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Holmes is where the heart is

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.