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2015-07-02 07:45:06
Theranos s boss says her mission extends beyond making a fortune
Jun 27th 2015
TECH entrepreneurs often have their own distinctive uniforms. For Facebook s
Mark Zuckerberg, it is jeans and a hoodie. For the late Steve Jobs, it was
jeans and black turtleneck. Elizabeth Holmes has plumped for something smarter:
matching black jacket, trousers and turtleneck. It saves having to decide what
to wear each morning, she says with typical single-mindedness.
At the age of 19 Ms Holmes had an idea about how to improve the way blood tests
are done. So she dropped out of Stanford University, where she was studying
chemical engineering, and with money that had been set aside for her college
education she quietly founded Theranos, a diagnostics company.
That was in 2003. She says she spent the next ten years in stealth mode ,
without press releases or even a company website. During that time she
perfected a way of doing hundreds of tests cheaply and quickly on a drop of
blood, using lab-on-a-chip technology. Today, aged 31, she is estimated by
Forbes magazine to be worth $4.7 billion, and thus to be the world s youngest
self-made female billionaire. She is the author, and co-author, of numerous
patents and patent applications.
Yet Ms Holmes seems uninterested in money or kudos. She says her mission is to
use testing to help people stay healthy. She wants to detect diseases such as
diabetes, cancers and heart disease far earlier, before they produce symptoms,
and in doing so save lives.
Admirers have compared her to technology titans like Jobs. But her focus on
humanity s big problems makes her more like Elon Musk, who wants not just to
make money building space rockets and electric cars, but to colonise other
planets and save this one from climate change. This week Ms Holmes announced
that she was taking her mission beyond America s borders, by launching a
not-for-profit project to bring cheap medical tests to Mexico, with backing
from Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecoms magnate.
Theranos is still privately owned Ms Holmes says she holds more than 50% of its
stock and remains secretive about its revenue streams and plans. Although it is
hard to know if the company merits its rich valuation, one encouraging sign for
other investors is the company s stellar board of directors. It includes two
former secretaries of state (George Shultz and Henry Kissinger) and a number of
high-profile investors including Larry Ellison of Oracle. If an ability to win
over luminaries is a diagnostic test for the health of young companies,
Theranos passes.