The Theranus Fraud (A good Marketer and Sales Person but not a Good Entrepreneur)

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"First they think you are crazy, then they fight you, and all of a sudden you change the world". Those were Elizabeth Holmes' words. While some people fantasize on being doctors, astronauts and every other occupation that could be fulfilment to their lives, Elizabeth Holmes wanted to be a Billionaire. This is a very interesting ambition for a young lady as most billionaires started their business with the hope of being successful, and then the billions come along with it, while this were thoughts of grown-ups, Elizabeth from her childhood wanted to be a Billionaire.

Fast Forward years after, she made it to become the founder of Theranos and the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, with the company valued at $9 Billion. Life must have been an appealing ride for her to dream of a goal as a child and achieve it. Theranos aimed at revolutionizing the healthcare sector as well as change the world.

Although she was a drop out from Stanford University, it didn't stop her from chasing her ambition, which led her to starting her company known as Real Time Cures but changed the name overtime into Theranos (Therapy and Diagnosis). The aim was to use a single drop of blood to do all type of test. You would wonder why someone who isn't a medical doctor have be willing to start a health care revolution. Well, Elizabeth was scared of needles and just wanted to get her problems solved without no stress. She was able to raise capital and get a lot of people to invest in her business. While there were investors who were interested in this business, they were not investors with background in medicine.

Although she was warned by experts that the project was nearly impossible, she wouldn't listen. Anything that can be imagined is possible, says motivational speakers and psychologist, but then this is science and people needed to result as she gave a time frame. She had to hire teams of scientists to work with her, and whoever didn't give results would be fired.

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What were the teams working on?
A machine that would be portable and would require a drop of blood to perform all kind of tests and in 2006, the scientist brought out a prototype known as The Edison and the machine claimed to do all this. While the device could have worked if it was given longer time, Elizabeth wasn't giving the scientist enough time to do their job and the company was losing money and needed more money to keep running while investors needed results.

When investors required a result, Elizabeth would send the blood samples to other labs and request that they did the test for them while the investors would go for a meeting or lunch or some other thing to keep them distracted. Soon, employees started to ask questions, and they got fired. She saw asking questions as disloyalty.

Wallgreens and Safeway were the big breakthrough for Elizabeth but then she was going to get into trouble as the machine wasn't giving accurate results. While Elizabeth wasn't real about her scientific revolution, she was truly a good marketer and sales person, as well as a good manipulator. She owned half of the company, which was estimated to be worth $9 billion.

In 2015, Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that Theranos was all a lie and the CEO was just lying to investors and the general public as well as joking with people's life with fake results.