Elizabeth Holmes’s startup Theranos made her a multi-billionaire hailed as the next US tech visionary by age 30, but it all evaporated in a flash of lawsuits, ignominy, and, finally, criminal charges, IgbereTV reports.
The rise and fall of Holmes, who on Monday was convicted of defrauding investors of her biotech startup, is a heavily-chronicled saga that prompted a hard look at her methods but also the unseemly aspects of startup life.
In many ways, Holmes fit the image of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, from her dark-colored turtleneck sweaters that evoked tech legend and Apple founder Steve Jobs to her dropping out of California’s elite Stanford University.
But much like in her trial, the fundamental question has been whether she was a true visionary who simply failed, as she claimed on the stand or a skilled self-promoter who took advantage of a credulous context to commit fraud.
Her story begins in the US capital Washington, with her birth to a Congressional staffer mother and a father whose online biography says he was once an executive at Enron — an energy company that collapsed in a massive fraud scandal.
She won admission to Stanford, and there began work on cutting-edge biomedical initiatives, founding in 2003 what would become Theranos when she was just 19.
Part of Holmes’s ability to convince her backers was her apparent deep personal commitment — she applied for her first patent while still in college and after dropping out, convinced her parents to let her use her tuition savings to build the company
