Jobs's entrepreneurial history of building a trillion-dollar market value Apple is wonderful. But like the "female version of Jobs", the "unicorn" who personally destroyed the 58 billion valuation is more reflective.
After nearly 3 years, Elizabeth Holmes, the protagonist of the "bad blood" fraud case that shocked the whole of Silicon Valley, finally went to the California court to accept multiple charges such as blood test technology fraud, fraud, and may face up to 20 years in prison, and a belated trial will begin in the next few months.
Who is Elizabeth Holmes? Theranos, the "blood cancer test" company she founded, was once the brightest entrepreneurial star in Silicon Valley, "media tycoon" Murdoch invested 1 billion yuan for her, former US Secretary of State Kissinger and Schultz personally stood for her, once ranked among the top 400 richest people in the United States, and a number of VCs and investors invested nearly 900 million US dollars (nearly 5.8 billion yuan) for her.
However, with the Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou writing a series of articles exposing the various lies behind Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos were pulled off the altar, and Theranos' once high valuation of $9 billion (nearly 58 billion yuan) was instantly wiped out.
After the counterfeiting case was exposed, public opinion focused more on the criticism of Elizabeth's morality and her abuse of legal loopholes. But what is more noteworthy is that the deeper essence of the "bad blood" fraud case is that the "Waterloo" encountered "Waterloo" when the US "Internet model" that cultivated giants such as Apple, Oracle, and Amazon was bluntly copied to the medical and health field.
Bad Blood was written by Wall Street Journal investigative journalist John Carreyrou based on hundreds of interviews with more than 150 people, including 60 former Theranos employees. The book recreates the beginning and end of Elizabeth Holmes's 10 years of entrepreneurship, and details the inside story of Theranos' transformation from an entrepreneurial star to the protagonist of the largest corporate fraud case since Enron.
At present, many entrepreneurs and capitals in China who originally focused on the Internet are exploring and marching into the medical and health field, and the Internet "burning money" model is also eager to try in China's medical and health industry. Why did Elizabeth Holmes fail? How to avoid repeating Elizabeth Holmes' mistakes?
In the narration of "Bad Blood", we can see that Elizabeth Holmes, like a crazy fan, copied the "Internet model" of idol Jobs in the field of medical and health care, became famous for a while in Silicon Valley, and gradually lost control and finally "never recovered".
The various experiences and lessons learned in this are worthy of vigilance for entrepreneurs and investors who have just entered the healthcare industry.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > failed fans of "Joe Helper"</h1>
"Anyone who spends some time with Elizabeth will find that she unabashedly idolizes Jobs and Apple." Bad Blood writes bluntly.
Black turtleneck lapel sweater, black pants, deep voice, public speech habits with elbows propped on the knees, Elizabeth Holmes from dress to demeanor is almost a copy of Jobs, coupled with "geeky" entrepreneurial experience, by the media praised as "female version of Jobs".
Deeply imitated Jobs's Elizabeth. Holmes
Not only dress and demeanor, in terms of entrepreneurial experience, philosophy and even company management, Elizabeth also tried to reproduce the idol Jobs: 19 years old dropped out of Stanford to found Theranos, the Theranos blood detection system Edison called "medical health version of the iPod", in the Edison device appearance of the extreme design and beautification, and even transplanted its extremely controlling company culture from Jobs Apple.
However, Elizabeth imitated Jobs's form, but did not learn the essence of "Joe's helper", let alone dialectically learn the lessons of his failure in entrepreneurship.
Elizabeth was extremely stubborn and strong in entrepreneurship, repeatedly exaggerating the magic of "blood cancer testing", advocating its technical strength, ignoring basic engineering and medical common sense, and hiring former Apple designers to beautify the blood testing system Edison, which is undoubtedly learning Jobs's famous "reality distortion force field", and indeed fascinated many non-professionals, but the pharmaceutical industry with high requirements for accuracy and rigor does not work.
Elizabeth's Edison blood tester looks "tall," but it's full of engineering and technical loopholes. Confusion such as mechanical failures and wireless transmission errors made Edison unable to even perform basic detection accuracy, and under the pull of the giant's vision of "blood cancer testing" and the dwarf-like engineering and technical capabilities, Elizabeth finally embarked on the road of no return.
In fact, even if the accuracy requirements are not so high electronic consumer products, Jobs himself has also been planted because of the excessive use of the "reality distortion force field", disregarding the objective laws of engineering and technology.
Steve. Jobs biography wrote that after Jobs was driven out of Apple, he set up NeXT to develop computers, but lost the balance of technical genius Wozniak, Jobs more and more crazy use of "reality distortion force field", regardless of engineering and technical problems, the NeXT computer design is very avant-garde and elegant, the conference is also very powerful, but it is flawed in technical functions.
Jobs ran away to build the NeXT computer
After the NeXT computer was released, Jobs's main competitor at the time, Bill. Gates not ironically commented in an email to employees: "All realities are completely shelved. ”
And the market also punched the "Joe Helper". In mid-1989, the NeXT computer finally went on sale, and the factory was ready to produce 10,000 units a month—resulting in only about 400 units sold per month.
After encountering the lessons of the NeXT computer, Jobs returned to Apple and paid more attention to the balance of technology and design, especially after he suffered from cancer, and even said "Stay hungry, Stay foolish" in a speech at Stanford University.
In this way, it is particularly valuable for the medical health industry that determines life and death, whether it is medicine or medicine, it is necessary to "Stay hungry, Stay foolish", constantly learn knowledge, humbly admit her shortcomings and constantly improve, but unfortunately Elizabeth learned these wisdoms one step late.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="54">“Fake it until you make it”行不通</h1>
Thinking further, behind the "bad blood" fraud case, the deeper reflection is that the tried-and-true "Fake it until you make it" (success, starting from pretending) entrepreneurial philosophy in the Silicon Valley Internet industry will not work in the more rigorous and accurate medical and health industry.
In the Internet industry, there seem to be many entrepreneurial cases of "pretending first, then succeeding". For example, Oracle, which currently has a market capitalization of up to $236.4 billion, was well known as its founder, Larry. Ellison exaggerated the capabilities of Oracle's database software, and the various releases were riddled with vulnerabilities. But for medical devices and pharmaceuticals, you can't do that.
In the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, there are also heroic stories of small startups that highlight the "century-old giants" and become great companies. For example, the protagonists of "Billion Dollar Molecule" Arete Pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceutical upstart Amgen and Genentech, but honesty is an essential quality for their success.
Biomedicine is an extremely risky, highly regulated industry from the beginning of the clinic, a new drug development takes at least ten years, costs a billion US dollars, and the failure rate is more than 90%. In the world of scientific research and development, risk is objective, rather than pretending that you will be able to succeed, calmly and honestly face your own success and failure, is the real secret of success.
Image credit: pexels
In fact, the anti-hepatitis C drug that Forte invested a lot of energy in research and development was finally defeated by Gilead Sciences' new drugs after a brief period of glory, and after many disappointments, Forte made a comeback with a major breakthrough in the field of rare diseases.
Failures and challenges in clinical trials are common in the biomedical industry, but that doesn't mean companies are sentenced to death.
And "female Jobs" Elizabeth's mistake is wrong, pretending to be able to do things too "tall", only with a drop of blood in four hours can get more than 200 items including cancer and high cholesterol test reports, but her own technical level is too "pediatric", Elizabeth herself dropped out of school after two years of study at Stanford University, some basic scientific and engineering principles have not been understood.
Under the huge tearing, although Elizabeth herself has maintained Theranos with financing for more than 10 years with superb public relations skills, she has not been able to bridge the huge gap between ideal and practical technical capabilities. At the same time, the "snowball" piled up by lies rolled bigger and bigger, eventually leading to the exposure of the real situation of Theranos and the collapse of entrepreneurship.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="75" > there is no "one-step ascension"</h1>
Although Elizabeth has captured the hearts of many political leaders and rich people with her superb "reality distortion force field", even the "media tycoon" Murdoch has paid 1 billion yuan for her. But none of the "old money" in the medical circle were deceived, and only Walgreens, who were deeply involved in the unregulated off-campus market, planted a heel.
"Bad Blood" wrote that pharmaceutical giants Novartis and Pfizer terminated their partnership with Theranos at the stage of technical verification, and avoided the situation of ignition and fire at an early stage.
In fact, in the field of biomedicine, there are companies that have "become famous in the first world war", but there are few cases of "one step to the sky". Once a startup has business potential, it will almost always be noticed by the giants and establish BD cooperation, and verify whether it is good or bad in one milestone after another.
Taking the current rapid growth of China's CAR-T leading legendary creatures as an example, the original partial security in Nanjing, was taken by the giant Johnson & Johnson at asCO, after the data and clinical investigation, Johnson & Johnson and legendary biology established bD cooperation, and then all the way through the milestone event, becoming a star enterprise.
It is not surprising that the Theranos, which has developed for decades and attracted quite a few non-professional celebrities, but has always wandered the non-regulated market outside the hospital, has finally been verified that the entire entrepreneurial story is woven by "lies".
With the opening of the door of the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the 18-A of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to unprofitable biomedical enterprises, more and more Chinese non-professional capital and investors are pouring into the biomedical field, and more biomedical professionals are willing to start their own entrepreneurial journey at an earlier stage.
For investors and entrepreneurs, in addition to providing a warning on the level of business ethics, the "bad blood" fraud case is more valuable than providing a profound lesson in biomedical venture capital.
For biomedical investors:
● Biomedicine, professional strength is more important than a glossy background
●Non-professional investment in biomedicine, it is necessary to find professionals to check
● Face up to the high risks behind the high returns of biomedicine
● The entrepreneurial story of "young success" in the Internet field is relatively rare in the field of biomedicine
● Biomedicine, more is thick accumulation, rarely one step to the sky
For biomedical entrepreneurs:
● Constantly forge their own professional ability, based on professional to find entrepreneurial opportunities
●“Stay hungry，Stay foolish”
● Biomedicine is more important than marketing propaganda, the product itself
● Face up to scientific successes and failures, and do not deceive and falsify
●Abide by the Hippocratic Oath and always safeguard the interests of patients