We’ve written about Theranos before (click here and here for background on the company and its FDA approval). This latest article from Inc.com intrigued us not only because it gives an in-depth look at how Theranos is changing blood testing as we know it, but also because it paints a compelling and unusual picture of the revolutionary company’s founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. It’s a longer read (though worth it), so we’ve pulled some of our favorite parts of the article.
On the similarities between Holmes and Steve Jobs:
Then there are the black turtlenecks. Most have assumed that Holmes’s sartorial choice is an eerie, if not presumptuous, homage to Jobs. But it turns out, the black turtlenecks were inspired by, of all people, Sharon Stone, who, having received a Best Actress nomination for her role in Casino, wore one to the 1996 Oscar ceremonies.
As with many things in Holmes’s life, she’s stayed with the look solely for reasons of efficiency: The turtlenecks eliminate early-morning decision making. Holmes has taken a similar life-hack approach to every aspect of her existence outside of her lab test company, which is at best minimal, given that the 31-year-old works seven days a week. Holmes is a vegan because avoiding animal products allows her to function on less sleep. She says she “doesn’t really hang out with anyone anymore,” aside from her younger brother, who joined Theranos as a product manager four years ago. She didn’t take a vacation during the entire decade of her 20s and doesn’t date. “I literally designed my whole life for this,” says Holmes in a strikingly baritone voice, her shoulders curled inward and hands clasped, the body language of someone who is fiercely protective and on guard. Talking to Holmes is a bit like talking to a politician–she’s politely impenetrable, unspooling a stream of words without actually revealing very much.
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On how her company is radically disrupting the lab tech industry:
Steve Jobs had massive ambition, but Holmes’s is arguably larger. While revolutionizing consumer technology is formidable, Holmes believes her company will actually save lives. Her diagnostic lab test upstart is aiming to disrupt a $75 billion industry, and to help grow it by another $125 billion. There’s the revolutionary nature of its science, as well as the transformational vision of its model. Theranos, now valued at $10 billion, has developed blood tests that detect hundreds of conditions and diseases from a couple of drops of blood from the finger, instead of tubes of blood from a vein in the arm. Holmes aims to enable anyone to get lab tests–for anything from cholesterol to cancer–on his or her own at a local pharmacy for no more than half of what Medicare would pay (Theranos.com). Holmes believes that providing faster, more convenient, and less expensive access to lab tests will transform preventive medicine. En route, she may also undo the profitable medical test industry, currently dominated by two decades-old behemoths, Quest Diagnostics and Laboratory Corporation of America. “I don’t think anyone disputes that Elizabeth and her team are visionaries,” says Gary St. Hilaire, the president and CEO of Capital BlueCross, which recently became a Theranos partner.
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On how her success comes from playing the long game:
To get there, Holmes has taken the road less traveled, and what an exceptionally long road that is. She’s already spent a third of her life building an organization that is still in its early days. From its inception in 2003, she operated Theranos in stealth mode, bringing it out into the light only a year and a half ago. She thinks another 20 years is a reasonable time frame for her company to impact the masses worldwide. In many ways, she is the opposite of a serial entrepreneur. She’s a devoutly monogamous entrepreneur: For better or worse, in sickness and in health, she sees herself as having only one existential purpose. “You’re talking to someone who wants to do this her whole lifetime,” she says.
On her innate tenacity:
From a young age, Holmes has always exhibited confidence. She led a solitary childhood, her family moving from Washington, D.C., to Houston, where instead of forging friendships, she’d sketch designs for time machines and collect insects. By the time she was a 15-year-old high school sophomore, she was spending her summers in California and had successfully pestered Stanford’s administrators into allowing her to take a college-level Mandarin class. During her freshman year at Stanford, she nagged [Channing] Robertson [Theranos’ senior technical adviser], at the time a dean of engineering, until he let her into his lab, which was populated mostly with PhD students. “She would just stand in my doorway every day and say, ‘When are you going to let me into your lab?'” says Robertson.
On what critics are saying about Theranos:
But Theranos’s black-box approach has led to a slew of criticism. Competitors and some in the medical community complain the startup has revealed too little about how its tests work, and have called for Theranos to publish its studies in peer-reviewed journals. Holmes is unapologetic about not giving in to the critics. “I admit it’s very intentional,” she says. “We don’t call on our competitors and explain how our technology works.” Instead, she says, Theranos is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve each of its tests, something no other lab test company has done. In July, it received its first FDA approval, for its herpes simplex 1 test. It has approximately 255 tests to go.
On what Theranos wellness centers are like:
Theranos wellness centers feel more like spas than testing facilities, despite being situated inside Walgreens drugstores, where virtually all 56 of them reside. At a Theranos-branded enclave in the downtown Palo Alto Walgreens, white leather couches and New Age music accompany a phlebotomist who warms the patient’s fingertip with a gel pack before pricking it. The specks of blood flow into a vial about the size of a pinkie nail, which is marked with a bar code. Holmes, who claims to be terrified of traditional needles, says 40 percent of people don’t get blood tests ordered by their doctors because of that fear, along with cost. Holmes’s vision is to ultimately have Theranos wellness centers within five miles of every person in the United States–and to provide similar access throughout the world.
RELATED: Theranos gets FDA approval—and what that means for blood tests
Curated article from Inc.com
Relevant sources, studies and photo:
Theranos.com
