Once upon a time there was a girl who, at the age of seven, wanted to invent her own time machine. She filled an entire notebook with notes and "engineering" plans of her contraption.
At nine, that same girl told her relatives that she wanted to be a billionaire when she grew up. "She said it with the utmost seriousness and determination," her relatives still remember.
They say that she was “intense and competitive from an early age. She often played Monopoly with her little brother and her cousin and she always insisted on continuing the games until she got it all and won. If she lost she would cause a storm. She more than once she ran away, fleeing.
Perhaps this is what you would like to do now: escape. Or have her time machine to go back, to the starting point, or travel to another time where nobody knew who she is.
That girl, named Elizabeth Holmes, grew up. It should be recognized that she achieved her great goal. She got to be very rich. She founded a startup (the word company seems old-fashioned in her case), which she named Theranos. A great idea developed with new technological applications.
He promised to do a blood test with a simple finger prick and immediate results. A true revolution in medicine and disease prevention. He rose to fame. Magazines like Forbes or Fortune placed her at the top of the entrepreneurs, at the top of the list of influential people and billionaires. The girls dreamed of being like her.
Holmes was said to be the female reincarnation of the great Steve Jobs, the enlightened businessman who laid the foundations for Apple to be the most valuable company in the world. Big words.
He was born in Washington (February 3, 1984). Her mother, Noel, was a clerk on a congressional committee, and her father, Christian, worked for Enron (a word synonymous with corporate fraud) and later for federal government agencies. Her daughter, smart as hell, entered the prestigious Stanford University, the cradle of technologists for Silicon Valley, but dropped out in the second year. She was in a hurry to be the best of the best.
Theranos once had a valuation of $9 billion and had raised more than $800 million from investors. Until in 2015 when the journalist from The Wall Street Journal John Carreyrou decided to stick his nose. He discovered that behind all the glamor there was nothing. Holmes, who had studied Mandarin, concealed what is called a true tall tale.
From the top of the world to prison. This is the fate of Elizabeth Holmes. She these weeks she has returned to the news. After a jury found her guilty of fraud and Judge Edward Davila, of the San Jose (California) Court, sentenced her to just over 11 years in prison. Her lawyer has appealed the sentence, although experts note that she is rather a tantrum and that her path seems rather short.
More than anything, it is a strategy to delay his entry into prison, which the judge set for April 27. He wants the judge to delay it until that appeal is resolved.
In addition, the same magistrate Davila imposed a 13-year sentence on Ramesh Sunny Balwani, 57, who was a partner, director of Theranos and lover of Holmes.
His fraudulent venture, a portrait for many of Silicon Valley greed, has spawned books, television series and a movie is expected. When the scandal broke, she responded: “It is what happens when you work to change things. First they think you're crazy, then they fight you and you change the world."
The day the judge handed down his sentence, Holmes, without saying so, evoked his childhood notebook when asking for mercy. "If he could go back in time, he would do things differently."
