutely need a large amount of blood. You can not accurately (a strong requirement for administering good health advice) test a small amount of blood for some of the tests they were claiming required only a drop.
@Daeng Selili A TV isn't taking blood. A palm TV isn't claiming to perform multiple tests on one drop of blood, which is physically impossible. This is a bad analogy.
The fact Elizabeth named their machine Edison is absolutely hilarious when you realize that: 1. It's apparently named after Thomas Edison, who was hailed as a genius of his time, only for it to be later revealed that he was a fraud who stole patents from other inventors and took credit for their accomplishments. 2. Taking point no. 1 into account, Theranos was conducting tests on other companies' machines and presenting results as if they were done on Edison machines.
Such a thief. No original ideas. She admired Steve jobs and stole his turtleneck look, and liked Yoda and stole his famous line and had it painted on the walls of her company. Lol
She clearly is a brilliant candidate to study about Sociopathy for those interested in psychology. The blood test thing was a sham right in its premise because the finger prick only takes capillary blood which is appropriate for only limited tests. You need venous and sometimes even arterial blood for specific tests!
@Tranquil thoughts She has no respect for the process. Elizabeth was not in medical school and had no experience working with patients and even less experience working in bio medical engineering. Years of research, testing and investigation and even basic medical science would have told Elizabeth the machine was not possible. Had she finished schooling she might have come up with something that actually worked. However she was also hampered by her horrible managerial skills. Employees under Elizabeth and Sunny eventually move on or quit due to abusive practices.
Felt like she was intially buying time hoping for a breakthrough and by the time she realises the mountain of challenges and obstacles, she was too deep in and the only way left is to continue. She definitely knew it is a ticking timebomb waiting to explode.
I read a memoir on this. I think she initially thought it was possible. And for awhile I think she genuinely thought she could somehow make it happen, hence the intense work demands and development. But eventually I think she got addicted to the fame she achieved. She was being viewed as the female Steve Jobs and viewed as a genius. And I tend to think that mattered most to her.
3:05 As an engineer, this is what pissed me off about Holmes. She going around telling people that she's "a trained engineer" when she went to school for 18 months and had zero working knowledge in that field. The first year is all math, chemistry, and physics prerequisite courses, so she took 3 or 4 actual engineering classes at most. It's like dropping out of medical school a year into the program and telling people that you're a doctor. What a scumbag.
She constantly badgered and threatened to fire anyone who disagreed with her and set up two engineering teams to compete with each other, threatening to fire the whole team. That must have resulted in an absolute toxic work place. It's always nice to see a rich beach like this get what's coming to her. I can't wait to see her sentenced in September.
This still blows my mind. I had a career as a lab tech and phlebotomist before working at a local Walgreens in the pharmacy. I remember my pharmacist asking me "can they do all these with a drop?" I quicky stated no, not with a drop. While we did use microtubes for newborns , even these were difficult sometimes as CBCs would immediately fail should the blood clot. Microtainers were notorious for having insufficient potassium anticoag lining for their blood. Regardless, most tests run off serum which is an EVEN smaller sample of blood. Other than a specific item of a met or lipid panel, there's no way a drop could run 99% of these tests.
@Matt I have a couple relatives who for some odd reason seem to think that ALL rich people got there by good honest hard work & none could ever do any wrong..... They believe this woman & SBF were good honest people who just made to many mistakes & got in over their heads. Despite her getting 11 yrs lol... I find it very odd, almost like some mental glitch. Sure there are many honest wealthy people who there the right way but there's also plenty who got there illegally. I just find it very odd how they think no rich person could ever be guilty of any wrongdoing.
I read a memoir about this fraud. My wife, who works as a medical lab technologist and has been in these various roles with blood testing for around 7 years now, was amazed that this ever got any traction to begin with at all. She explained to me that basically the amount of blood they wanted to use wouldn’t be scientifically possible to get any type of accurate result and basically it seems any person with knowledge of this industry has immediately brushed away this idea ever being possible to begin with. Kinda crazy just how long she was able to keep it going. At the same time it’s one of the most awful frauds that has ever occurred to me. Outside of the financial fraud that occurred the harm to health and danger to people that this fraud had is just beyond evil. I can believe that she began with good intentions but the clear lying she carried out for years is just so fascinatingly evil.
I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from a top university. I can tell you I would need lots of time, money, consultants and research to understand whether this would even be possible. Let alone to actually leave school to claim you WILL do it. Absolutely unethical what she did and completely dishonest. The cancer patient thing with Pfizer completely blew my mind, that is just pure evil in my books. Idc if you wanna be rich, it’s not worth anybody’s life, especially those desperately trying to fight for it. The scariest part is Pfizer backed her up, very questionable
You only needed to look at the hardware Not even computers that small could run stably or go into peak performance because it's just too small especially for hardware made in the 2000s when most hardware that small could barely run a game let alone run an os without burning up
@Skank or You Can Call Me Maurice You’re right, It’s absolutely immoral and unjustifiable. A single loss of life is an irreparable and irreplaceable loss to the world, no amount of money can replace that. She truly does deserve the conviction, It’s kinder than what she did to those people
@Skank or You Can Call Me Maurice I remember my friend who I studied with showed me her before she was exposed saying “she’s amazing, she’s the youngest billionaire ever. She must be a genius” I remember seeing it thinking how much it blew my mind what she said she could accomplish. I kept thinking over and over how Someone so young could accomplish so much research and resources. I thought she must’ve come from a rich family or she was a child prodigy. Alas, when I heard the news she was a fake I thought “wow, that’s scary” how someone could lie their way to the top with ease and how big serious money could invest in something with very little factual evidence and without doing some thorough Research First. Now I know exactly what she did and I thought she was just a liar, I see now she’s more like a monster. The things she did, absolutely no consideration for others whatsoever. She was willing to let people who trusted her and had faith in her die all for her own personal gain. She deserves this imprisonment, it’s actually less cruel than what she did to those cancer patients and the many other companies that would’ve received venture Capitalist Support had she not lied to them.
This reminds me of the time my first friend and I wanted to make a machine that would transport us to TV and movie worlds. A problem arose when we realized that neither of us knew how to build such a device, which was only compounded by the fact that said machine was going to be made out of logs.
I actually built this machine and used it continuously with my brother and several friends. We travelled far and wide until unfortunately for us, it started to rain. You see the Whirlpool refrigerator box melted due to its meeting a element so strong it disintegrated it after being in contact with it for mere seconds. That element? H20
In the world currently, we get excited by "tech", coding, apps, dashboards etc. So I can see how people with zero medical or chemical knowledge would buy into this. As soon as I heard what Theranos did, I was very confused why they are in Silicon Valley. The problem that they tried solving was not an information, or speed or size of calculation problem.
Not to be "That guy" but it was likely cultural. It's silicon valley. They want their unicorns. Easy investment money from people who wouldn't _dare_ to question you.
The only reason this scam company was in Silicon Valley was because her dad bought her way into Stanford U and she had a Steve Jobs fetish that was disturbing (as detailed in the book Bad Blood).
Really her idea is a technology concept and a fairly simple one, although requiring very fairly sophisticated tech behind it.. capturing a small amount of blood doing analysis on it and transmitting the data to a proper testing machine was the 'easy' part.. the hard part and where the company hit a brick wall was in trying to re-develop the entire testing machine into a more compact size.. I think had she just accepted that couldn't be done and focused entirely on the testing capturing and transmitting/receiving tech, this concept may have worked well.. it only needed to interface with existing testing machines in labs, not replace the machines.
THANK YOU for outlining upfront how the whole concept was a physical impossibility. As someone with a background in medicine and biochemistry, it is infuriating seeing all the interviews on most docs by investors who claimed they had no way of knowing it was a farce. The pre med undergrads in the lab where I worked knew it was nonsense, but VCs making millions somehow couldn't figure it out?
This was the equivalent of saying you will solve nuclear fusion within the next years. As a medical doctor in lab medicine I am really astonished by the naivity of the investors.
There were a large amount of skilled professionals who knew such grade of testing simply wasn't possible, but they weren't the people who counted in big financial decisions. Sadly, this is true in many other situations. E.H. and her associates knew that their trick had no future, but they had an unshakeable faith into their capabilities of keeping their investors bamboozled for ever: this is not realistic, and the main indicator that they were delusional at best, and full blown psychopaths at most. The many professionals which had seen the reality of the facts were simply not taken into consideration - how sad. There are sectors were Science has made enormous progress, like placing four billions transistors in a chip; on the other hand, Science took 30 years to simply double the capacity of lithium batteries. Unless you know physics, you can't understand what sector can improve rapidly, and what sector cannot. The scammers rely on this type of ignorance to defraud people...
Isnt there some regulatory board in the US that should actually test these products themselves and look into the people making these claims? Maybe they were bribed or influenced i suppose
I'm not sure a physicist would be able to tell you much about blood testing. I wouldn't hire albert Einstein to do my taxes or be my lawyer. At the highest levels of education and training knowledge is extremely specialized.
Honestly it’s so sad because if her goal had been something feasible, like testing one single virus or bacteria with a single finger prick in a way that was attainable for everyone her company could have grown and helped people instead of hurting them
I doubt that could have turned into a wholesome story. Her tool was manipulation and that tool is not really useable for good. Also she would have needed to be humble in knowing that she needs outside expertise, which manipulators don't do. And if she went for something smaller but achievable then she would not have been the second Steve Jobs.
@Barry F Our company is also somewhat going down but there is always hope that things might change. Also, there are always new employees who have hope and they are totally mislead by the seniors who know what's wrong. So the company basically lives off these new people who go in with false expectations.
I work in technology for a major company. I know of few people in our organization that would play along with such deception and lack of expertise at the top. We'd all take a walk.
Here's why she could succeed with little support and confirmation from medical professionals: Her machine was supposed to replace doctor's visits and lab testings, so it looked like the medical professionals who didn't believe her were just scared of being replaced by a machine and losing their jobs and importance. Had a machine like that actually worked, that would totally be the case. And once she discredited the only community that had the knowledge to prove that she's a phoney, she could fool the world.
Are you kidding me?! _Theranos_ is the reason Safeway went under?! I'm so freaking mad. Safeway was a good store. Good product selection and the best prices anywhere. And an excellent bakery section.
@Justin Barion As mentioned, Safeway was bought out by the same company that owns Thrifty Foods, so while in _name_ they still operate, in _practice_ they do not. The Safeway stores that still exist are effectively just Thrifty's with a different name, due to new management.
I recently saw the series on starplus called the Dropout, and I’m surprised by its accuracy. Ik it’s a drama and some things are changed, but highly recommend it
I was there when Theranos was still in its infancy and everyone was claiming it would be the next revolutionary thing in science (one of my biggest flexes LOL) and I also remember watching Elizabeth's Ted Talk and thinking to myself... Does this lady have something in her throat? And then when speculations started flying around that she was faking her voice, my first thought was, did anyone actually believe her to begin with?
Yeah it's absurd really. OK she may have a revolutionary medical concept, but you absolutely need properly skilled scientists and medical professionals to develop and bring a product like that to market, it's a medical and scientific process which has to be followed strictly, not just a commercial underlying like developing the iphone which is how she seemed to view it. Peoples lives depended on this tech working properly, and medical peoples careers. Going through the process and having critical feedback from your engineers and scentists is vital to realise what's possible and not possible, and how you might approach a problem differently. She seems to have cut herself off from reality and refused to accept any critical feedback from people who knew what they were doing. There's being driven to solve a technological challenge like Steve Job's was, and there's being totally detached from reality trying do the impossible with an impossible time frame.
Could be done, if you know whar are doing and hire the right people. "Can we do this?" "No." "Ok." instead of: "Can we do this?" "No." "You fired." // "Can we do this?" "Yes (Lie)" "You promoted!"
I remember being a kid and hearing about this on the news (we live nearby), and thinking “oh cool.” Then, many years later, still going to the hospital regularly and getting my blood drawn like usual, I was curious about what ended up happening. I was really surprised by everything, lol.
My favourite part about stories like this is how many people warn everyone they can but they get brushed off. It happens so often that I no longer doubt the bad decisions people make in movies. They're realistic now, this is reality.
I watched this today and the funny thing is the verdict came within the same day and she is serving 11 years in jail. That's a good end tbh. One of the best I've seen, we can't let a person like this walk on the earth for that long and not eat her cake.
I’ve worked for Walgreens 15 years and I used to perform some of these tests that were replaced by Theranos. If not aware of any lawsuits against Walgreens, but they should have been sued as well for their recklessness with patients’ lives.
Thank you for this vid. I didn't follow that story (lack of interest). But I've been wondering recently how and when this "thing" got so wrong. I was particularly curious as to why and how so many prominent people and large companies got involved in this if the machines, we're told now, made no sense. In the end, the fact that she insisted on testing real cancer patients with a system she knew did not work is itself worth the 11 years she got.
Regarding her not caring about her senior employee's suicide: she also had no qualms about doing unreliable tests for cancer patients, lying to people giving her hundreds of millions, etc. Meanwhile, her dad (and probably childhood role model) was one of the execs at Enron, who were famously on tape joking about how they were screwing the elderly over, like cliched movie villains, so it's not exactly a shocker she didn't care a guy killed himself because of her lies.
@John Smith Fair enough, but that's beside the point anyway. My point is she literally started a fake company that marketed extremely unreliable blood tests as revolutionary and accurate, which ended up reassuring people they didn't have cancer or other time-sensitive ailments, genetic conditions, etc., when in fact, some of them definitely did, because all of their blood tests were in fact complete garbage and physically impossible. So, if one of her colleagues actually did kill themselves, or simply overdosed, it wouldn't be too shocking she'd feel totally indifferent about it, considering.
It is pretty scary how long Theranos and Holmes were able to operate this scheme with such ridiculous valuations and absolutely nothing to back it up on.
I'm not surprised. She's a great manipulator of people, possibly one of the best ever. It helped her greatly that she could play on the pathological wish to see women making great achievements in male-dominated areas. She presented these ideologues everything they dreamt of: a female Steve Jobs.
When I first heard about this story I could not understand how it was possible for something like this to happen. But when you learn about all the parts of it, you see it was about 100 different things that came together perfectly for her to be able trick so many people for so long. It would be very hard for anyone to pull this off again in the way she did. It would be one thing for someone with a big background in business, and prior history of success to pull off a massive fraud like this, but for a college dropout with no money, to become the world's youngest female self-made billionaire (on paper), with nothing but an imaginary product, would be near impossible. It wasn't just that she was a great liar, the stars also aligned perfectly for her to be able to pull this off.
"Filled with determination, she dropped out of Stanford at age 19 and started her own company". Yes, "filled with determination" but not "filled" with any knowledge on chemistry, engineering or basic biology 😂😂😂
As someone who's done at least two blood tests in my life time (vein or artery) I can't understand why she had to start so big. Hell, if she could find a way to just halfen or even use 75% the amount of blood they need it would have been revolutionary.
@Matt I think that might be part of why she chose this route. she knew a minor upgrade would sell, but not on the same scale as something that was too good to be true.
@Tamlynn idk if it ended up going anywhere, but my uncle used to be on a team engineering what was basically a mini InfraRed camera with a screen that would be used for stuff like finding veins! Much simpler solution
I think her ego was just to an extreme level. A slight improvement Would have been big but it wouldn’t have been world genius extreme to the level she wanted to be. But at the same time even 75% of the blood, which would’ve been a huge scientific advancement, wouldn’t have been the patient advancement of this idea. Even if you took a quarter less blood it would still require the blood draw process as normal. The real sale of this idea was not having to do thag and having the ease of a finger prick. For some people who have difficulty getting their blood drawn that would’ve been an amazing advancement. It just wasn’t possible with current technology and she couldn’t get the money to try and get there in a time frame to actually possibly develop something like it. If this were ever possible it would require many years to advance things to that level which would be many years of sinking tons of money into development without a return on investment anywhere in sight. She needed the illusion of the progress to get the deals from pharmacies to bring in revenue so that she could entice investors.
@Maj U Another benefit to pricking the finger vs taking vials of blood are for people like me whose veins are difficult to find. Seriously everytime I’ve needed blood drawn the phlebotomist usually pokes me a few times before finding a good vein. I hate it lol
Still doesn’t really make sense the body can give so much blood so doesn’t actually matter if you take 1 test tube or 10. Only innovation would be the time between test and results, but this is an issue because there are not many people that can accurately interpret the data
I don’t think that the verdict was just. I don’t care about the billionare investors who lost their money. I care about the fact that she knowingly endangered human lives, the fact that nobody died, was sheer luck and the fact that it didn’t go on for very long. Fraud is one thing but this could very easily have killed people. She knew that her so called technology wasn’t working and she did it anyway. Again, not to the investors but people. Sociopath!
@NYC State of Mind The judge who sentenced her recommended "she be incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, in Texas, a minimum security facility with limited or no perimeter fencing. 'No one wants to get kicked out because compared to other places in the prison system, this place is heaven. If you have to go it's a good place to go,' said a criminal defense lawyer."
@Random Grandma Hillary REALLY??? Seriously my friend it sounds over fantastical . Please find yourself along with your elk another spooky boogeyman..,…… woooooohooooowoooooo
@JulCaos The whole Enron scandal erupted in 2001. I'm sure he did his 2 years in jail and did just fine with the money he was able to pocket from that company. Liz Holmes grew up in a mansion and went to the finest private schools in Houston, dear ole dad did just fine lying, cheating, and stealing.
this is such a huge insane story I only found out now that the Netflix show is out, I'm ashamed to admit. How she managed to get away with it even for as long as she did is remarkable. and how the hell did she think she will get out of it???? how didn't the medical, scientific community call her out sooner??? She's definitely a bit crazy and you can see it in her eyes but you got to give her some credit to be able to pull smth this huge off starting at 19. probably because she is definitely a full blown sociopath.
What is wrong with a society that takes so long to uncover crimes and bring criminals to justice? I hope Theranos finds a conscience in prison. And serves every day of her sentence.
Her origin story makes me wonder if she legitimately started out wanting to help people and for how long she thought she was helping people. I think it's possible she was deluded into thinking the product would actually work and change the world even if deep down she knew it wouldn't, and that's how she justified her actions. Just a theory.
@JAMES RECKNOR My guess this is just a very rare thing. After all she was a very good manipulator who could convince almost everybody she had contact with. Also it is quite easy to get a crazy look on basically any person if we just take a picture at the wrong time. So it's quite easy to demonize your opponents that way. And those people who never have that crazy look either are abnormally good people or they are actors all their life.
I once had to get a blood test to determine what allergies I had, as a routine blood test to determine if I had an allergy to soya showed that I had lived my whole life with a pretty severe allergy to it with no knowledge. They took three vials of blood to do strictly allergy testing, nothing else. Now I’m not a chemist, I actually failed high school chemistry in my final year, but as soon as it was said that Theranos could do all this with just a drop I knew it was impossible. Maybe if the machine was trimmed down to focus on a single disease (like diabetes) or function and had a team of actual scientists, biologists and chemists, it would have worked.
Theranos is a wild scenario i have been obsessed with since 2019. I've been following the criminal trial. She apparently has gotten married during, and had a child. She was found guilty. She has been a real piece of work.
I never really agreed that Elizabeth was a sociopath, I had the mindset that she was just trying to prove to herself that she could do this, even though she hurt people to get there. But the fact that she pretty much brushed off Ian’s death- is disgusting. He killed himself essentially due to the stress from HER COMPANY, and she didn’t even call his wife back??? Sociopath.
I remember the first time I saw Elizabeth in an interview on TV and my bs alarms started going off. I couldn’t place what it was but I knew something was off about her. Glad to see that others got the same feeling and exposed this fraud for her slimy real self.
"Bad Blood," the book by WSJ reporter John Carreyrou, is really good if you want to dig even deeper. Holmes didn't hesitate to go after Tyler Schultz through his own family - there's an incident where he goes to visit his grandfather (George Schultz) to try again to warn him, and he gets ambushed by Theranos lawyers who were already WAITING IN THE HOUSE.
@Anna Lake amazing that people at the highest levels allowed her to even be associated with them. Wow. We all should be deeply concerned with the levels of security within the government if these kinds of people get in. The governments are in turmoil right now and should be asking how this could have happened and don’t sweep that part under the wrong.
Yyyyyyup. If you believe something strong enough, it becomes true. ("Peter Pan" the children in the audience have to say out loud "I BELIEVE" so that Tinker Bell will live. . . . )
This documentary is so much more entertaining than anything I've seen on Netflix recently. She seems like a credible compelling villain...for real life.
Pretty scary how that former secretary of state didn't listen to his own grandson with this type of information and did nothing. I wonder what else he did while as the secretary of state. Probably chose to look the other way all the time
Yep, it caused a real rift in his family and he wound up eating some serious crow over it. It really calls a lot of things about him into question. I'm thinking that a lot of his government dealings were sketchy considering how he handled this. He had a sterling legacy and blew it over this, that is not smart.
This reminds me of the time my first friend and I wanted to make a machine that would transport us to TV and movie worlds. A problem arose when we realized that neither of us knew how to build such a device, which was only compounded by the fact that said machine was going to be made out of logs
I don't remember writing the comment above this one. I don't say it isn't possible I wrote it but I think someone has logged into my account and wrote the comment.
Hello, I've watched several of your presentations now and I'm very impressed with your delivery. I've researched your findings and conclusion independently and found them to be correct and accurate. As a result, I've subscribed to your channel and will continue to learn from your presentations. I apologise if I sound overbearing and overly formal but I believe that with the vast number of inaccuracies prevalent on the internet, research into the content of a channel is a vital part of staying accurately informed. Thank you for the time and effort you clearly spend on researching your subject matter.
I find it so strange, that in my studies we have to come up with so many fake projects and products, and the lecturer would question every single small detail and can immediately tell if something wouldn't work out or is done wrong. But somehow companies like Theranos or Nikola can make Billions without a real product and no-one notices it or just ignore any signs of fraud completely...
Is it really possible that even the board wouldn’t know about any of this? Just wondering because Elizabeth could possibly just be the scapegoat. It’s extremely hard to keep these secrets from a “powerful” board for a “decade.”
The fact that she got so much investment for tech that nobody bothered to verify actually worked is amazing. Not sure how u hide broken tech for so long
@Upful Soul problem was that truly smart researchers and professors didn’t want to work for her and told her multiple times that her idea as good as it was on a paper is not implementable. She didn’t listen to top of the field scientists and went ahead with defrauding millionaires with zero knowledge in the field of chemistry, molecular biology, physics or medicine. The outcome was predictable…
People and companies are so addicted to making money they do not care who or how many others they destroy. It's amazing to hear or read the backstories of every rich person and who they screwed to get the money, from family to friends they just don't care.
The fact that this got into Walgreens is terrifying. I imagine most medical and/or researchers knew that the idea of this was impossible. On top of that, they weren't approved by the FDA! This means the due diligence was slim to none. That's amazing to me, as well as inexcusable. I also give credit to the owner of WSJ. When the story was about to break, she went straight to the top to kill the story, only to be told that he trusted his journalists and editors, and he would not interfere. Kudos.
@Ralph Alvarez Lol, same w/the judge at her sentencing who probably fed her over-bloated ego when he stated how sad it is because she's brilliant! (After she apologized from every cell of her body)!
@isabel lind the grandson was interviewed later and the old man still held a grudge. That goes to show just how bloated his ego was. The grandson was better off without the approval of the old windbag.
It is mostly possible, by now there are even companies getting really close to what she promised. She just didn't have the patience to actually wait for her researchers to catch up. The tragic and scary thing is that had she given R&D some more years instead of going on a total power trip, it could've all worked out...
One of my favorite parts of this story is that Rupert Murdock did not kill the story. The other favorite parts are Tyler Schultz and Erica Chung’s parts I. Taking down Theranos. John Carreyrou is a Rock Star
14:18 The fact that they could come to a conclusion that stacking 6 minilabs skews results more is remarkable, and a bit sus. Capable of measuring levels of how bad you are measuring in a non-test production environment (you just want to get the work done) is remarkable.
It reminds me so much of one of my previous employers: a tobacco spin-off in Winston-Salem. Hide failure by spreading fear or cheat, subdue critical voices or fire them. Fortunately no one got hurt.
16:45 I loved when Elizabeth told Jareed Leto back then "It's Theranin' time" and then they both Theraned all over the Silicon Valley, it was truly a moment of human history time!
When Elizabeth come out of prison, she would write a memoir detailing her scamming experiences. Her book will become the best selling book of the year. Then she become a motivational speaker for the crowd and she can make millions again, just like Jordan Belfort in Wolf of the Wall Street. History always repeats.
But then the victims of her scam will sue her for whatever she makes. That is, if the government doesn't claim restitution from her first. If she's smart, she'll just fade away into obscurity after serving her time.
She got that right: "it's about getting people to believe in you" .. and nothing more.. she had a professor who didn't buy into this and stated as much but her concern and expertise was diminished
If this story doesn't prove that your connections are more important than anything, I don't know what will. I'm so glad making connections is so easy and natural for literally every person on the planet especially people who have real ideas and real plans for the future.
Nope, if people are struggling to find a job without connections Trust me, it's a lot fucking harder and downright impossible to get the right connections that is anywhere near silicon valley unless you lucked out or were born rich
Anybody that passed 5th grade science could easily have known the product could never do even 10% of what she claimed. The people who got ripped off deserve the loses because all they had to do was ask anybody the facts and they would have known. They lost the money because they were arrogant and thought they knew better.
When I first saw this video, I read the title, and before I even clicked on the link, I said to myself, "So far." Less than 4 years later, and I'd like to talk to you about FTX... It's time the federal government end speculative investments. Period.
Elizabeth Holmes scares the shit out of me. Her entire persona (especially her gigantic piercing eyes) gives me the impression she's trying to hypnotize people. I fully expect that even if she's found guilty for her crimes that she will escape jail time.
@Leah Rachelle No because every doctor and every diagnosis has the potential to be false. It’s up to you to get a second opinion. Plus no one died except someone committed suicide. To be honest that guy committed suicide because he knew he was guilty just as much as Elizabeth Holmes except he took the east way out. No one really suffered except the people who invested and honestly I don’t care about them either.
What I find strange is why none of the “professionals” and the Board picked up on this mess. You want to tell me that seasoned members of the science/technology community were so taken in by this woman that they wouldn’t even listen to their own family members bringing up concerns? Seems a bit easy to put the entire blame on Holmes in my opinion.
From what I understand, most of the members of the board were businessmen, military/ex military, investors? One of the senior employees, an actual medical scientist, took his own life when his attempts to question the bs methods of the “science” theranos hsed resulted in his demotion or termination. I was in microbiological pharm research during grad school and before Med school, developing a novel drug to combat abx resistance. I know the gig. But even as an ID physician working in ED, all of the associate degree “business professionals” make up our administration, and ultimately call the shots. Despite their complete lack of knowledge regarding science/medicine. Completely messed up. Medicine and healthcare shouldn’t be treated like a for-profit business. But it is. Even though I spent well over a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars investing into my career, my passion, I (along with every other US HCW) am literally at the mercy of business major kids who decide how many pts I’m required to see per shift. In. An. ED. Sorry for the novel. Long story short, us medical professionals don’t have as much power as people assume we do, systemically. Additionally, the theranos scandal reminds me so much of the Andrew Wakefield/lancet scandal.
Like the other examples she had ( Edison, Ford, Jobs ) I guess she really thought if she could give enough incentives and hold on long enough then one of her team would break through and it would justify all the lies.
People are just enamored with technology and let their common sense go out the window. I remember working at one of the big auto companies as a new engineer. I spent considerable time trying to convince management of a new design that would be far superior and met all engineering standards but was outside their conventional approach. No matter how many hand calculations I did the results were never accepted. Finally out of frustration I wrote a computer program that literally did nothing but print out my answer. The results were immediately accepted, no questions asked.
She couldn't be a fraud! She comes from a good family. She's got personality. Her family is well connected. She knows the important people. She's blonde. She went Stanford. Stanford! She never had to work a real job like common folk. She's much to smart for peasant work. How could anyone doubt her veracity, her morals, her acumen! Her good intentions!
Love how the grandfather didn't believe his educated smart grandson. 'Nah sonny, this woman who has never been to medical school, or even a college degree knows so much more than you, I trust her cause her voice is lower than yours.' I respect that guy for still telling the world about it, mostly to stick it to his grandfather.
You would be shocked at just how effective sociopaths are at isolating people. They have a talent for making you feel like you can't trust anyone else, including yourself.
It is clear that this company was a front for something else and those Govt officials were in on it. That grandfather was brushing off his grandson because he knew what was really going on with this company and it had nothing to do with fake blood work.
As an engineer my opinion when I first heard about it was it was a technology perhaps a little advanced for Star Trek Next Generation. I have noticed that all the investors were not technically savvy.
Thank you for closing with hopeful medical science buried by these money grubbing scandals. It helps remind us that there is hope and not to become to jaded as we grow more cautious of the greedy!
She reminds me of what happened in a show called The Dropout. It’s odd how similar everything is, it’s almost like the show is based on these events. If someone knows the odds of how rare this is tell me.
The story of Ian Gibbons is one of the saddest you can imagine for multiple reasons: a) suicide b) fearing unemployment c) fearing umemplyment as a 67yr old. Why did that happen? He shouldve been retired, not commiting suicide!
I remember watching a documetnary about this clusterfuck a couple of years ago and just getting slowly more and more furious. After the interview with Ian's widow I had to turn it off for while.
If there's ANY developer at Mircosoft that's written only 1000 lines of code in an entire year, there's something seriously wrong with that team.. this is impossible!
I work in a hospital lab, there are so many different systems to test blood using different technology. Coag has its own process, chemistry has different tech and hematology cell counter have a different technology. There is no way she was going to miniaturize all of these different types of technology and have them operational in a small box. Even if she was (and she wasn’t) able to deliver this small box, she couldn’t run it on 1 drop of finger stick blood. Once the blood is prepared with the chemical used for coag , the blood is no longer usable for chemistry or hematology
The fact that there were no real medical professionals on the board of directors/investors just shows that it was fake. Otherwise you'd have a few experts in hematology on the board at least if the machine functioned as it claimed.
The idea of Theranos is honestly great. Is it tangible though? Obviously not with how broadly they wanted it to be. Had Elizabeth started on trying to make small improvements to blood testing technology I think she would have been more successful and had legitimate contributions to the medical community.
If they would've had a bunch of specialized machines that focused on a couple tests, with different sized cartridges, they could've pulled it off and Holmes wouldn't be in jail
22:15 "...incredible names baking the product." I think this is the main reason why Theranos became so big. In another documentary, General Mattis was being quoted by Theranos (paraphrasing) "...we have been using Theranos for the last 2 years in our helicopters with great success." Was he aware of his quotes?
“Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” - Simon & Garfunkel Everyone wanted to believe Elizabeth Holmes, just like they wanted to believe Bernie Madoff, to the point where they were willing to disregard common sense. As long as there is a human factor in financial transactions, there will always be grifters, and Holmes is no different. The mindset of a typical grifter is “That’s my money in your wallet, all I have to do is take it from you.” The biggest skill of a grifter is the ability to make people trust them without giving any evidence of being trustworthy. I’m sure Holmes really studied what people wanted to hear and how to deliver false information in a credible way to VCs. I guess the big difference between Holmes and the typical grifter was her insane obsession with Steve Jobs. I think being Steve Jobs was more important to Holmes than anything else, even money.
@John Smith yes, I can claim to build the first space ship that can go at warp speed with the best of intentions, but I'd be crossing the line when I claim to investors that I already invented it and take money from them. In case you weren't aware, that's called stealing.
For her idea to work, not only the blood analyzer should be given importance. Creatively drawing small amount of blood with helpful cells / data and then correctly storing it should be the first steps.
![Finesse2Tymes - Mob Tied [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/O0CxAfxptiY/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m a medical laboratory professional, and I can tell you that not everyone was taken in by Elizabeth Holmes. The medical laboratory community was crying foul from the very beginning.
agreed, my father worked in the medical field his whole life. the first time he heard about Theranos was in a NYTimes article, and he pinned it on his fridge and wrote the words "Fraud" in red marker on it, circling the word Theranos. it was a wonderful point of conversation with everyone who saw it. He had worked his whole life in blood related fields and knew it was bullshit from the first moment. He still loves to pull that article out and use it as "point no.1" about how little the press understands science.
@Lord Jim They never heard of nickola trucks or ELON "its not really that hard" MUSK! inventor of the tunnel and a person to drive a car for you? LOL
Unfortunately people believe in what they want to believe and never listen to experts. specially when money is promised.
she should've gone into politics. She had a thirst for power, a disgusting and inhuman disregard for the well-being of others, a near-superhuman ability to charm and deceive people, and an outstanding talent for gathering the support of political string-pullers. If she'd had the patience to wait until she was 35, she would've been president.
Ok but do you even know how many jiggawatts are in the flux capacitor?
Shes pretty much a machiavellian man.
This says a lot about which people run our country. This is not the type of society we should want to leave in.
@Guy Skillen "It is cool bro, but hey, can you please lower the minimum wages and we are cool" - Every political sponsor ever
In a way, she might be able to make use of the dictatorial structure of the Presidential system. Usually, that ends up for the worse.
When i first heard of Theranos as a science teacher, I had my doubts. i asked my wife, who works in pathology (blood testing) she literally scoffed in laughter, because it is impossible.
You see, some of the tests they were claiming require such low concentrations that you absolutely need a large amount of blood. You can not accurately (a strong requirement for administering good health advice) test a small amount of blood for some of the tests they were claiming required only a drop.
@Joel Reid it was a dumb fucking comparison, but good on you for entertaining it for a moment. Comparing this to a handheld video. Unreal.
@Daeng Selili A TV isn't taking blood. A palm TV isn't claiming to perform multiple tests on one drop of blood, which is physically impossible. This is a bad analogy.
@Lucignolo they never went public, einstein
Why didn’t you short sell theranos if your wife knew it wouldn’t work?
The fact Elizabeth named their machine Edison is absolutely hilarious when you realize that:
1. It's apparently named after Thomas Edison, who was hailed as a genius of his time, only for it to be later revealed that he was a fraud who stole patents from other inventors and took credit for their accomplishments.
2. Taking point no. 1 into account, Theranos was conducting tests on other companies' machines and presenting results as if they were done on Edison machines.
Such a thief. No original ideas. She admired Steve jobs and stole his turtleneck look, and liked Yoda and stole his famous line and had it painted on the walls of her company. Lol
They do that (Tesla)
I mean, they take advantage of reputations.
She’s so obsessed with Steve Jobs lol. Apples retail scanning machines are called “Issacs” named from Issac Newton…
She clearly is a brilliant candidate to study about Sociopathy for those interested in psychology.
The blood test thing was a sham right in its premise because the finger prick only takes capillary blood which is appropriate for only limited tests. You need venous and sometimes even arterial blood for specific tests!
@Tranquil thoughts She has no respect for the process. Elizabeth was not in medical school and had no experience working with patients and even less experience working in bio medical engineering. Years of research, testing and investigation and even basic medical science would have told Elizabeth the machine was not possible. Had she finished schooling she might have come up with something that actually worked. However she was also hampered by her horrible managerial skills. Employees under Elizabeth and Sunny eventually move on or quit due to abusive practices.
And yet businesses threw money at her.
Exactly
Psychopathy, not sociopathy
Felt like she was intially buying time hoping for a breakthrough and by the time she realises the mountain of challenges and obstacles, she was too deep in and the only way left is to continue. She definitely knew it is a ticking timebomb waiting to explode.
Zoot Rollo yeah, if you admit failure... well.. that's like giving up your goal to get rich. show's over, time to pack it up and leave.
I read a memoir on this. I think she initially thought it was possible. And for awhile I think she genuinely thought she could somehow make it happen, hence the intense work demands and development. But eventually I think she got addicted to the fame she achieved. She was being viewed as the female Steve Jobs and viewed as a genius. And I tend to think that mattered most to her.
She made the tempting mistake any layman is inclined to make: thinking that anything can be done if you just throw enough money at it.
instead of going into medicine, this lady should've been a politician. she would have killed it.
I am actually glad she managed to dupe the dupes if nothing else.
She’s not old as fuck though
Can't agree more
3:05 As an engineer, this is what pissed me off about Holmes. She going around telling people that she's "a trained engineer" when she went to school for 18 months and had zero working knowledge in that field. The first year is all math, chemistry, and physics prerequisite courses, so she took 3 or 4 actual engineering classes at most. It's like dropping out of medical school a year into the program and telling people that you're a doctor. What a scumbag.
She had Jewish ancestry, so there's that...
boo hoo waaa waaa
@Martin
Just wait until her demon-spawn go out into the world.
@Martin
Yeah, those big dead eyes are disturbing.
She constantly badgered and threatened to fire anyone who disagreed with her and set up two engineering teams to compete with each other, threatening to fire the whole team. That must have resulted in an absolute toxic work place. It's always nice to see a rich beach like this get what's coming to her. I can't wait to see her sentenced in September.
It said that in this video I don't know why you repeating it in this comment
@John Smith multiple patients got scammed with inaccurate test results. Watch the video again, Sir. Please.
@John Smith the coroner report and police inquiry & investigation ruled Ian's demise as suicide. She pulled the strings.
@Clint Oruss two sons, sadly.
@jekblom123 11.25 years behind bars is too much! It is not definitive she harmed anyone
Kinda surprising how all these "self-made" billionaires always come from wealthy families lol.
This still blows my mind. I had a career as a lab tech and phlebotomist before working at a local Walgreens in the pharmacy. I remember my pharmacist asking me "can they do all these with a drop?" I quicky stated no, not with a drop. While we did use microtubes for newborns , even these were difficult sometimes as CBCs would immediately fail should the blood clot. Microtainers were notorious for having insufficient potassium anticoag lining for their blood. Regardless, most tests run off serum which is an EVEN smaller sample of blood.
Other than a specific item of a met or lipid panel, there's no way a drop could run 99% of these tests.
@Matt I have a couple relatives who for some odd reason seem to think that ALL rich people got there by good honest hard work & none could ever do any wrong..... They believe this woman & SBF were good honest people who just made to many mistakes & got in over their heads. Despite her getting 11 yrs lol... I find it very odd, almost like some mental glitch. Sure there are many honest wealthy people who there the right way but there's also plenty who got there illegally. I just find it very odd how they think no rich person could ever be guilty of any wrongdoing.
I read a memoir about this fraud. My wife, who works as a medical lab technologist and has been in these various roles with blood testing for around 7 years now, was amazed that this ever got any traction to begin with at all. She explained to me that basically the amount of blood they wanted to use wouldn’t be scientifically possible to get any type of accurate result and basically it seems any person with knowledge of this industry has immediately brushed away this idea ever being possible to begin with. Kinda crazy just how long she was able to keep it going. At the same time it’s one of the most awful frauds that has ever occurred to me. Outside of the financial fraud that occurred the harm to health and danger to people that this fraud had is just beyond evil. I can believe that she began with good intentions but the clear lying she carried out for years is just so fascinatingly evil.
@Jose peña what do half of those have to do with this?
I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from a top university. I can tell you I would need lots of time, money, consultants and research to understand whether this would even be possible. Let alone to actually leave school to claim you WILL do it. Absolutely unethical what she did and completely dishonest. The cancer patient thing with Pfizer completely blew my mind, that is just pure evil in my books. Idc if you wanna be rich, it’s not worth anybody’s life, especially those desperately trying to fight for it. The scariest part is Pfizer backed her up, very questionable
You only needed to look at the hardware
Not even computers that small could run stably or go into peak performance because it's just too small especially for hardware made in the 2000s when most hardware that small could barely run a game let alone run an os without burning up
@Skank or You Can Call Me Maurice You’re right, It’s absolutely immoral and unjustifiable. A single loss of life is an irreparable and irreplaceable loss to the world, no amount of money can replace that. She truly does deserve the conviction, It’s kinder than what she did to those people
@Skank or You Can Call Me Maurice I remember my friend who I studied with showed me her before she was exposed saying “she’s amazing, she’s the youngest billionaire ever. She must be a genius” I remember seeing it thinking how much it blew my mind what she said she could accomplish. I kept thinking over and over how Someone so young could accomplish so much research and resources. I thought she must’ve come from a rich family or she was a child prodigy. Alas, when I heard the news she was a fake I thought “wow, that’s scary” how someone could lie their way to the top with ease and how big serious money could invest in something with very little factual evidence and without doing some thorough Research First. Now I know exactly what she did and I thought she was just a liar, I see now she’s more like a monster. The things she did, absolutely no consideration for others whatsoever. She was willing to let people who trusted her and had faith in her die all for her own personal gain. She deserves this imprisonment, it’s actually less cruel than what she did to those cancer patients and the many other companies that would’ve received venture Capitalist Support had she not lied to them.
Yes, that was absolutely terrible.
This reminds me of the time my first friend and I wanted to make a machine that would transport us to TV and movie worlds. A problem arose when we realized that neither of us knew how to build such a device, which was only compounded by the fact that said machine was going to be made out of logs.
I actually built this machine and used it continuously with my brother and several friends. We travelled far and wide until unfortunately for us, it started to rain. You see the Whirlpool refrigerator box melted due to its meeting a element so strong it disintegrated it after being in contact with it for mere seconds. That element? H20
😂😂😂
@Craig Young yeah that sounds horrible
this is more or less exactly what happened :'D
Holy cow.. I'm in!!!!
In the world currently, we get excited by "tech", coding, apps, dashboards etc. So I can see how people with zero medical or chemical knowledge would buy into this. As soon as I heard what Theranos did, I was very confused why they are in Silicon Valley. The problem that they tried solving was not an information, or speed or size of calculation problem.
Not to be "That guy" but it was likely cultural.
It's silicon valley. They want their unicorns.
Easy investment money from people who wouldn't _dare_ to question you.
The only reason this scam company was in Silicon Valley was because her dad bought her way into Stanford U and she had a Steve Jobs fetish that was disturbing (as detailed in the book Bad Blood).
Really her idea is a technology concept and a fairly simple one, although requiring very fairly sophisticated tech behind it.. capturing a small amount of blood doing analysis on it and transmitting the data to a proper testing machine was the 'easy' part.. the hard part and where the company hit a brick wall was in trying to re-develop the entire testing machine into a more compact size.. I think had she just accepted that couldn't be done and focused entirely on the testing capturing and transmitting/receiving tech, this concept may have worked well.. it only needed to interface with existing testing machines in labs, not replace the machines.
@J. Baldwin was a genius... Adam was a talented salesman, apparently. Even though Adam failed several businesses.
THANK YOU for outlining upfront how the whole concept was a physical impossibility. As someone with a background in medicine and biochemistry, it is infuriating seeing all the interviews on most docs by investors who claimed they had no way of knowing it was a farce. The pre med undergrads in the lab where I worked knew it was nonsense, but VCs making millions somehow couldn't figure it out?
They didn’t want to figure it out. Maybe she was involved with some of the investors intimately like Sunny.
This was the equivalent of saying you will solve nuclear fusion within the next years. As a medical doctor in lab medicine I am really astonished by the naivity of the investors.
Obviously some of the "naive" got greedy and have no common sense. Let alone the knowledge needed.
There were a large amount of skilled professionals who knew such grade of testing simply wasn't possible, but they weren't the people who counted in big financial decisions. Sadly, this is true in many other situations.
E.H. and her associates knew that their trick had no future, but they had an unshakeable faith into their capabilities of keeping their investors bamboozled for ever: this is not realistic, and the main indicator that they were delusional at best, and full blown psychopaths at most. The many professionals which had seen the reality of the facts were simply not taken into consideration - how sad.
There are sectors were Science has made enormous progress, like placing four billions transistors in a chip; on the other hand, Science took 30 years to simply double the capacity of lithium batteries. Unless you know physics, you can't understand what sector can improve rapidly, and what sector cannot.
The scammers rely on this type of ignorance to defraud people...
@gerry o sullivan How do you think she was caught out? She couldn't dodge them forever, after all.
Isnt there some regulatory board in the US that should actually test these products themselves and look into the people making these claims? Maybe they were bribed or influenced i suppose
I'm not sure a physicist would be able to tell you much about blood testing. I wouldn't hire albert Einstein to do my taxes or be my lawyer. At the highest levels of education and training knowledge is extremely specialized.
Science makes enormous progress where there is demand thus money.
@Moise Mensah because the ones running the institution or school have a different field of knowledge than the medical professionals they employ.
Honestly it’s so sad because if her goal had been something feasible, like testing one single virus or bacteria with a single finger prick in a way that was attainable for everyone her company could have grown and helped people instead of hurting them
I doubt that could have turned into a wholesome story. Her tool was manipulation and that tool is not really useable for good. Also she would have needed to be humble in knowing that she needs outside expertise, which manipulators don't do. And if she went for something smaller but achievable then she would not have been the second Steve Jobs.
I feel sorry for the scientists who really wanted to make this project succeed in a truthful manner
@Barry F Our company is also somewhat going down but there is always hope that things might change. Also, there are always new employees who have hope and they are totally mislead by the seniors who know what's wrong. So the company basically lives off these new people who go in with false expectations.
I work in technology for a major company. I know of few people in our organization that would play along with such deception and lack of expertise at the top. We'd all take a walk.
I feel like they knew it wouldn't work, just didn't wanna get canned and/or assaulted.
Here's why she could succeed with little support and confirmation from medical professionals: Her machine was supposed to replace doctor's visits and lab testings, so it looked like the medical professionals who didn't believe her were just scared of being replaced by a machine and losing their jobs and importance. Had a machine like that actually worked, that would totally be the case. And once she discredited the only community that had the knowledge to prove that she's a phoney, she could fool the world.
Are you kidding me?! _Theranos_ is the reason Safeway went under?! I'm so freaking mad. Safeway was a good store. Good product selection and the best prices anywhere. And an excellent bakery section.
@Justin Barion As mentioned, Safeway was bought out by the same company that owns Thrifty Foods, so while in _name_ they still operate, in _practice_ they do not. The Safeway stores that still exist are effectively just Thrifty's with a different name, due to new management.
I'm pretty sure Safeway still exists in Canada and the UK
@FlameUser64 I wondered why they stopped making their best selling item in the bakery, energy bars.
They had gullible execs
Ah so that's why it's so shit now
I recently saw the series on starplus called the Dropout, and I’m surprised by its accuracy. Ik it’s a drama and some things are changed, but highly recommend it
@Martin Amaya ohh got it. Never heard of that streaming service but makes sense if it’s outside the US
@arcanine 917 if it has the same name, the dropout, it’s the same. In my country it streams in Star plus
You mean hulu? Or is it a difference mini series?
Yeah the real story and the series almost identical. So scary!
This was riveting. Well done Cold Fusion. 100% she still believes she was right, a complete sociopath.
It's so insane anyone could take her seriously with that fake low voice 😂😂😂😂😂 I'm literally cracking up just listening to it
Plus she genuinely looks insane. Her eyes are scary.
I was there when Theranos was still in its infancy and everyone was claiming it would be the next revolutionary thing in science (one of my biggest flexes LOL) and I also remember watching Elizabeth's Ted Talk and thinking to myself... Does this lady have something in her throat? And then when speculations started flying around that she was faking her voice, my first thought was, did anyone actually believe her to begin with?
@Harri Gersack And we are off to the races! LOL
@Lee Williams were His buddies fellow war criminals?
@Clint Oruss omg 21.10 ,looks like shes on drugs 🤣
Imagine a founder of a medical company in her early 20’s with no medical training
Yeah it's absurd really. OK she may have a revolutionary medical concept, but you absolutely need properly skilled scientists and medical professionals to develop and bring a product like that to market, it's a medical and scientific process which has to be followed strictly, not just a commercial underlying like developing the iphone which is how she seemed to view it. Peoples lives depended on this tech working properly, and medical peoples careers. Going through the process and having critical feedback from your engineers and scentists is vital to realise what's possible and not possible, and how you might approach a problem differently. She seems to have cut herself off from reality and refused to accept any critical feedback from people who knew what they were doing. There's being driven to solve a technological challenge like Steve Job's was, and there's being totally detached from reality trying do the impossible with an impossible time frame.
That reminds me of Resident Evil: Code Veronica.
Could be done, if you know whar are doing and hire the right people.
"Can we do this?" "No." "Ok."
instead of:
"Can we do this?" "No." "You fired." // "Can we do this?" "Yes (Lie)" "You promoted!"
I remember being a kid and hearing about this on the news (we live nearby), and thinking “oh cool.” Then, many years later, still going to the hospital regularly and getting my blood drawn like usual, I was curious about what ended up happening. I was really surprised by everything, lol.
My favourite part about stories like this is how many people warn everyone they can but they get brushed off.
It happens so often that I no longer doubt the bad decisions people make in movies.
They're realistic now, this is reality.
I watched this today and the funny thing is the verdict came within the same day and she is serving 11 years in jail. That's a good end tbh. One of the best I've seen, we can't let a person like this walk on the earth for that long and not eat her cake.
I’ve worked for Walgreens 15 years and I used to perform some of these tests that were replaced by Theranos. If not aware of any lawsuits against Walgreens, but they should have been sued as well for their recklessness with patients’ lives.
Thank you for this vid. I didn't follow that story (lack of interest). But I've been wondering recently how and when this "thing" got so wrong. I was particularly curious as to why and how so many prominent people and large companies got involved in this if the machines, we're told now, made no sense. In the end, the fact that she insisted on testing real cancer patients with a system she knew did not work is itself worth the 11 years she got.
Regarding her not caring about her senior employee's suicide: she also had no qualms about doing unreliable tests for cancer patients, lying to people giving her hundreds of millions, etc. Meanwhile, her dad (and probably childhood role model) was one of the execs at Enron, who were famously on tape joking about how they were screwing the elderly over, like cliched movie villains, so it's not exactly a shocker she didn't care a guy killed himself because of her lies.
@John Smith Fair enough, but that's beside the point anyway. My point is she literally started a fake company that marketed extremely unreliable blood tests as revolutionary and accurate, which ended up reassuring people they didn't have cancer or other time-sensitive ailments, genetic conditions, etc., when in fact, some of them definitely did, because all of their blood tests were in fact complete garbage and physically impossible. So, if one of her colleagues actually did kill themselves, or simply overdosed, it wouldn't be too shocking she'd feel totally indifferent about it, considering.
There is no evidence, no note, that indicates this man committed suicide. Just that he overdosed
Yikes. Bunch of lunatics, these people are
Wait, her dad was an Enron execs? that explain a lot.
It is pretty scary how long Theranos and Holmes were able to operate this scheme with such ridiculous valuations and absolutely nothing to back it up on.
I'm not surprised. She's a great manipulator of people, possibly one of the best ever. It helped her greatly that she could play on the pathological wish to see women making great achievements in male-dominated areas. She presented these ideologues everything they dreamt of: a female Steve Jobs.
F#ke news
I’m not surprised.
When I first heard about this story I could not understand how it was possible for something like this to happen. But when you learn about all the parts of it, you see it was about 100 different things that came together perfectly for her to be able trick so many people for so long. It would be very hard for anyone to pull this off again in the way she did. It would be one thing for someone with a big background in business, and prior history of success to pull off a massive fraud like this, but for a college dropout with no money, to become the world's youngest female self-made billionaire (on paper), with nothing but an imaginary product, would be near impossible. It wasn't just that she was a great liar, the stars also aligned perfectly for her to be able to pull this off.
"Filled with determination, she dropped out of Stanford at age 19 and started her own company". Yes, "filled with determination" but not "filled" with any knowledge on chemistry, engineering or basic biology 😂😂😂
Smarter than you regardless.
As someone who's done at least two blood tests in my life time (vein or artery) I can't understand why she had to start so big. Hell, if she could find a way to just halfen or even use 75% the amount of blood they need it would have been revolutionary.
@Matt I think that might be part of why she chose this route. she knew a minor upgrade would sell, but not on the same scale as something that was too good to be true.
@Tamlynn idk if it ended up going anywhere, but my uncle used to be on a team engineering what was basically a mini InfraRed camera with a screen that would be used for stuff like finding veins! Much simpler solution
I think her ego was just to an extreme level. A slight improvement Would have been big but it wouldn’t have been world genius extreme to the level she wanted to be. But at the same time even 75% of the blood, which would’ve been a huge scientific advancement, wouldn’t have been the patient advancement of this idea. Even if you took a quarter less blood it would still require the blood draw process as normal. The real sale of this idea was not having to do thag and having the ease of a finger prick. For some people who have difficulty getting their blood drawn that would’ve been an amazing advancement. It just wasn’t possible with current technology and she couldn’t get the money to try and get there in a time frame to actually possibly develop something like it. If this were ever possible it would require many years to advance things to that level which would be many years of sinking tons of money into development without a return on investment anywhere in sight. She needed the illusion of the progress to get the deals from pharmacies to bring in revenue so that she could entice investors.
@Maj U Another benefit to pricking the finger vs taking vials of blood are for people like me whose veins are difficult to find. Seriously everytime I’ve needed blood drawn the phlebotomist usually pokes me a few times before finding a good vein. I hate it lol
Still doesn’t really make sense the body can give so much blood so doesn’t actually matter if you take 1 test tube or 10. Only innovation would be the time between test and results, but this is an issue because there are not many people that can accurately interpret the data
"On November 18, 2022, she was sentenced to serve 11+1⁄4 years (135 months) in prison." WHEW. Serves ya right!
I don’t think that the verdict was just. I don’t care about the billionare investors who lost their money. I care about the fact that she knowingly endangered human lives, the fact that nobody died, was sheer luck and the fact that it didn’t go on for very long. Fraud is one thing but this could very easily have killed people. She knew that her so called technology wasn’t working and she did it anyway. Again, not to the investors but people. Sociopath!
theres people that got convicted of possessing with an ounce of weed that get longer sentences.. watch her get out in like 5 yrs too.
@NYC State of Mind The judge who sentenced her recommended "she be incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, in Texas, a minimum security facility with limited or no perimeter fencing. 'No one wants to get kicked out because compared to other places in the prison system, this place is heaven. If you have to go it's a good place to go,' said a criminal defense lawyer."
She would’ve been if she was black or Muslim and poor
That’s the American justice
I think she should have been behind bars longer than that for what she had done
Her dad was...an ENRON executive. 😂
He taught his daughter well.
Her father was never implicated in any wrongdoing
@Random
Grandma Hillary REALLY???
Seriously my friend it sounds over fantastical . Please find yourself along with your elk another spooky boogeyman..,…… woooooohooooowoooooo
Is that true ???
@JulCaos
The whole Enron scandal erupted in 2001. I'm sure he did his 2 years in jail and did just fine with the money he was able to pocket from that company. Liz Holmes grew up in a mansion and went to the finest private schools in Houston, dear ole dad did just fine lying, cheating, and stealing.
this is such a huge insane story I only found out now that the Netflix show is out, I'm ashamed to admit. How she managed to get away with it even for as long as she did is remarkable. and how the hell did she think she will get out of it???? how didn't the medical, scientific community call her out sooner??? She's definitely a bit crazy and you can see it in her eyes but you got to give her some credit to be able to pull smth this huge off starting at 19. probably because she is definitely a full blown sociopath.
The scary things is that plenty of people just like her are running major companies and even countries/states.
What is wrong with a society that takes so long to uncover crimes and bring criminals to justice? I hope Theranos finds a conscience in prison. And serves every day of her sentence.
This is the world we live in.
I doubt a eternity will convince a narcissist that they were at fault, their brains are wired differently.
Money
follow the money 🤷♀️ it wouldn't have benefitted the juggernauts backing her to question the efficacy of the company
Her origin story makes me wonder if she legitimately started out wanting to help people and for how long she thought she was helping people. I think it's possible she was deluded into thinking the product would actually work and change the world even if deep down she knew it wouldn't, and that's how she justified her actions. Just a theory.
@JAMES RECKNOR My guess this is just a very rare thing. After all she was a very good manipulator who could convince almost everybody she had contact with. Also it is quite easy to get a crazy look on basically any person if we just take a picture at the wrong time. So it's quite easy to demonize your opponents that way. And those people who never have that crazy look either are abnormally good people or they are actors all their life.
"At a young age, Elizabeth knew what she wanted to be in life... to be a billionaire." How anyone would think she was actually genuine boggles me.
Those crazy eyes were a red flag
I once had to get a blood test to determine what allergies I had, as a routine blood test to determine if I had an allergy to soya showed that I had lived my whole life with a pretty severe allergy to it with no knowledge. They took three vials of blood to do strictly allergy testing, nothing else.
Now I’m not a chemist, I actually failed high school chemistry in my final year, but as soon as it was said that Theranos could do all this with just a drop I knew it was impossible. Maybe if the machine was trimmed down to focus on a single disease (like diabetes) or function and had a team of actual scientists, biologists and chemists, it would have worked.
Mark Zuckerberg’s dead eyes, Steve Jobs’ black turtle necks, voice of Megatron.
Seems legit.
@McBain Um, no.
@Apimpnamedslickback 3 yr old comment still cringe as the day you wrote it
Her $50k watch is concerning. Psychopathic traits
And spirit of SBF.
@Apimpnamedslickback dead eyes becaus ethey look like they don't blink they look souless
Theranos is a wild scenario i have been obsessed with since 2019. I've been following the criminal trial. She apparently has gotten married during, and had a child. She was found guilty. She has been a real piece of work.
I never really agreed that Elizabeth was a sociopath, I had the mindset that she was just trying to prove to herself that she could do this, even though she hurt people to get there. But the fact that she pretty much brushed off Ian’s death- is disgusting. He killed himself essentially due to the stress from HER COMPANY, and she didn’t even call his wife back??? Sociopath.
🥲the fact that she had been fooling the world for nearly 20years is impressive
it's impressive alright by how much these investors can be fooled so easily and would willingly give money just for the fear of missing out
political party in the us have been doing it for century
I remember the first time I saw Elizabeth in an interview on TV and my bs alarms started going off. I couldn’t place what it was but I knew something was off about her. Glad to see that others got the same feeling and exposed this fraud for her slimy real self.
"Bad Blood," the book by WSJ reporter John Carreyrou, is really good if you want to dig even deeper. Holmes didn't hesitate to go after Tyler Schultz through his own family - there's an incident where he goes to visit his grandfather (George Schultz) to try again to warn him, and he gets ambushed by Theranos lawyers who were already WAITING IN THE HOUSE.
Well, I'm kinda impressed by her level of manipulation. She talked her way out of being fired when it was already decided beforehand.
@Anna Lake amazing that people at the highest levels allowed her to even be associated with them. Wow. We all should be deeply concerned with the levels of security within the government if these kinds of people get in. The governments are in turmoil right now and should be asking how this could have happened and don’t sweep that part under the wrong.
@Thorsten Reitz that reminds me of Adam Neumann, Roger Ailes and as we speak, Vince McMahon.
Yyyyyyup. If you believe something strong enough, it becomes true. ("Peter Pan" the children in the audience have to say out loud "I BELIEVE" so that Tinker Bell will live. . . . )
This documentary is so much more entertaining than anything I've seen on Netflix recently. She seems like a credible compelling villain...for real life.
Pretty scary how that former secretary of state didn't listen to his own grandson with this type of information and did nothing. I wonder what else he did while as the secretary of state. Probably chose to look the other way all the time
Yep, it caused a real rift in his family and he wound up eating some serious crow over it. It really calls a lot of things about him into question. I'm thinking that a lot of his government dealings were sketchy considering how he handled this. He had a sterling legacy and blew it over this, that is not smart.
She gambled with people’s life for her egoistic reasons of becoming “somebody”.Her sentience is well deserved.
This reminds me of the time my first friend and I wanted to make a
machine that would transport us to TV and movie worlds. A problem arose
when we realized that neither of us knew how to build such a device,
which was only compounded by the fact that said machine was going to be
made out of logs
@Sabia Naum It most likely is but that all there is to it.
@Thermal cam lab but the comment did seem very bot like
@Thermal cam lab that is the worse excuse i have ever heard
I don't remember writing the comment above this one. I don't say it isn't possible I wrote it but I think someone has logged into my account and wrote the comment.
Well i mean VR is the prototype for what you were trying to invent
Hello,
I've watched several of your presentations now and I'm very impressed with your delivery.
I've researched your findings and conclusion independently and found them to be correct and accurate.
As a result, I've subscribed to your channel and will continue to learn from your presentations.
I apologise if I sound overbearing and overly formal but I believe that with the vast number of inaccuracies prevalent on the internet, research into the content of a channel is a vital part of staying accurately informed.
Thank you for the time and effort you clearly spend on researching your subject matter.
I find it so strange, that in my studies we have to come up with so many fake projects and products, and the lecturer would question every single small detail and can immediately tell if something wouldn't work out or is done wrong. But somehow companies like Theranos or Nikola can make Billions without a real product and no-one notices it or just ignore any signs of fraud completely...
@b the comment from Cindy Louwho which you replied to
@jay0oni huh?
@b you replied to someone before that it was racist
@jay0oni what are you even talking about? You didn't make any points, all you said was I can't deny it lmfao, there's nothing I can say to respond
@b and you can't even respond to my previous statement directly and instead typed a long paragraph rambling about nothing. proved my point
Is it really possible that even the board wouldn’t know about any of this? Just wondering because Elizabeth could possibly just be the scapegoat. It’s extremely hard to keep these secrets from a “powerful” board for a “decade.”
Scapegoat? If they know how would she not know? She's on the ground.
So, she went to Stanford for about two weeks? This whole affair took place in about a 2 sq. mile area around the Stanford campus.
Tyler had a backbone and integrity a dangerous combination in this world. Well done to him for speaking out.
The fact that she got so much investment for tech that nobody bothered to verify actually worked is amazing. Not sure how u hide broken tech for so long
Yeah the first red flag is that she dropped out of school to create medical tech with basically no medical knowledge
and dressed like Steve Jobs.
@Upful Soul problem was that truly smart researchers and professors didn’t want to work for her and told her multiple times that her idea as good as it was on a paper is not implementable. She didn’t listen to top of the field scientists and went ahead with defrauding millionaires with zero knowledge in the field of chemistry, molecular biology, physics or medicine.
The outcome was predictable…
@Y attractive????
Her experience is so shocking that someone would make a movie about it.
She so helped show the lack of journalism and critical thinking involved in those who supported and uplifted her.
Watched a couple of your videos so far, interesting topics and presented very well ;)
the scariest thing is there are a lot of people like Elizabeth out there, only some of them get caught
People and companies are so addicted to making money they do not care who or how many others they destroy. It's amazing to hear or read the backstories of every rich person and who they screwed to get the money, from family to friends they just don't care.
The fact that this got into Walgreens is terrifying. I imagine most medical and/or researchers knew that the idea of this was impossible. On top of that, they weren't approved by the FDA! This means the due diligence was slim to none. That's amazing to me, as well as inexcusable.
I also give credit to the owner of WSJ. When the story was about to break, she went straight to the top to kill the story, only to be told that he trusted his journalists and editors, and he would not interfere. Kudos.
@Ralph Alvarez Lol, same w/the judge at her sentencing who probably fed her over-bloated ego when he stated how sad it is because she's brilliant! (After she apologized from every cell of her body)!
@isabel lind the grandson was interviewed later and the old man still held a grudge. That goes to show just how bloated his ego was. The grandson was better off without the approval of the old windbag.
It is mostly possible, by now there are even companies getting really close to what she promised. She just didn't have the patience to actually wait for her researchers to catch up. The tragic and scary thing is that had she given R&D some more years instead of going on a total power trip, it could've all worked out...
One of my favorite parts of this story is that Rupert Murdock did not kill the story. The other favorite parts are Tyler Schultz and Erica Chung’s parts I. Taking down Theranos. John Carreyrou is a Rock Star
14:18 The fact that they could come to a conclusion that stacking 6 minilabs skews results more is remarkable, and a bit sus. Capable of measuring levels of how bad you are measuring in a non-test production environment (you just want to get the work done) is remarkable.
It reminds me so much of one of my previous employers: a tobacco spin-off in Winston-Salem. Hide failure by spreading fear or cheat, subdue critical voices or fire them. Fortunately no one got hurt.
16:45 I loved when Elizabeth told Jareed Leto back then "It's Theranin' time" and then they both Theraned all over the Silicon Valley, it was truly a moment of human history time!
Who's here after Elizabeth Holmes was just sentenced to 11+ years in prison?
When Elizabeth come out of prison, she would write a memoir detailing her scamming experiences. Her book will become the best selling book of the year. Then she become a motivational speaker for the crowd and she can make millions again, just like Jordan Belfort in Wolf of the Wall Street. History always repeats.
the question still remains, but with which voice?
But then the victims of her scam will sue her for whatever she makes. That is, if the government doesn't claim restitution from her first. If she's smart, she'll just fade away into obscurity after serving her time.
She's got to go to jail first.
I guess that fits the old "fool me twice" scenario.
@Pilosopong Tacio yooooo 😂😂😂😂😂
She got that right: "it's about getting people to believe in you" .. and nothing more.. she had a professor who didn't buy into this and stated as much but her concern and expertise was diminished
If this story doesn't prove that your connections are more important than anything, I don't know what will. I'm so glad making connections is so easy and natural for literally every person on the planet especially people who have real ideas and real plans for the future.
Nope, if people are struggling to find a job without connections
Trust me, it's a lot fucking harder and downright impossible to get the right connections that is anywhere near silicon valley unless you lucked out or were born rich
Anybody that passed 5th grade science could easily have known the product could never do even 10% of what she claimed. The people who got ripped off deserve the loses because all they had to do was ask anybody the facts and they would have known. They lost the money because they were arrogant and thought they knew better.
You have to admit all the way around this is just one of the most bizarre stories to come out of the woodwork in a while.
When I first saw this video, I read the title, and before I even clicked on the link, I said to myself, "So far."
Less than 4 years later, and I'd like to talk to you about FTX...
It's time the federal government end speculative investments. Period.
Elizabeth Holmes scares the shit out of me. Her entire persona (especially her gigantic piercing eyes) gives me the impression she's trying to hypnotize people. I fully expect that even if she's found guilty for her crimes that she will escape jail time.
Well she didn't. She got a "pretty stiff sentence". She is now scared and that proves that without power she is human after all
@Leah Rachelle Yea I don’t care about billionaires who invested in her company. There are more important situations to care about
@Leah Rachelle No because every doctor and every diagnosis has the potential to be false. It’s up to you to get a second opinion. Plus no one died except someone committed suicide. To be honest that guy committed suicide because he knew he was guilty just as much as Elizabeth Holmes except he took the east way out. No one really suffered except the people who invested and honestly I don’t care about them either.
What I find strange is why none of the “professionals” and the Board picked up on this mess. You want to tell me that seasoned members of the science/technology community were so taken in by this woman that they wouldn’t even listen to their own family members bringing up concerns? Seems a bit easy to put the entire blame on Holmes in my opinion.
FWIW, Kenneth Lay from Enron was once on the board of Compaq Computer
From what I understand, most of the members of the board were businessmen, military/ex military, investors? One of the senior employees, an actual medical scientist, took his own life when his attempts to question the bs methods of the “science” theranos hsed resulted in his demotion or termination. I was in microbiological pharm research during grad school and before Med school, developing a novel drug to combat abx resistance. I know the gig. But even as an ID physician working in ED, all of the associate degree “business professionals” make up our administration, and ultimately call the shots. Despite their complete lack of knowledge regarding science/medicine.
Completely messed up. Medicine and healthcare shouldn’t be treated like a for-profit business. But it is. Even though I spent well over a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars investing into my career, my passion, I (along with every other US HCW) am literally at the mercy of business major kids who decide how many pts I’m required to see per shift. In. An. ED.
Sorry for the novel. Long story short, us medical professionals don’t have as much power as people assume we do, systemically. Additionally, the theranos scandal reminds me so much of the Andrew Wakefield/lancet scandal.
Like the other examples she had ( Edison, Ford, Jobs ) I guess she really thought if she could give enough incentives and hold on long enough then one of her team would break through and it would justify all the lies.
oh my days lol. Quite sad and pathetic really
My uncle was a research scientist for over 35 years- after acquiring a Ph.D. He was extremely bright to begin with... Who would you trust more...?
Zoot Rollo even her voice is fake
Zoot Rollo she looks terrifying though
People are just enamored with technology and let their common sense go out the window. I remember working at one of the big auto companies as a new engineer. I spent considerable time trying to convince management of a new design that would be far superior and met all engineering standards but was outside their conventional approach. No matter how many hand calculations I did the results were never accepted. Finally out of frustration I wrote a computer program that literally did nothing but print out my answer. The results were immediately accepted, no questions asked.
holy balls I have to use that strategy
She couldn't be a fraud! She comes from a good family. She's got personality. Her family is well connected. She knows the important people. She's blonde. She went Stanford. Stanford! She never had to work a real job like common folk. She's much to smart for peasant work. How could anyone doubt her veracity, her morals, her acumen! Her good intentions!
Well, looking into her early life tells otherwise.
Lolllll 😂😂😂😂
Love how the grandfather didn't believe his educated smart grandson. 'Nah sonny, this woman who has never been to medical school, or even a college degree knows so much more than you, I trust her cause her voice is lower than yours.' I respect that guy for still telling the world about it, mostly to stick it to his grandfather.
You would be shocked at just how effective sociopaths are at isolating people. They have a talent for making you feel like you can't trust anyone else, including yourself.
@SuperShecky Its not a good idea to overgenelize and put people in groups
It is clear that this company was a front for something else and those Govt officials were in on it. That grandfather was brushing off his grandson because he knew what was really going on with this company and it had nothing to do with fake blood work.
@SuperShecky Funny, her biggest supporters were big time Democrats.
Clinton, Obama,Biden, oprah, zuckie . . .
As an engineer my opinion when I first heard about it was it was a technology perhaps a little advanced for Star Trek Next Generation. I have noticed that all the investors were not technically savvy.
Thank you for closing with hopeful medical science buried by these money grubbing scandals. It helps remind us that there is hope and not to become to jaded as we grow more cautious of the greedy!
She reminds me of what happened in a show called The Dropout.
It’s odd how similar everything is, it’s almost like the show is based on these events.
If someone knows the odds of how rare this is tell me.
@Joanna I know... i wass making a shitty joke :(
Imagine if she'd just focused on the ten tests it could run, there might have been an outcome worth a dime or a damn
Now both of them were sentenced in jail for over dozen years. Justice might be late but never absent…
The story of Ian Gibbons is one of the saddest you can imagine for multiple reasons:
a) suicide
b) fearing unemployment
c) fearing umemplyment as a 67yr old.
Why did that happen? He shouldve been retired, not commiting suicide!
D) Also kept a job so that he wouldn't lose his health insurance.
@2msvalkyrie he was married. Enough said.
I remember watching a documetnary about this clusterfuck a couple of years ago and just getting slowly more and more furious. After the interview with Ian's widow I had to turn it off for while.
He was a respected highly paid scientist. and had been for many years ; but he couldn't afford to retire at age 67 !?!?!?..
If there's ANY developer at Mircosoft that's written only 1000 lines of code in an entire year, there's something seriously wrong with that team.. this is impossible!
I work in a hospital lab, there are so many different systems to test blood using different technology. Coag has its own process, chemistry has different tech and hematology cell counter have a different technology. There is no way she was going to miniaturize all of these different types of technology and have them operational in a small box. Even if she was (and she wasn’t) able to deliver this small box, she couldn’t run it on 1 drop of finger stick blood. Once the blood is prepared with the chemical used for coag , the blood is no longer usable for chemistry or hematology
How much blood was really needed to make it? So there is no way to make one box for all blood diagnosing technologies in the future, is not?
The fact that there were no real medical professionals on the board of directors/investors just shows that it was fake. Otherwise you'd have a few experts in hematology on the board at least if the machine functioned as it claimed.
The idea of Theranos is honestly great. Is it tangible though? Obviously not with how broadly they wanted it to be.
Had Elizabeth started on trying to make small improvements to blood testing technology I think she would have been more successful and had legitimate contributions to the medical community.
If they would've had a bunch of specialized machines that focused on a couple tests, with different sized cartridges, they could've pulled it off and Holmes wouldn't be in jail
So this lady was able to amass 9 billion dollars and didn't even achieve anything
Apart of trying to become the "female" Steve Jobs and founding a pharmaceutical company that its name is like Thanos' lost brother
The voice deception is one of the most bizarre things I've every heard of.
@Luke Lang and you made up a scenario that didn't happen just so you could get mad at it. Like what do you want me to say to that 💀
@siN a weren't you the one who commented about the differences in companies hiring males vs females?
@Luke Lang what does that have to do with anything. Yall are just here to say anything at this point lmfao shoo
22:15 "...incredible names baking the product." I think this is the main reason why Theranos became so big. In another documentary, General Mattis was being quoted by Theranos (paraphrasing) "...we have been using Theranos for the last 2 years in our helicopters with great success."
Was he aware of his quotes?
“Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” - Simon & Garfunkel
Everyone wanted to believe Elizabeth Holmes, just like they wanted to believe Bernie Madoff, to the point where they were willing to disregard common sense.
As long as there is a human factor in financial transactions, there will always be grifters, and Holmes is no different. The mindset of a typical grifter is “That’s my money in your wallet, all I have to do is take it from you.” The biggest skill of a grifter is the ability to make people trust them without giving any evidence of being trustworthy. I’m sure Holmes really studied what people wanted to hear and how to deliver false information in a credible way to VCs.
I guess the big difference between Holmes and the typical grifter was her insane obsession with Steve Jobs. I think being Steve Jobs was more important to Holmes than anything else, even money.
@John Smith yes, I can claim to build the first space ship that can go at warp speed with the best of intentions, but I'd be crossing the line when I claim to investors that I already invented it and take money from them.
In case you weren't aware, that's called stealing.
Her pursuit was prestige and not money.
Even then I believe she started her company with the best intentions
Of course it's less than the estimated sentence, but 11 years is still a good win and a small relief to the families who suffered from her affair.
For her idea to work, not only the blood analyzer should be given importance. Creatively drawing small amount of blood with helpful cells / data and then correctly storing it should be the first steps.