The biggest deception case in the history of Silicon Valley was sentenced, and the "female version of jobs" went from altar to destruction
2022-01-06
She dropped out of Stanford University at the age of 19, turned an idea she germinated in her dormitory into a product, and took charge of a technology company valued at nearly 10 billion US dollars; She always wears a black sweater with a high collar. She is a workaholic and perfectionist. She was selected as one of the top 100 people in the world by time magazine; When she was questioned by the media, she would respond confidently and disdainfully in TV programs: "when you want to change the world, some people will target you like this." These stories should be familiar to you. They are a mixture of entrepreneurs such as jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and musk. If one could integrate the souls of so many talents, what kind of genius would he be? But she is the protagonist of the biggest scam in the history of Silicon Valley - Elizabeth Holmes. ▲ Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth has launched a "revolutionary blood test equipment", which claims that more than 300 blood test projects can be completed only by taking blood from her fingertips, and the blood drops into gold. In a twinkling of an eye, she has become the most dazzling star in Silicon Valley. All this was finally found to be a scam. Such a skyscraper supported by capital, media and the public collapsed. After several years of trial, the California District Court recently convicted Elizabeth of four counts of investor fraud. Although the judge has not announced the final sentence, each charge can be sentenced to up to 20 years' imprisonment, which means that Elizabeth, 37, may spend the rest of her life in prison. (some legal experts do not expect to impose the maximum penalty) Become the "female version of jobs" It is not unreasonable for Elizabeth to be called "the female version of jobs". In high school, Elizabeth showed her genius, kept all a's, was admitted to Stanford University at the age of 17, received $3000 a month for scientific research, and began to embark on the road of scientific research. ▲ Elizabeth speaks at Pepperdine University Channing Robertson, Dean of Stanford Institute of engineering, is Elizabeth's bole. She made an exception to let Elizabeth, a freshman, enter the laboratory to work with doctoral students. During the summer of freshman year, Elizabeth entered the laboratory work of the Singapore genome research center, when Elizabeth was responsible for the detection of SARS virus in blood samples at the time of atypical pneumonia. After returning from Singapore, Elizabeth applied for the first patent in her life, a wearable drug injection patch, which surprised president Qian Ning. The next year, Elizabeth decided to drop out of school and start a business. President Qian Ning not only supported her decision, but also served as an adviser to the board of directors of her company. The company founded by Elizabeth is called theranos, which is a combination of the English words "therapy" and "diagnosis". Its direction is to do micro blood test, that is, to test multiple indicators through only one drop of blood. At the end of the story, you may see the growth track of jobs and Bill Gates. In fact, Elizabeth is a loyal fan of jobs. She takes jobs as a template almost everywhere in the entrepreneurial process. Like jobs, Elizabeth wore the same black turtleneck sweater and casual pants in public. In order to match this dress, Elizabeth asked the company's air conditioning temperature to be kept at 15.5 degrees Celsius for many years. When talking, she also deliberately imitated jobs' deep baritone. In the HBO documentary, many former theranos employees suspected that Elizabeth's voice was forged, because she would hear her real voice when she slipped and got drunk occasionally. Elizabeth seems to want to imitate jobs and establish the image of a maverick. Such people are very popular in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, who claims to immigrate to Mars, is one of them. ▲ Elon Musk So it's no surprise that "changing the world" has become Elizabeth's mantra. When the Wall Street Journal issued a long report questioning theranos, she responded in this way on the TV program: This is what happens to a person who wants to change the world. First they say you're crazy, then they hit you, and you finally changed the world. Although Elizabeth didn't change the world in the end, she succeeded in shaping her personal brand image. It seems that she really has the marketing ability comparable to jobs and strong storytelling ability. On Ted, she spoke passionately about her original intention of starting a business, to make people who fear needles like her better receive treatment, and not to let people like her uncle delay treatment because they can't afford expensive testing costs. "The people we love will change, the whole medical system and the world will change." What's more, Elizabeth also succeeded in winning over a group of political and business tycoons as her platform. At that time, US President Barack Obama appointed her as US global entrepreneurship ambassador. On the board of theranos, there were two former US secretaries of state, former US Secretary of defense, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, former admiral and former Marine Corps General. Former Secretary of state George Shultz publicly said: This girl is the next jobs, the next bill gates. At first glance, theranos's board of directors is like a small cabinet. Interestingly, as a medical technology startup, the board of directors does not have a person with medical background. When theranos was questioned, Murdoch, a media tycoon known for his vicious investment vision, invested $125 million in theranos. Theranos was once valued at $9 billion, and Elizabeth's personal value was more than $4 billion. The swarming media began to hold Elizabeth to the altar. Forbes rated her as "the world's youngest self-made female billionaire". Time magazine nominated her as "the 100 most influential people in 2015". Fortune rated her as "businessman of the year". The cover title of Inc is "the next jobs" Why can Elizabeth be favored by so many celebrities and media? Erika Cheung, who once worked as a laboratory assistant in theranos, gave her answer in the documentary: It's hard to understand her, but I admire her. Because she is a woman who has entered the field of science and technology and founded her own company, she is a very ideal idol. Cheung's answer is very representative. After all, in the male dominated silicon valley, there are few female founders who can hold their own technology to make the company a unicorn. Investors, the media and even the American people need such a story. A drop of blood turns gold. A drop of blood burns $1.4 billion? According to Elizabeth's vision, as long as she collects one or two drops of blood, her products can immediately test more than 200 physical indicators. She hopes that patients with needle phobia like her can easily and quickly complete the physical examination. If this idea is realized, it will completely subvert the medical testing industry. You should know that a drop of blood is only one thousandth of the blood collection volume of routine examination in the hospital, and the hospital needs 1-2 days to get the test results. Even more exciting, Elizabeth reduced the cost of the hospital's $50 blood test to $2.99. This means that theranos is expected to replace 70% of the business of the U.S. medical testing industry. The annual revenue of this industry in 2017 was about 73 billion yuan, which has also become a powerful data for Elizabeth to attract investors. However, after burning out $1.4 billion in financing, theranos finally built only an instrument that can detect only a few indicators and has a high error rate. In bad blood, a silicon valley giant's secret and lie, published by John carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal, the details of theranos's product development and fraud were exposed in detail, and the original whistleblower was theranos's former laboratory director. Perhaps the imitation of jobs is too deep into the play, and Elizabeth is very stubborn about creating a "perfect product". Because the amount of a drop of blood is really difficult to meet the test needs, the team once suggested increasing the blood collection, which was firmly opposed by Elizabeth and fired the person in charge of the product. Elizabeth doesn't care about spending money at all. The $200 blood box is scrapped once and can use hundreds a week. But the product has not reached the standard, and there are competing products with 31 indicators detected in 12 minutes in the market. Elizabeth finally started the idea of fraud. In order to win the order of Walgreen, the largest chain drugstore in the United States, Elizabeth boasted that her products can complete more than 300 tests and even screen for cancer. In fact, Edison, the only product of theranos, can only test a few indicators. If you tell a lie, you have to tell more lies. In order to cope with the testing in Walgreen's store, Elizabeth spent a lot of money to buy a number of large Siemens testing instruments and express the blood drawn in the store back to the laboratory for testing with Siemens instruments. ▲ the Siemens testing instrument weighs 1200 kg However, Siemens instruments can not solve the problem of insufficient blood collection. In addition, due to improper preservation of blood during transportation, the test results are still unreliable. The original commitment of "accurate and rapid detection of more than 300 indicators per drop of blood" has not been fulfilled. In the face of substandard test results, the company's coo and Elizabeth's boyfriend at that time, sunny balwani, will directly ask employees to eliminate "abnormal data". ▲ theranos has set up blood collection sites in 40 Walgreen stores In the later investigation results released by the FDA of the U.S. Food and drug administration, only 12 of theranos's 250 tests were completed by its own product Edison, and almost none of these 12 test results is accurate. As mentioned earlier, theranos' board of directors has no medical background at all, and a venture capital company focusing on biotechnology invests in theranos, which has actually explained the problem to some extent. The book bad blood mentioned that many pharmaceutical institutions and people in the industry early found that theranos technology was not reliable. When Walgreen decided to cooperate with theranos, Kevin hunt, its laboratory consultant, questioned, while theranos refused Kevin Hunt's request to visit the laboratory on the grounds of confidentiality. ▲ Elizabeth even set up a temporary laboratory to invite then Vice President Biden to visit Unfortunately, Walgreen didn't follow Kevin Hunt's advice, signed a purchase order of US $50 million without verification, and renovated the store for the placement of theranos equipment. These inputs were wasted in the end. In fact, the $1.4 billion theranos received did not really use for product research and development. Many of them were spent on Elizabeth's luxurious life and paying expensive lawyer fees. According to an article in Vanity Fair, the monthly rent of theranos headquarters is US $1 million and a conference table is US $100000. Before 2017, Elizabeth rented a business trip by private plane, equipped with a special security team, personal chef, assistant, driver and official, and the monthly personal cost is as high as US $25000. After the fraud was exposed, Elizabeth and the man
Edit：Li Ling Responsible editor：Chen Jie
Source：ifanr
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