Elizabeth Holmes BLOOD MONEY

THE TECH ENTREPRENEUR SWINDLED BILLIONS OUT OF SILICON VALLEY

- Kylie Walters

Hailed as the next Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes was a breath of fresh air among the boys of big tech during the early 2010s. With her signature black turtlenecks and big, innocent blue eyes, the entrepreneur seemed to be an anomaly, using her “genius” to help others rather than solely wanting to bank billions.

“To me, nothing matters more than the reality in our healthcare system today, which is, when someone is sick, by the time we find out about it, it’s often too late to do anything about it,” the then-31-year-old explained while speaking at a conference in 2015.

Spurred on by her fear of needles, Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at age 19 intending to revolutionise healthcare. Setting up her company Theranos, the teenager claimed to have invented a machine that would put preventative healthcare at everyone’s fingertip.

She claimed her Edison device, a black box around the size of a home printer, could replace a pathology lab and test for diseases with just a single drop of blood. The simple, needle-free procedure cost next to nothing so it could be used once a month to track for small changes to prevent the onset of conditions like cancer or diabetes.