She styled herself as the female Steve Jobs, becoming one of the youngest self-made woman billionaires. Today, she faces up to 20 years in prison for fraud.
This is the story of Elizabeth Holmes.
This is the story of Elizabeth Holmes.
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00:00To the young women in the room here, do everything you can to be the best in science and math and engineering.
00:42I was at a point where another few classes in chemical engineering was not necessary for what I wanted to do.
00:52I started to get really interested at a really early age in this concept that building a business could be a vehicle for making a change in the world and for doing good.
01:22The question was, as a 19-year-old, how do you go about the process of convincing people that you know what you're doing and that you can pull it off?
01:50The first piece is realizing that it's not necessarily about age, and people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and others have demonstrated that.
02:20Stanford and Silicon Valley, I think, in so many ways are synonymous, and the people who come here from all over the world, they have different backgrounds, but they have so much in common in that they share a dream and they share a goal to be part of something that makes a difference in the world.
03:20I think money and fame are motivating factors, for sure. For someone building a company in Silicon Valley, hoping to make it a multibillion-dollar company like she did, I have no doubt that she was attracted by what goes with that status, which is the money, the fame, the celebrity.
03:50It's about technology, it's about people, it's about the conviction and dedication that an entrepreneur has in going into it to make something work, no matter what.
04:50It's our actions that will determine this new stereotype around women being the best in science and technology and engineering.
05:20Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos, along with her COO, Sunny Balwani, are facing conspiracy and wire fraud charges.
05:40In her view, a lot of the men that had come before her, Larry Ellis and Steve Jobs, Larry Page, etc., had also faked it until they made it earlier in their careers, and therefore she felt justified in doing so.
06:10Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos, along with her COO, Larry Page, etc., had also faked it until they made it earlier in their careers, and therefore she felt justified in doing so.