Meet Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley's latest phenom

[Mercury1]

I saw this article on forbes and what this company is pursuing very interesting, could literally revolutionize the medical testing industry. What makes it more interesting is the CEO apparently got the idea while doing an intern in Singapore on a project to find Sars in patients.

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/michelle-quinn/ci_26147649/quinn-meet-elizabeth-holmes-silicon-valleys-latest-phenom

Quinn: Meet Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley's latest phenom

By Michelle Quinn

[email protected]

POSTED: 07/15/2014 06:11:39 AM PDT6 COMMENTS| UPDATED: 5 MONTHS AGO

Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford in 2003 as a 19-year-old to start Theranos, a company now poised to disrupt the medical diagnostic test market. She spoke about the company's vision at their headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Thursday afternoon July 3, 2014. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) ( Karl Mondon )

Silicon Valley, much like baseball, has its share of phenoms, those up-and-comers who demonstrate extraordinary promise.

Meet the latest: Elizabeth Holmes.

The 30-year-old Stanford dropout turned paper multibillionaire has quietly worked for 11 years on her startup, which aims to give all of us better information about our bodies in a quest to revolutionize how we manage our health.

"If people can really begin to understand their bodies, that can help them change their lives," she said during a recent interview at the Palo Alto headquarters of Theranos, a mix of the words "therapy" and "diagnosis."

Over the past year, Holmes has embraced a more public profile, recently snagging the cover of Fortune magazine in what bore all the hallmarks of a carefully orchestrated media push. Her board includes a Who's Who of American political influence -- former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary Bill Perry, a couple of former U.S. senators, a Marine general. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is one of her investors.

FAMILIAR QUALITIES

Holmes' drive to change the world has a familiar ring here. She may actually do it -- or not. It's always hard to know in Silicon Valley whether the hype matches the reality.

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The tech industry has seen phenoms before. They are typically young, bold and single-minded with boundless ambition. Think Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg.

What often distinguishes great leaders are qualities like determination and persistence, but something else too, said Bob Sutton, a Stanford engineering school professor and co-author of "Scaling Up Excellence."

"They believe they are destined to do something special," he said.

Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford in 2003 as a 19-year-old to start Theranos, a company now poised to disrupt the medical diagnostic test market. She spoke about the company's vision at their headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Thursday afternoon July 3, 2014. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) ( Karl Mondon )

In that respect, Holmes is cast from the same mold as Jobs et al. She launched the company, she told me, after "thinking about what is the greatest change I could make in the world."

Holmes, who hates needles, zeroed in on blood tests as a starting point. If blood tests were easier, cheaper and more convenient -- Theranos aims to put a lab within a mile of any city dweller -- people could take multiple tests over time and see signs of a disease or condition before it's too late, Holmes argues.

She recalled the death of her uncle, whose skin cancer progressed rapidly to brain cancer.

"You look at something like that and it doesn't make sense," she said softly. "If it was caught in time, it's a completely manageable condition."

To that end, Theranos has devised software and hardware so that with just one pinprick of blood, critical medical tests can be run more cheaply and more conveniently.

In September, Theranos and Walgreens announced a deal to open Theranos "wellness centers" at one Walgreens in Palo Alto as well as 20 stores in Phoenix. The goal is to expand to all 8,200 Walgreens stores nationwide. Theranos' main revenue stream is payment from customers or their insurance providers for lab tests. The company has other revenue streams through its long-term strategic partners, which it declined to discuss.

With Theranos, Holmes is taking on the $70 billion U.S. blood-testing industry dominated by companies such as Quest and LabCorp. But she says her aim is something bigger, creating a new market called "consumer health technology," which Holmes describes as engaging and empowering people about their health.

"Here in California, I can go and buy a gun and shoot myself but I can't order a vitamin D test because I might do something quote 'clinically dangerous,' " she said. "We feel strongly over time that this has to change."

Shultz, who meets weekly with Holmes to discuss the business, described Theranos as "on the cusp of a real movement in preventive medicine."

"What Elizabeth is doing is important in diagnostics, that the more you are able to spot something before it occurs, the more you can do something about it," he said.

'CRITICAL PIECE'

Theranos faces numerous regulatory, logistical and market challenges, said Eric Lakin, an analyst with DeciBio Consulting, a market research firm. Still, the potential is great.

"With current efforts to realize the dream of personalized medicine, Theranos may play a critical piece in this puzzle," he said. "But as with all puzzles, it often takes time to collect these pieces and put them together in a meaningful way."

Holmes' background is right out of the phenom playbook. Growing up in Texas, Holmes taught herself Mandarin and launched a business in high school selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities. She applied for her first patent while at Stanford, where she majored in chemical engineering. In the summer before her sophomore year, she went to Singapore to work at the Genome Institute on the SARS virus.

Then she dropped out of Stanford to begin working on Theranos, using the money her parents had saved for college for the business.

"She may be the female Mark Zuckerberg that Silicon Valley has been waiting for," said Vivek Wadhwa, a professor and researcher at Stanford and Duke and a lecturer on entrepreneurship. "She started when she was young, defied the odds and built a great technology, and is doing good for the world."

Tim Draper, the venture capitalist, said Holmes, who was friends with his daughter growing up, is the first entrepreneur he knows who kept quiet about her business for so long "so that the competition wouldn't get a chance to start."

"She had a winner and knew it," he said. His firm DFJ Venture was the first to invest.

In recent years, Theranos' head count has mushroomed to about 500 employees, up from 100 in 2010. It took over the former offices of Facebook at the Stanford Research Park.

Holmes has raised $400 million, valuing the entire company at $9 billion. She has a 50 percent stake, leading Forbes to call her "the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire."

As for her gender, Holmes, who wears all black suits and heels and speaks in a deep, soft voice, has never allowed herself to think of it as an issue, she says.

But she knows people are paying attention.

"If I can show that in this country, a 19-year-old girl can drop out of school and build something like this," she said, "then other women should be doing it."

 

[Vid]

Pretty

[Jamesc]

Pretty

 

Yeah pretty smart.

 

[Sosaria]

Mostly hype lah ... Good luck to those investing.

 

If there was technology to do so many diagnostic from one pinprick of blood, many companies would have done it already. Or hired those people who could implement such tech.

[Spurman]

Some industry dislike new technologies.

 

The oil cartels will wish theres no invention of other energies.

[Sturtles]

Mostly hype lah ... Good luck to those investing.

 

If there was technology to do so many diagnostic from one pinprick of blood, many companies would have done it already. Or hired those people who could implement such tech.

Conspiracy theories abound, but think Kodak for a real example

[Icedbs]

Err....can someone tell me what is the difference between her "blood testing technology" and those that are existing now?

 

Is it those existing now won't tell you everything unless you pay more and more, but hers can tell you every health issues that exist in today's medical world with just a pinprick of blood?

 

Honestly I don't think it will fly unless it is available cheaply, and the diagnostics from this technology is proven to be extremely accurate and better than the most qualified doctors out there.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Icedbs

[Vid]

Err....can someone tell me what is the difference between her "blood testing technology" and those that are existing now?

 

Is it those existing now won't tell you everything unless you pay more and more, but hers can tell you every health issues that exist in today's medical world with just a pinprick of blood?

 

Honestly I don't think it will fly unless it is available cheaply, and the diagnostics from this technology is proven to be extremely accurate and better than the most qualified doctors out there.

 

She raised $400m and has 500 employees. That in itself is an outstanding feat. Maybe investors saw something that we don't.

 

 

[Icedbs]

 

She raised $400m and has 500 employees. That in itself is an outstanding feat. Maybe investors saw something that we don't.

 

 

 

Let's see how it goes.

 

The problem in selling health technologies is that there is also a big group of people who prefer to live without wishing to know their health issues. These people want to live and eat to the fullest and when time is up, it is up.

 

I think a machine or technology that can tell your fortune extremely accurately from a pinprick of blood would probably sell much much better. Spiritual, geomancy and astrology stuff always sells much better than preventive health science. Now, who wants to go to Silicon Vallley and start that?

 

 

[Sosaria]

 

She raised $400m and has 500 employees. That in itself is an outstanding feat. Maybe investors saw something that we don't.

 

 

Investing in some new tech industries is like pyramid scheme. The VC does not need to understand the science or tech. They just bet on the fact that the hype will build up and draw more investors, and raise their stock value.

 

Then just before collapse (they will know from insider info), they will cash in and run...

 

Think abt the many internet 'bubble' tech co.

[Vid]

 

Let's see how it goes.

 

The problem in selling health technologies is that there is also a big group of people who prefer to live without wishing to know their health issues. These people want to live and eat to the fullest and when time is up, it is up.

 

I think a machine or technology that can tell your fortune extremely accurately from a pinprick of blood would probably sell much much better. Spiritual, geomancy and astrology stuff always sells much better than preventive health science. Now, who wants to go to Silicon Vallley and start that?

 

 

The biggest lure is that they have a big market in the US. In fact, every market is big there. Just need someone to tap into it.

 

Like you, I'm also skeptical how this thing can become big. To open a testing centre everywhere? Not sure there is such a demand. It's not like going into a convenience store and suddenly have the urge to have your blood tested

 

I think she might have got some new technology that can test blood well. Problem is she wants to earn on that instead of selling to perhaps hospitals where she won't get as much.

[Vid]

Investing in some new tech industries is like pyramid scheme. The VC does not need to understand the science or tech. They just bet on the fact that the hype will build up and draw more investors, and raise their stock value.

 

Then just before collapse (they will know from insider info), they will cash in and run...

 

Think abt the many internet 'bubble' tech co.

That's true. A lot of technological firm collapse because they could not sustain and were merely hype.

 

Still there is a lot of money to be made if investors make their moves carefully.

[Icedbs]

That's true. A lot of technological firm collapse because they could not sustain and were merely hype.

 

Still there is a lot of money to be made if investors make their moves carefully.

 

I think sometimes for these VCs, all it takes is just one mega successful investment and that's enough to recuperate the capital from all the other so-so investment.

 

Same with commoners buying stocks. One 10 bagger is enough to cover all the other 9 dogs.

[Mercury1]

Actually the tech will be put in place very shortly (US), honestly I believe this technology to put this together should be already available. Big pharma doesn't see the lure in this primarily most of the big money is in drugs, also by creating a fast and accurate test method to detect diseases is counter productive to their business objective to treat this is later stages where the big money is.

 

Looking at the test list it covers a comprehensive list of blood test most of which can be found on most health screening services. If it really delivers what it says it will definitely a game changer.

 

1. http://www.walgreens.com/pharmacy/lab-testing/home.jsp

2. http://www.theranos.com/test-menu

3. http://www.mountelizabeth.com.sg/facilities-services/diagnostic-tech-services/health-screening

 

The CEO actually had the notion for about a decade but kept it quiet in case it got copied before she could implement. The idea is interesting where it mimics inkjet like technology to take in the blood sample and culture it for examination all within a cartridge. Apparently she got the idea when working on the SARS detection chip during her stint in Singapore.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2013/08/30/theranos-the-biggest-biotech-youve.html?page=all

 

On a similar but unrelated case, a 15 year old boy develop a test kit for pancreatic cancer that can be detected via a drop of blood thru combination of blood sample and carbon nanotubes. This kit is (Quoted)

 

168 times faster than what is currently available.

26,000 times less expensive.

And it’s potentially almost 100% accurate.

Unfortunately due to the usual red tape its unsure when it will be available to the masses. But this also indicates this is quite possible indeed.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnosta/2013/02/01/cancer-innovation-and-a-boy-named-jack/

 

 

 

Mostly hype lah ... Good luck to those investing.

If there was technology to do so many diagnostic from one pinprick of blood, many companies would have done it already. Or hired those people who could implement such tech.

 

[Nlatio]

alamak... thought got xmm in lingerie....

[Vid]

alamak... thought got xmm in lingerie....

 

You can always imagine her in black lingerie rather than that black blouse [laugh]

 

And her hands are reaching out to you wor...

 

[Mercury1]

Dun like that leh, later everyone all I do is bio xmm pictures

 

alamak... thought got xmm in lingerie....

 

That picture is kinda freaky hehe

 

 

You can always imagine her in black lingerie rather than that black blouse [laugh]

 

And her hands are reaching out to you wor...

 

 

[Nlatio]

 

You can always imagine her in black lingerie rather than that black blouse [laugh]

 

And her hands are reaching out to you wor...

 

Nbzzzz it's more like she is saying I hope yours is bigger and longer....