Bowen Xiaocha from Oufei Temple
Qubits reports | Official account QbitAI
The former "female version of Jobs" has finally become a prisoner of the order today.
Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, Angel Faces, "disruptive" entrepreneurship, endorsements by a bunch of VC bigwigs — and even the name of "female versions of Jobs" turned out to be outright fools.
Theranos, the super unicorn he founded, claimed to be able to detect hundreds of diseases with just "one drop of blood", and proved to be a complete scam.
Some even commented that it was the biggest startup scam in Silicon Valley after the infamous Enron bankruptcy in 2001.
Now, here comes the end:
Founder Elizabeth was convicted of 4 counts of telecommunications fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison.
And for this 19-year-old entrepreneur, Bai Fumei, who is only 37 years old, has blown how high she once was, and now it has fallen heavily.
Blood turns into gold, Silicon Valley myth
In 2004, 19-year-old Elizabeth, a Stanford undergraduate, decided to drop out of school to start a business and did something disruptive.
Blood test, to be precise, is a drop blood test.
It's simple, everyone has had an experience in a physical examination – we go to the hospital for a test, and the doctor will draw blood from a vein on the arm with a large needle, but one tube or several tubes.
And that doesn't include problems like pain, needle sickness, and blood sickness.
But Elizabeth and the company she founded, Theranos, play "subversion."
Say goodbye to the traditional blood test mode, just gently prick your finger, one or two drops of blood to get it done, and you can also measure hundreds of physiological indicators.
The point is that it is still quite cheap, can be detected anytime, anywhere, and the time is still very fast.
Later, he also reached a cooperation with American pharmacies to make blood tests similar to nucleic acids.
And Elizabeth, long-sleeved good at dancing, outstanding personality, belongs to the typical Bai Fumei entrepreneurship, so the first ten years of entrepreneurship, once smooth sailing, successfully deceived the world.
Bai Fumei's entrepreneurial process
Elizabeth's family is no ordinary, and her father was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that went bankrupt because of financial fraud.
Later, he served in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Trade Development Agency and other government departments, and built contacts for Elizabeth's future development.
In 2002, Elizabeth entered Stanford University to study chemical engineering.
Before that, there was an episode in which she met her boyfriend, Barwani, who was 19 years her senior in high school, and the two founded Theranos a year later.
Elizabeth and her boyfriend were neither biological nor medical, so why did they go down the path of starting a medical company?
It turned out that Elizabeth had interned in the laboratory of the Singapore Genome Research Institute in her freshman year of college, and at that time, when SARS was raging, she felt that the detection of the SARS virus in the blood at that time was too backward, and there must be a better way.
So after returning from Singapore, Elizabeth came up with the idea of a relevant direction and filed a patent.
Later, she felt that there must be a lot of potential, so she resolutely dropped out of Stanford University to start Theranos.
Theranos are the English compound words for "therapy" and "diagnosis."
Human and luxurious boards
While many entrepreneurs fret about financing, Elizabeth has no similar concerns because she herself was "born in Rome."
Thernos' investors have had extravagant facelifts, most notably Oracle founder Ellison and media mogul Murdoch, who has invested up to $125 million in it.
In addition to the business giants, Elizabeth also took care of a number of academic and political leaders:
Her mentor, Channing Robertson, associate dean of Stanford's School of Engineering, was hired as a consultant to the company and became the first board member;
Two former U.S. secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, also joined Theranos' board;
Elizabeth also hooked up with former U.S. President Bill Clinton...
Even in 2015, Biden, who was vice president of the United States at the time, visited the platform at Theranos...
Theranos is also considered to be the brightest startup in Silicon Valley after Jobs and Apple.
Yes, at that time, Musk and his Tesla and SpaceX were still "nothing."
And Elizabeth herself is also very good at creating her own external image.
In order to create a tall image, Elizabeth put on a turtleneck sweater imitating Jobs and deliberately suppressed her voice very low on company occasions.
The image of the "female version of Jobs" has also begun to penetrate the hearts of the people.
Frequently appears on the front page of the media, often sharing in the world-changing topics.
Investors, people and marketing also bring more direct effects -
Ten years after the company was founded, Theranos ushered in its first major turning point, receiving a large order from Walgreen, the second largest pharmacy in the United States, and establishing a long-term partnership.
The first Theranos Health Centre was established in Palo Alto, where local consumers could go to Walgreen to use Theranos' blood testing instruments.
After the commercial revenue began to rise, Theranos valuation went even higher.
In 2014, Elizabeth was named one of the richest women in the United States by Forbes, when she owned 50 percent of the company and Theranos' valuation peaked at $9 billion (60 billion yuan).
In July 2015, Theranos received FDA approval for a herpes virus finger blood test, the only time it qualified for a diagnostic test.
However, the fake is ultimately fake, and it is more and more commercial landings that make Theranos show their feet.
In the process, Theranos was found not to have blood testing capabilities at all, but to hang sheep's heads to sell dog meat, OEM at the front desk, and later used traditional testing methods.
Using a method in the field of AI, that is, front-end AI, back-end labor.
And the horse's foot was also revealed to John Carreyrou, a famous reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
This became the fuse for Elizabeth and Theranos to be liquidated.
Silicon Valley "Watergate"
After obtaining the tip, Carreyrou began a secret investigation for several months, and in October he published a series of blockbuster articles... Pull Theranos straight off the altar.
In the report, Carreyrou revealed a surprising fact:
Theranos' test results were not accurate at all, they used medical devices from other companies to detect blood, and the amount of blood was not more than one drop.
According to insiders, only a fraction of the 240 blood tests used Theranos proprietary technology, and the vast majority of the tests were done using vials of blood drawn from the arm, rather than "a few drops" drawn by puncturing a finger.
In other words, Theranos has basically no innovation, and the one-drop blood detection technology simply cannot meet the requirements.
The evidence is so overwhelming that Elizabeth can't even refute it head-on.
She tried the "means of capital".
Because of the Wall Street Journal, which reported the scandal, the boss happened to be Theranos' investor, Murdoch.
At one point, Elizabeth asked Murdoch for help, hoping that he would suppress the report.
But Murdoch did not agree, saying "he trusts the newspaper's editors to handle the matter fairly."
In the end, after the news was published in the Wall Street Journal, public opinion was in an uproar, and finally became the first domino that overwhelmed Theranos.
The scandal of Theranos has finally surfaced.
In order to round up the lie, Elizabeth on the one hand strictly controls the caliber of employees and keeps employees who know the inside story silent.
Even Ian Gibbons, the company's chief scientist, was forced to commit suicide.
Gibbons wanted Theranos' instruments to be at the same level as other commercial instruments, so friction arose with management.
Under the dual pressure of testifying in court and obstruction by the company, Gibbons chose to end his life.
……
However, even the Wall Street Journal report detonated the entire Silicon Valley and technology circles, suspected of multiple frauds, and led to the death of an academic tycoon.
But Elizabeth did not plead guilty, denied all the allegations in the report, and her investigation and trial were also tortuous.
Trial of twists and turns
First, in January 2016, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Ancillary Services (CMS) investigated Theranos' laboratory in California.
It was determined that its laboratory personnel did have irregularities in operating equipment and procedures.
Later, in July 2016, U.S. regulators formally issued an injunction banning Elizabeth from operating blood testing services for two years.
Theranos also officially ceased operations that year.
But for Elizabeth herself, the lawsuit has not stopped.
In March 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Theranos founder Elizabeth for a $700 million investment fraud.
After the lawsuit, Elizabeth relinquished voting control of Theranos and reached a settlement with a $500,000 fine.
In June 2018, Elizabeth and her boyfriend, Balwani, were indicted by a U.S. federal jury on nine counts of telecommunications fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit telecommunications fraud.
Prosecutors accused the two of not only defrauding investors, but also withholding or misrepresenting some of the facts from doctors and patients in some of the company's biotech tests.
The two not only denied guilt, but also used various lace information to attract attention during the trial process, and finally let the lawsuit continue to drag on.
Later, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the original trial time of the case was also repeatedly postponed, and Elizabeth, 35, was released from prison on bail.
During her release on bail, Elizabeth again delayed the trial with pregnancy and childbirth.
But what should come will still come.
On January 3, 2022, US time, after a delay and delay, the verdict was still coming.
First, the jury found Elizabeth guilty of four counts, one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of telecommunications fraud.
Second, it was confirmed that Elizabeth had false propaganda and fraud in her "blood-dripping detection disease" technology.
And those charges could put Elizabeth in jail for up to 20 years.
But how the sentence will be determined may be a long hearing and game.
One more thing
Will Elizabeth finally sit on the bottom of the prison?
Probably not.
Although she was discredited, Elizabeth's life did not seem to have fundamentally changed.
Remember what you said above? During the trial, she succeeded in slowing down the trial with her pregnancy and childbirth.
And she married and had children, not a generalist, but Billy Evans, the heir to the Evans Hotel.
Elizabeth still has the "power of capital", let alone in a beautiful country.
However, the human design should be completely crossed.
Journalist John Carreyrou, who thoroughly debunked Elizabeth's deception, wrote the whole process into a book, Bad Blood, which was also translated as "Blood into Gold." In that year, it won the major bestseller list awards.
Even the adaptation rights of "Blood into Gold" have been heavily won by Legendary Pictures.
Elizabeth herself is played by "Big Cousin" Jennifer Lawrence.
Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, is to be nailed to the pillar of shame forever.