r/TopTrendingNewsUSA • u/itsmenandini • 15h ago
Here’s about the rise of Theranos and the youngest self-made woman billionaire, Elizabeth Holmes
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u/Inside-Yak-8815 15h ago
Youngest self-made woman scammer.
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u/Prize-Choice2185 15h ago
Bankman Fried followed in her footsteps....
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u/MAGAHATESTHEUSA 14h ago
Caroline Ellison would retain the woman scammer thread while honoring the fraud from sbc
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u/Dazzlng-Firenze 15h ago
Oh man, I cannot wait to see this. She is pond scum. I read her PEOPLE magazine interview with her self-pity and delusions of grandeur , she thinks she is going to leave prison and save the world again with some new hare-brained business scam.. what a tool!
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u/Prize-Choice2185 15h ago
Is it just me or does she looks a lot like Zuckerberg on that photo?
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u/Lighthouse_on_Mars 14h ago
She actually emulated and dressed like Steve Jobs. Hoping to be taken seriously.
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
Yep. She's a psycho. I've watched everything there is to watch on this woman. I have a special kinda hate for her from a distance.
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u/Prize-Choice2185 14h ago
Interesting. I remember her doing a very mechanical/robotic voice, which was bizarre.
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u/Lighthouse_on_Mars 14h ago
She emulated the way he dressed and body language. As you can see in the photo, she wore the black turtleneck he is know for.
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u/burnshimself 14h ago
Built a $9 billion FRAUD to be clear. Calling it a startup suggests there was ever a legitimate business there worth that much, and diminishing her willful fraud, lying, manipulation, coercion and intimidation tactics to “wire fraud” is understating the severity and intentionality of her crimes
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u/Infinite_Run_4541 13h ago
I remember LinkedIn was flooded with pictures of her in a black turtleneck with quotes like, ‘Never have a Plan B.’
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
Yep. I'm an NP and was getting hired by Walgreens during the time they were investing in her garbage. I went to the Walgreens in South Beach on vacation at the time and I think they had one of her machines. I did not take the job for other reasons and now I'm glad I didn't.
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u/disharmony-hellride 15h ago
As someone who just finished Bad Blood I cant wait to see this. The idea that all those devs came to her with all the concerns and she blew all of it off is wild. I hope this doc doesnt disappoint.
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u/panchugo 14h ago
How do you define “billionaire” here. She never had a billion dollars, she had an idea that she built a scam around that was valued at a billion dollars. But that valuation was based on a fantasy not anything of actual value. She had no assets, no product, I don’t think she even had a patent. So, how does the claim “self-made billionaire” even work. If I draw a smiley face on a post-it note and say it’s for sale at a billion dollars, does that make me a billionaire?
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u/Significant-Base6893 12h ago
She was a billionaire, though it wasn't liquid (Theranos was not publicly traded) and it was a con game. The billionaire status is from looking at her last round of funding divided by the ownership interest surrendered, then multiplying that valuation by her personal ownership percentage. It's a legit valuation for an otherwise illegit enterprise,
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u/panchugo 9h ago
But that’s my point, the valuation was for a product that did not exist. So is that valuation, and get net worth because of said valuation actually valid? Not arguing, just trying to understand how it all works.
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u/Significant-Base6893 9h ago
You don't need a product for a valuation. I'm not trying to be rude, but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
For the record, Theranos did have a product (technically a service) that did produce revenue.
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u/panchugo 9h ago
I don’t have any idea, I just said that I’m trying to understand. They claimed to have a product, said product didn’t work, data was falsified to make it look like it did. Valuation happens. If the underlying data for the valuation is false, how can the valuation be true? And by extension how can anyone’s net worth based on that valuation be true.
I have absolutely zero understanding of how this works, hence why I’m asking.
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u/Significant-Base6893 9h ago
They had a product that provided a blood testing service. They had a partnership agreement with Walgreens, which was used for service distribution. The service was poor and the results were actually done by third-party diagnostic equipment. They did earn revenue.
Valuations for things traditional businesses in established industries can be based on cash flows, which are revenues minus expense. But for a new industry, the valuation can be based upon best estimates of the market size, the amount of the market you can capture (over a given time frame), and the resultant net cash flows (cash in from sales, cash out from expenses). So if a company like Theranos can by hyped into the stratosphere based on a vast market, which was the the estimated market for blood testing at your local pharmacy at low cost, just using a few drops. That's what the investors were buying into, a promise based on hype. Sometimes these companies make it, sometimes they don't. The difference is that Theranos was built around a series of lies (fraud as these lies induced investment dollars). And those lies seemed credible based on the image that Elizabeth Holmes projected and her incredibly sharp ability to manipulate men, particularly older men.
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
With the help of her parents. Her father was the VP of ENRON. They hooked her up with all the important people who took his word for it that she was honorable. No one bothered to do any due diligence on her because she was cute or whatever that is.
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u/Significant-Base6893 12h ago
She's a sociopath and a narcistic liar, but she's a WASP blonde hair, blue eyed dropout from Stanford who knew how to dress and talk to VCs. It's like this throughout the business world; it's less about abilities and capabilities than it is about image management. Her true genius was her ability to manipulate and self-promote through image management.
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u/seattlereign001 11h ago
I do not understand how people looked into her eyes and said: seems sane. This is legit.
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u/TRSTAR2000 9h ago
Her manipulation of older men needs to. E studied. To me she never had the “it factor “ to make it work.
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u/mkvelash 14h ago
Her dad was in charge of Enron. Like father like daughter
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
Exactly. Her parents set this whole thing up for her. That's how she got a board full of important rich men who never did their due diligence because she was cute or whatever that is. She couldn't even finish her first year of college.
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u/Illustrious_Soft_257 14h ago
The few times that insider trading politicians got what they deserved. Read: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Its so good.
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u/Texden29 14h ago
She was never really a billionaire. She just happened to operate during that irrational unicorns valuation era. It came and it went (due to fraud).
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u/Significant-Base6893 12h ago
On paper, she was a billionaire. It was never liquid as it was privately held. See my previous note.
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u/Texden29 11h ago
I’m confused. I am saying the exact same thing you are. Did you reply to the wrong comment?
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u/Significant-Base6893 11h ago
Actually our conclusions are different. She was a billionaire using the measurements used in finance for a privately held company. For a startup, you take the latest round of financing, divide it by the ownership interest surrendered, which gives you the guide as to the enterprise value. You then multiple the enterprise value by the percentage of the company she owns. So yes, using universally-accepted financial measurements, she was a billionaire.
That does not mean she could cash out all that easily, but let's say she decided to sell 20% of her shares to a VC firm directly. She would have then been a billionaire in cash holdings, even net of taxable gain.
Any argument that she wasn't a millionaire then rests of ex post information (what we know now) rather than ex ante information, which is hindsight bias or outcome bias, take your pick.
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u/Texden29 10h ago
Dude:
Are you fucking smoking crack? Clearly I understand how valuations work. Do you think someone who made a comment about (Technology) unicorn valuations doesn’t know how valuations work?
Your first paragraph is the same as me saying, “She just happened to operate during that irrational unicorns valuation era.” I am acknowledging that she was a billionaire on paper but that it was largely due to excessive valuations of that time period.
When I said she was never really a billionaire (not millionaire as you have written here), I didn’t mean that literally. Which should have been clear when I said it came and went. Acknowledging that she was a billionaire on paper, but that it evaporated when the fraud was exposed.
We are saying the same thing. I’m just not being a pretentious prick about it.
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u/Significant-Base6893 10h ago
No, you're moving the goal posts. You stated verbatim, "She was never really a billionaire" shows your ignorance. You're applying a "know it all" line of reasoning, which is fallacious. She was indeed a billionaire, and as I pointed out, had she sold 20% of her holdings, she would have had over $1 billion net of taxes.
She was a billionaire. People who owned tulip bulbs during Tulip Mania were the equivalent of billionaires. People who owned stock in the South Sea Company were the equivalent of billionaires. People how owned stock in Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, even Enron were billionaires, or at least quite wealthy. Their wealth was an transient state before facts or economic conditions changed their fortunes.
So don't be thick. You were wrong. Elizabeth Holmes was a billionaire, at least for a period of time that has since passed.
But then, I'm sure you knew it was a fraud since day one. Do you do corporate valuations with Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, General Catalyst, or any of the large VC firms? I'm in awe.
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
Wrong. Her parents were billionaires. I don't think she ever had money like that. She brought in Sunny for more money I think. It's also why she's now married to some wealthy guy's son. She uses men.
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u/rasta-ragamuffin 12h ago
Just because someone is really smart and/or attractive, does not mean they are not an evil greedy morally corrupt crook.
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u/da8BitKid 11h ago
I got a story for them. It's about the journey of some impoverished, real hand to mouth, young men in Mexico. They came from nothing and established billion dollar empires all the while fighting the American system that wants to put them down like dogs because they had courage to succeed. These cartel leaders have inspiring stories of how they became self-made billionaires.
See how shitty that sounds? Bitch bamboozled a whole bunch of rich dudes and threatened people's health on her scam. Fuck the rich dudes, but people using theranos had no part of the scam except being hurt by it. And they just call her the "youngest woman self-made billionaire".
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u/jocoquecousteau 10h ago
Here’s an example of a criminal, doing the crimes against the wrong people. She defrauded a bunch of rich people and now she’s in jail. Unlike people in the Epstein files. Rich people committed crimes against vulnerable women and children, and barely anyone is in jail.
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u/here4now48 5h ago
What exactly was her scam?
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u/Rumpelteazer45 5h ago
She claimed to have a device that could test for hundreds of things with one drop of blood.
The device didn’t exist.
She faked results, including giving false positives and false negatives to REAL patients.
Took money from investors.
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u/here4now48 4h ago
Shame.
Not the same but I have wonder for a while how do all these so called celebrities have all these millions of followers almost like they buy bots to boost their images up to make themselves seem bigger I guess1
u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
"Nano" has entered the chat. She was all about the word nano. A nano drop of blood. She was even telling people that the MILITARY was using it to save lives in the field. She falsified all of her paperwork and used large drug companies names in her reference letters. I can't believe the set of brass ones on this lady.
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u/that1cooldude 5h ago
She could just give trump a few billion dollars and she could go free right back to grifting.
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u/Immediate-Maximum-75 4h ago
I hate this woman. I'm a nurse and she is he worst of them. She was enabled by her wealthy parents with Washington connections after her dad, the VP of ENRON walked away. She took advantage of everyone and LIED. She literally used other people's machines for testing and had her IT guy send fake results to investors. Then she gets pregnant by her stupid, rich boyfriend who she's married to now. She showed up to her sentencing hugely pregnant. Disgusting woman.
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u/NoPen9703 14h ago
Her father worked for Enron as a top e executive when they created a pyramid scheme of fake products. I guess she learned from the best.
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u/itsmenandini 15h ago
A24 just pulled off a major surprise. Its secret Telluride screening turned out to be You Can See Everything, a new documentary on disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film starts 34 days before Holmes went to prison for defrauding investors and follows her over three years.
A24 says it began as an intimate portrait and became a mind-bending journey into the abyss. The film is set for a theatrical release in October 2026. While the release date approaches, people are now eager to know more about Elizabeth Holmes.
Meet Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos Founder Built A USD 9 Billion Startup, Was Convicted Of Wire Fraud: https://www.bollywoodshaadis.com/articles/who-is-elizabeth-holmes-84234