ELIZABETH HOLMES: The Most Notorious Stanford Student?

Here is a table showing those schools most successful in business.  A unicorn founder is someone who formed a startup company that reached a valuation of $1 billion.

Business Insider wrote about the 26 most famous and successful Stanford University students of all time.  Included were people like:  John F. Kennedy, Mitt Romney, Steve Ballmer (Microsoft guy), Shri Mukesh Ambani (runs the largest company in India), Larry Page (cofounded Google), Sergey Brin (co-founded Google), Reese Witherspoon and Tiger Woods.  I mention these particular individuals because they all left Stanford without a degree.  Some remain on leave, perhaps to return someday to finish what they started.  Clearly, all have done well. 

Of course, there is me.  I started and earned a B.S. degree in chemical engineering, from Stanford, graduating in 1962.  I think I have been successful, but certainly not famous.  However, I'm now 86 and live a fabulous retired life at 15 Craigside in Honolulu.  Mind you, Albert Einstein would not think much of me.

Then there is Elizabeth Holmes, who was a freshman in the Stanford Chemical Engineering Department from 2002-2003 and qualifies as a unicorn founder, for her Theranos reached a value of around $10 billion in the 2014-2015 period.  However, her fame is notorious, for her company dropped to a net worth of zero in 2016 and dissolved in 2018.  She is also now serving a 10-year and 3-month federal prison sentence in the Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, with a scheduled release date of 22February2030.

I have been keeping track of Elizabeth Holmes now for 12 years, the year after she founded Theranos.  I read somewhere that she had dropped out of the chemical engineering program to found the company, with a name or two I recognized from the ChE department.  Her public profile peaked in 2015 when she landed on Time Magazine's list of the 100 influential people, before The Wall Street Journal published the landmark exposé questioning the validity of her technology later in the year.  Note the author, John Carreyrou.  He becomes prominent in some of those mentioned documentaries.

Who is Elizabeth Holmes?

• Born in 1984 in Washington, D.C..
• Her father was a vice president of a subsidiary of Enron, while her mother was a Congressional committee staffer.
• One of her ancestors founded Fleischmann's yeast.
• Family in financial trouble when Enron went bankrupt in 2001.
• 
  However, family must have had resources, for Elizabeth began studying at Stanford in 2002, and was not on scholarship.  
• One of the film productions mentioned she was a presidential scholar, meaning that she was in the top 10% of the entering class.
• I can identify with that, for I must have been in the bottom 10% when you include, family wealth, sociological experience and general status of life.
• So anyway she attended Stanford University's summer Mandarin program.

• 
  Liz met Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, a Pakistani-born technology entrepreneur in 2002 during a Beijing trip.  
• She was 18 and he 37.  
• He had already divorced his wife when they met, and said he had sold a company and was worth $40 million.
• They began to live together in 2005, and he joined Theranos in 2009 as COO.
• He left the company in 2016.
• 
  She had a fear of needles, and saw how much blood was being taken for each test, and thought that there should be a way to do all the tests with one drop of blood.  
• I can appreciate that, too, for I need to let three vials taken out of me every six months a week before my 6-month physical with my doctor.  Hate it, and, if I were to invent something similar, would make the test uninvasive.  Even one drop means your finger has to be pricked.

• 
  It takes 100 to 300 drops of blood to fill a vial, depending on the size.
• It takes a whole laboratory of people and scads of devices to test your blood.  She wanted a small box like this.
• 
  Founded Real-Time Cures in Palo Alto, California in 2003 to "democratize healthcare."
• Used her tuition money to start the company, dropping out of Stanford.
• Professors at Stanford told her what she was trying to do was impossible.
• But she convinced Channing Robertson (former chairman of the ChE dept. and now dean of the School of Engineering) to back her idea.

• 
  Re-named company Theranos (combination of words "therapy" and "diagnosis").
• Robertson became the first board member, and he introduced Holmes to venture capitalists.
• By the end of 2004, raised $6 million.
• By 2010 had $92 million in venture capital.
• 
  In 2011 got former secretary of state George Shultz to join, and added Henry Kissinger, General James Mattis, William Perry (former Secretary of Defense), Sam Nunn (former Senator), Riley Bechtel (chairmann of Bechtel Group), David Boies (high profile lawyer, who also served as company counsel) and others.
• 
  Somewhere along the way she began to believe Silicon Valley jargon that you had to fake it 'til you make it.  Holmes operated Theranos in a stealth mode until 2013, when she announced a partnership with Walgreens.  This got on her on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, etc.
• Forbes recognized her as the world's youngest self-made female billionaire and her #110 on their top 400 in 2014.
• By the end of 2014, her name appeared on 18 U.S.  and 66 foreign patents.
• 
  Then came John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal.
• Theranos did everything to stop him from publishing.
• In October 2015, the Journal published the bombshell article.
• Journal continued to publish for the next few years, and in 2018, Carreyrou published Bad Blood:  Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

Tomorrow, Part 2 to the story of Elizabeth Holmes.  

• I haven't said anything about her new family of a partner and two small children.
• I've just this week seen numerous films and documentaries about her.  I will review what is out there for your watching.

Remember the strongest oceanic storm the world has seen this year, Super Typhoon Champi?

Well, pretty much followed the predicted model and is today a tropical storm over Kyushu, Japan.  However, no one saw this coming.

Thankfully, still pretty much missed Taiwan and the islands of Okinawa.  Of course damage was still significant in Guam, Taiwan and some of those islands.  Well, a new typhoon formed to pretty much follow the path of Champi.

In-Fa just became a typhoon today, but will strengthen into a Category 2 tomorrow, then Category 3 the next day, and will be at least a Category 4 from October 29, heading straight for Taiwan and Okinawa, again.

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