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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.