She styled herself as the female Steve Jobs, becoming one of the youngest self-made woman billionaires. Now, she faces up to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of 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.
00:30I was at a point where another few classes in chemical engineering was not necessary
00:53for what I wanted to do.
01:11I started to get really interested at a really early age in this concept that building a
01:16business could be a vehicle for making a change in the world and for doing good.
01:45The question was, as a 19-year-old, how do you go about the process of convincing people
01:49that you know what you're doing and that you can pull it off?
01:53The first piece is realizing that it's not necessarily about age.
01:57And people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Larry Ellison and others have demonstrated
02:05that.
02:34Stanford and Silicon Valley, I think, in so many ways are synonymous and the people
02:39who come here from all over the world, they have different backgrounds, but they have
02:43so much in common in that they share a dream and they share a goal to be part of something
02:49that makes a difference in the world.
03:19And I think money and fame are motivating factors, for sure.
03:32For someone building a company in Silicon Valley, hoping to make it a multibillion-dollar
03:36company like she did, I have no doubt that she was attracted by what goes with that status,
03:43which is the money, the fame, the celebrity.
04:09It's about technology.
04:10It's about people.
04:11It's about the conviction and dedication that an entrepreneur has in going into it to make
04:19something work, no matter what.
05:04It's our actions that will determine this new stereotype around women being the best
05:15in science and technology and engineering.
05:34Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos, along with her COO, Sunny Balwani,
05:40are facing conspiracy and wire fraud charges.
05:44In her view, a lot of the men that had come before her, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Larry
06:01Page, et cetera, had also faked it until they made it earlier in their careers.
06:08And therefore, she felt justified in doing so.