A President’s Scholar at Stanford as a freshman in 2002, a time when the push for women to pursue STEM studies was ramping up, she chose chemical engineering. Child of an accomplished, purpose-driven family, highly intelligent Elizabeth (she spent one teenage summer in Beijing learning Mandarin), seemed to have the right stuff to achieve her ambition to help humankind and “become a billionaire.”Īnd she started fast.

Holmes and Theranos have become a veritable cottage industry - the subject of the Hulu series, a bestselling book by Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou, an HBO documentary ( The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley), several podcasts, and an Apple Studios feature film forthcoming with Jennifer Lawrence - the essential details of this high profile bunco are familiar. It may be one of the few authentic expressions the Silicon Valley wunderkind ever displays most of the rest, we discover, are masks, simulacra of emotions rehearsed before a mirror. Hulu’s current original series The Dropout opens with a recreation of the video footage, as Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried, seems to be trying very hard to remember who she is and why this terrible thing is happening to her. Unlike the composed, well-put-together figure who graced magazine covers and was the face of a new generation (and gender) of tech billionaires, Holmes looks frayed, almost crazed.

In a 2018 60 Minutes segment on health technology company Theranos, its young CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes is seen in a snippet of videotape as she appears before the SEC to answer questions brought against her on charges of fraud for scamming investors. The Dropout, Hulu television miniseries (episodes 1-5). Playing on their strengths and working within the limitations of each medium, both The Dropout and Bad Blood pull us into the very American story of Theranos’ and Holmes’ rise and fall.īad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou.

Book bad blood