Once again, Marnie was refreshed by the ambitions of Silicon Valley tycoons to change the world.
When it comes to Silicon Valley, which is full of geniuses, big things can happen every year, but the most exciting and magical story in Silicon Valley in recent years is the fall of the legendary female entrepreneur Elizabeth.
"Inventor's Bloodletting in Silicon Valley"
The Birth of a Female Jobs
In 2014, the US "Forbes" announced the annual rich list, a strange name attracted everyone's curiosity: Elizabeth Holmes (Elizabeth Holmes).
The blond young woman founded Theranos, a medical business a decade ago, that was valued by venture capital at $9 billion.
At just 30 years old, she is the youngest female billionaire since Zuckerberg.
In 1984, Elizabeth was born into a privileged family, her father was the USAID disaster relief coordinator and her mother was a congresswoman.
At the age of nine, Elizabeth suffered the first heavy blow in her life. Her close uncle was suddenly found to have skin cancer. Soon, complications such as brain cancer and bone cancer appeared. Before she could say goodbye, her uncle died. left them.
This had a huge impact on Elizabeth, and a great "salvation dream" quietly appeared in her heart: if her uncle could perform daily physical examinations at home, cancer cells could be detected early, and the tragedy might not have happened.
Because of this, little Elizabeth made up her mind to devote herself to the medical career.
Matching the great dream is the brain of genius, which is exactly what Elizabeth possesses.
Elizabeth, who got an A in every homework, received an admission letter from Stanford University at the age of 17, with a $3,000 presidential scholarship.
Dean Channing Robertson
When SARS raged in 2003, Elizabeth went to Singapore for an internship. She found that the current detection technology for blood viruses was too backward. After 5 days of research, Elizabeth invented the first patented product-a wearable drug injection patch.
It was this patent that opened the door to Elizabeth's entrepreneurship.
In 2004, Elizabeth, who was a sophomore, dropped out of Stanford University and used tuition and the first financing (6 million) to start a blood testing system company - Theranos, which is taken from "therapy (treatment)" + "diagnosis (diagnosis). ".
Here, a new Zuckerberg myth seems to be born. That year, Elizabeth was only 19 years old.
With Elizabeth's efforts, she led her team to design a blood testing machine called "Edison" that could revolutionize traditional blood testing methods .
This blood analyzer, which looks like a computer host, abandons the old-fashioned venous blood drawing method and adopts the fingertip blood drawing method. Just take out a few drops of blood at the fingertip and suck it into a micro test tube. After Edison's blood analysis, you can Complete a medical report covering 240 physical tests.
The inspiration for "Edison" came from Elizabeth's fear of needles since she was a child. She found that many children were as afraid of needle-hole blood as she was, and seriously ill patients had to draw several tubes of blood every day.
Elizabeth wanted to improve the situation, so she devised this painless blood draw.
Great, right?
The most important thing is that "Edison" is not only a complete test, but its price is much cheaper than a general hospital physical examination. In the United States, even a simple set of blood tests can cost high medical bills if you don't have health insurance.
And Theranos, just $2.99.
It is foreseeable that once "Edison" is put into the market, it will completely overthrow the American medical system, and Elizabeth is enough to become a hero in the medical field and even ordinary people.
Company solgan: "One small drop changes everything"
However, "Edison" was not perfect at this time. Elizabeth needed to continue her research, but she had already spent the first financing. In order to attract more investors, Elizabeth embarked on the second step of building a medical empire - marketing.
Elizabeth frequently gave speeches and pulled venture capital, and everyone who met her would be impressed by her:
This sweet-looking girl born in the 1980s looks almost the same as her idol, Jobs, in a black coat and a black sweater with a lapel, paired with black slacks.
What's more unique is that she has a dark voice close to the bass.
Elizabeth's superb speaking skills and unique personal charm have attracted many bigwigs in the venture capital circle, such as the famous venture capital firm DFJ, and former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
Eventually, she met the nobleman George Schultz, the former US Secretary of State.
A 19-year-old female student dropped out of school with the great dream of reforming medical technology to start a business. George Schultz was impressed by her persistence and decided to take a stake in Theranos.
And under his recommendation, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, media tycoon Murdoch and other political and business giants have participated in the vote, forming a board of directors with a lineup comparable to the White House cabinet.
With the support of celebrity bosses, Elizabeth successfully signed a contract with Walgreens, the American pharmacy giant, to open a health center in its pharmacy to provide blood collection and testing services for patients.
At the same time, Elizabeth spent huge sums of money to shoot advertisements, issue gift cards, and launch free blood test activities. "Edison" quickly swept the country.
In 2015, Elizabeth became a female entrepreneur worth 4.5 billion and was selected as one of the "100 Most Influential People of the Year" by Time magazine.
31-year-old Elizabeth really successfully copied the legendary life of her idol Jobs and became the "female version of Jobs" in Silicon Valley.
The instant collapse of the myth
etc? It is estimated that many people have been confused when they see this. Why are there no technical details about "Edison"? What major research results has it achieved?
Not that Marnie forgot to say it, but that she really didn't.
Theranos was expanding like crazy, but until 2015, "Edison" didn't achieve anything.
Eileen Chang, Elizabeth's fan sister who entered Theranos for her, also discovered this problem.
Although Elizabeth kept giving speeches and shows, in fact, no matter how hard the laboratory worked, "Edison" could not achieve the ability to operate as Elizabeth imagined.
Its capacity is too small to hold enough testing equipment, and its blood samples are too small to support 240 tests.
And in operation, "Edison" often freezes, damages, and sometimes requires employees to reach out and adjust at the risk of being stabbed.
Whenever an investor came for a blood test, the staff would help to falsify it.
First let "Edison" draw blood, and then take advantage of the investor's meeting or visit to bring the blood sample to the laboratory for manual testing.
In this way, the report obtained by the investor is naturally a correct and complete inspection report.
Some people may ask, since these employees know about it, why are they reluctant to expose Elizabeth?
Not unwilling, not afraid.
These employees sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering the company, and the computers they use are also monitored by the company.
Once employees disclose company secrets to the outside world, what awaits them will be sky-high compensation fees, enough to bankrupt their families.
Ailing Zhang resigned and left the company after realizing she had been deceived, but another employee, Taylor Schultz, was reluctant to remain silent.
Taylor Schultz, the grandson of George Schultz, was recommended by his grandfather to enter Theranos after graduation. Soon after, he found that the clinical test data of Theranos was inaccurate.
Due to the "non-disclosure agreement", Taylor could not be directly exposed, so he "sniffed" to John Carreyau, the ace reporter of the "Wall Street Journal" and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
It was this man who single-handedly destroyed Elizabeth's medical empire.
John went to the health center to investigate secretly for several months, interviewing former employees of Theranos and patients and doctors who had used "Edison", only to determine that "Edison" was a complete business scam.
On October 15, 2015, John published all of his findings on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, a story that shook America: "The Struggle of a Star Startup."
This report completely changed Elizabeth's life.
It turned out that, of the so-called 240 blood tests, "Edison" can only complete 12 tests, and other tests are done on blood testers of other brands such as Siemens.
Not only that, but the much-hyped fingertip blood test is fake. When the patient goes to the health center for blood draw, a venipuncture is still done.
To make matters worse, many patients who came for blood tests received false test results, the sick were delayed, and the healthy wasted treatment fees.
What genius girls, changing the world, medical empires... are just the modern version of "the emperor's new clothes".
As soon as the news came out, the whole nation was in an uproar. The market value of Theranos 9 billion evaporated overnight, and the myth of the "female version of Jobs" collapsed instantly.
Yet even when the truth was revealed, Elizabeth still brazenly defended herself on TV:
At this time, Elizabeth was powerless, and then the regulator of the US clinical laboratory intervened in the case, prohibiting Theranos from continuing to set foot in the laboratory industry.
Until 2018, Elizabeth was charged with two counts of conspiracy to defraud and nine counts of defrauding.
She faces up to 20 years in prison.
absurd god-building movement
The story ends here, but there are still many mysteries about it that have not been solved-
For example, why are these battle-hardened political and business figures willing to trust Elizabeth? One of the shareholders, George Schultz, even after Elizabeth was arrested, did not hesitate to turn against her grandson Taylor and still supported her.
Another investor, Murdoch, even invested $125 million in Theranos when his Wall Street Journal investigated Elizabeth.
For example, those venture capital companies, they have seen too many talented entrepreneurs, why did they fall into Elizabeth's trap so easily?
For example, the media that touted Elizabeth, they are obviously the most skeptical people, why has no one asked "how does this technology work" before John?
And every employee involved, they experienced the absurdity of "Edison", why continue to believe her?
Marnie believes that they are not just collectively stupid, perhaps because there have been too many similar entrepreneurial myths in Silicon Valley, so when they face the "female version of Jobs", they instinctively choose to believe it.
Or maybe it is because after Jobs and Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley needs a new genius and a new totem too, so they collectively entered the water and participated in this god-building movement.
Finally, back to Elizabeth, according to the follow-up investigation, the relationship between her and her uncle is not close, and even the bass in her mouth is disguised.
This makes people wonder, is she really believing in the story, or is she deliberately lying from beginning to end?
Interestingly, Elizabeth named the blood testing machine "Edison" because she believed in Edison's famous saying: Fake it till you make it, and pretend until it succeeds.
One of the greatest inventors of mankind, he also did the same thing as Elizabeth a hundred years ago. In order to stabilize investors, he lied that he had unlocked the secret of incandescent lamps, but he did not.
He falsified the presentation, bribed reporters with company stock, and successfully kept the secret for four years.
Four years later, Edison, who worked hard, really solved the secret of the incandescent lamp.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth only did the first half of the sentence. So she is not the "Edison" of the new era, she is just a shameless liar who seeks money and kills her life.
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