When she was studying at Stanford University, she dropped out of school to start a business. She said she had an idea. As long as she takes a drop of blood from her finger and puts it in a test box the size of a credit card, she can get the results on the spot in a few minutes and can do more than 200 professional blood tests.
Driven by this entrepreneurial idea, in 2003, at the age of 19, she founded a medical company called Hilaros. Soon, Hilalos Company was in full swing, and investment was rolling in.
In just ten years, the company's valuation has risen to nearly10 billion US dollars, becoming a veritable "unicorn". At the age of 30, elizabeth holmes made the Forbes list of the 400 richest women in the world.
20 15 10 15, the wall street journal exposed this shocking scam. As it turns out, Hilalos has no innovative technology at all. The so-called blood drop test is deceptive, and the so-called "blood goddess" turned out to be a female liar.
Recently, the charges against elizabeth holmes, the founder of Theranos, a former blood test company, will be tried by law.
If 12 is convicted of fraud, the 37-year-old will face up to 20 years in prison.
After reading this amazing scam, even Bill Gates exclaimed, "This story is crazier than I expected ..."
This is the book Bad Blood that I read on the road today and want to share with you.
1. Drop out of school and start a business.
About this big scandal in Silicon Valley, the core focus is still the young company founder, the legendary "female version of Jobs" elizabeth holmes.
Sherlock Holmes comes from a famous family. Her grandfather's grandfather, the founder of Cincinnati Hospital and University of Cincinnati Medical School, is still remembered and celebrated today. Her grandfather's grandmother, from the famous Fleischman family in the United States, has a deep political and business background; Her grandfather graduated from West Point Military Academy and is an official of the Pentagon.
This family covers a wide range of fields, including American business, medical care, politics and military affairs. What do you think that is? Children born in such a family have the glory of their ancestors on their heads and live under their famous reputation. What do you think of her childhood education model? Will you be nagged by your parents all day: you should make progress, work hard and become a dragon and phoenix like your ancestors? Is that right?
Therefore, in such a growing environment, Holmes is young, ambitious and clear-cut: I want to be a big boss and make a lot of money. 10 years old, a relative teased her. Girl, what do you want to be when you grow up? The little girl blurted out, "I want to be a billionaire!" " "
Relatives asked her again, "Why not be president?" The little girl frowned and said solemnly, "No, if I had $654.38 billion, the president would marry me!" " "I guess, if a child wants to say these things, adults will find it fun at most, right? If it is a doll, who will take it seriously?
But Holmes didn't just talk. Facts have proved that her future life path is really moving in this direction in running all the way. Of course, the girl's IQ level and hard work are also worthy of her ambition.
When I was 7 years old, I designed a time machine, and my notebook was full of detailed engineering drawings. When I was a teenager, I was admitted to a key high school with straight A's. In 2002, with a presidential scholarship, he entered Stanford University to study chemical engineering. Stanford University, presidential scholarship, with such ability, what kind of life dream can't be pursued? Right?
However, who would have thought that just one semester after college life, Holmes couldn't sit still. She had to drop out of school to make money.
The cause of the incident can be traced back to the SARS epidemic that swept the world in the spring of 2003, and Asia was the most seriously affected. That summer, Holmes applied for an internship at the Singapore Genome Institute, and she spent the whole summer helping to test patient samples.
In the process, she was surprised to find that it is now 2 1 century. How to collect samples, or the traditional means of taking blood with syringes and taking secretions with cotton swabs in the last century? Is this too inefficient and backward in technology? Science and technology are advancing by leaps and bounds, why haven't they kept up at all?
Holmes was greatly stimulated by this internship, and she deeply felt that there was a lot of room for improvement in medical diagnosis technology. Furthermore, she believes that if a technological innovation can be realized in this field, it will definitely be a super business blueprint. The more she thinks, the more she wants to make big money.
In this way, 19-year-old Holmes decided to give up his studies and embark on the road of entrepreneurship. Soon, she set up her own company, therapy, which is a combination of two English words: treatment and diagnosis.
2. Hilalos: A New Star in Silicon Valley
A few years ago, internet entrepreneurship was surging, and I casually walked into a coffee shop. Here one table says "I have an idea" and the other table says "I have finished the A round". What is the most important thing in starting a business? This is not an idea, this is a change, and so is Shiloh in Homs.
When Holmes told investors about her entrepreneurial ideas, many people were deceived.
Her idea is this: develop a high-tech medical patch, painlessly collect blood through a micro needle, and then analyze it through the microchip induction system in the patch to determine how much dose of medicine should be released, and the analysis results will be transmitted to the patient's doctor. Moreover, according to her vision, this equipment is the alternate use of nanotechnology and semiconductor technology, which is quite cutting-edge and innovative.
In addition, when Holmes told investors about her ideas, the live speech was full of charm and appeal, and investors praised it.
In less than a year, at the end of 2004, Holmes raised $6 million in angel fund. Even her university tutor, Qian Ning Robertson, thought the idea was promising and volunteered to serve as an adviser to the company's board of directors. In addition, her doctor brother Shanett Roy, who was in the same lab with her before, also joined in. Although he thought her idea was unrealistic, he was moved by her passion and optimism and became the first employee of the company.
In fact, this brother's suspicion is not unreasonable. The patch envisioned by Holmes is perfect in theory, integrating treatment, diagnosis and intelligent control. But after a little analysis, we will find that there are many technical problems involved, and it is impossible to make a finished product in just a few years.
This time, Holmes had to accept the reality that the patch could not be realized. So, she decided to simplify the function of the product and only keep the core function of diagnosis, and developed a home portable blood detector.
For the structure and principle of this instrument, Holmes imagined that the instrument was mainly divided into two parts, a smaller detection box and a larger reader. When in use, just put the blood into the test box, then put the test box into the reader, and then hand over the next work to the machine.
There are many microchannels in the test chamber, and the reader generates pressure to let blood flow through the microchannels, separate plasma, and then enter the innermost hole. These pores are filled with different antibodies, which will react with different components in plasma to generate signals. Finally, these signals will be uploaded to the server, and after calculation and analysis, the detection results will be displayed on the screen of the reader.
This detector combines biochemistry and microfluidic technology. If it can be done, patients don't have to go to the hospital all the time, they can do tests at home at any time and send the results to doctors in real time. The doctor can know the patient's condition at a glance and adjust the medication immediately if necessary.
What Holmes expects is that the blood test she conceived can enter every family in the United States like his idol Jobs' Apple phone.
According to the adjusted new ideas, Holmes and his team began to get busy. In less than a year, he made the first prototype and further proposed a business model of making money quickly. What mode? -license this blood testing technology to a large pharmaceutical company.
As we all know, those pharmaceutical companies spend tens of billions of dollars on clinical trials of new drugs every year. If Hilaros technology can participate in it, it will be a huge sum for a startup to get a share of those tens of billions of dollars.
In short, scientific and technological concepts, prototype products, business models, talent teams, and Sherlock Holmes' startup companies are all alive, and the main points are thoughtful. Want money, want money, want talent. As soon as you start, huge profits will roll in. Such a good pusher who made a lot of money soon attracted venture capitalists from all walks of life.
3. The product is not good enough, and it was cheated.
In the process of product development, the team encountered a technical bottleneck and could not solve the problem. Finally, they managed to make an instrument, but the types of tests that this instrument can do are very limited.
These are far from the convenient detection and blood drop test described by Holmes. Every time I give a presentation, there are problems here or there. I haven't seen normal performance anyway.
Such a big technical bug in the product is definitely a fatal problem for startups. However, as the founder, Holmes' coping style turned out to be: crossing the sea. I won't tell investors that it is a fool to demonstrate products on the spot.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the American economy declined. Only the technology companies in Silicon Valley stand out, and many big companies come here to look for opportunities, hoping to expand their business and realize innovation.
At this time, Hilalos, as one of the star companies in Silicon Valley, naturally attracted much attention. Only 20 10 negotiated several major cooperation projects.
Walgreen, a large chain pharmacy, is one of them. They believe that if Hilalos's instruments can be placed in every drugstore, it will not only increase income, but also change the rules of the game in the pharmaceutical retail industry and expand the influence of the company.
However, after several meetings between the two sides, walgreen's professional consultant kevin hunt felt that Hillary had many doubts:
Holmes has been hiding a secret that he has been trying to protect. In fact, there is only one secret, and that is that Hillary Ross is a complete scam.
The technical problems of the blood detector have not been solved, but in order to give Hillary the influence she expected, Holmes deluded himself and refused to admit that the company had no mature products at all. Their so-called secret laboratory is full of ordinary testing instruments, using traditional venous blood, and the staff responsible for testing is still half a bucket of water. The operation is not standardized, resulting in many errors, and finally the testing work can only be outsourced.
Finally, on 20 15, 1815, a report entitled "The Struggle of a Promised Start-up Company" appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, exposing all kinds of cheating behaviors of Hilalos and Holmes to the public.
2065438+In September 2008, Hilalos declared bankruptcy. Holmes, who constructed this huge lie, was also accused of fraud and murder in the same year and faced the possibility of imprisonment.
Editor | Liangshan
Paibianliangshan
Reading on the Road: Doctors from world-renowned universities intensively read a good book for 30 minutes.