When medical oncologist David Agus first met Elizabeth Holmes at a health conference, he encountered a personable individual. However, that perception shifted instantly once she stepped on stage. Agus describes the transformation as jarring, recalling how her voice dropped into a deep, serious register, making it seem as if he were suddenly dealing with an entirely different person. “The accent changed: this deep voice, very serious,” Agus, a medical oncologist, recalls by phone from Los Angeles. “It was as if I had met a person and then interviewed a separate person. Not swayed by personalities.”, that characteristic is very difficult in health because we should be data-driven. And several times a day she drinks a pulverized concoction of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, and celery.”, she is a vegan. In his biography, In the Nation’s Service, journalist Philip Taubman describes how people around Shultz worried that his enthusiasm had become entangled with personal affection for Holmes. Shultz spoke to her by phone almost daily and invited her to family Christmas dinners.
This duality is central to understanding the rise and fall of the woman who dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to found Theranos in 2003. Promising to revolutionize the blood-testing industry with microfluidics, she lured high-profile investors including Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Carlos Slim, and former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. By 2014, the company hit a valuation of $9 billion, and Holmes was celebrated as the youngest female self-made billionaire, boasting a net worth of $4.5 billion by age 30. A confidence trick built on a scam, but it was all an illusion. By 2014 Theranos was valued at $9bn. She was celebrated on magazine covers and in power lists.
Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington, suggests that Holmes succeeded by defying gendered expectations. She positioned herself as a female successor to Steve Jobs, intentionally tempering her femininity and youthfulness to project authority in a male-dominated industry. At the time, investors were hungry for meaning beyond simple app development, and Holmes presented a compelling, albeit fabricated, alternative. An unblinking gaze, a husky voice and a black turtleneck worn in homage to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, she cultivated a distinctive persona: blond hair. A history professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, says: “You can’t make this stuff up, margaret O’Mara. She found a receptive audience among investors who wanted Silicon Valley to deliver more than Facebook friends. O’Mara explains: “ She stands out in her ascent as a female entrepreneur at a time when men were dominating the scene and she was doing something that was in tech but seemed to be change-the-world-tech. “The techlash wasn’t brewing yet but, where there was criticism of Silicon Valley, it was like: ‘Hey, you’ve got all these brilliant people and all you’re doing is building apps. Why don’t you do something a little more meaningful. Agus, a professor of medicine who is chief executive of the Ellison Medical Institute, comments: “You know how you go into a room and there could be 10 people at a table and everyone’s having a discussion. All of a sudden one person speaks and the entire room goes: ‘Yeah, I’ll go that direction. She no longer devotes time to novels or friends, doesn’t date, doesn’t own a television, and hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years, the New Yorker wrote: “Although she can quote Jane Austen by heart. As she eats most of her meals at the office, her refrigerator is all but empty.
The deception was orchestrated alongside Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, a partner 19 years her senior with whom she maintained a secret romantic relationship. Together, the pair raised $945 million, despite the company never publishing peer-reviewed data. Agus notes that while such charismatic influence is effective in tech, it is dangerous in medicine, where decisions must be dictated by data rather than personality.
The internal atmosphere at Theranos eventually drew scrutiny, particularly from within. George Shultz, who joined the board in 2011 despite lacking diagnostic expertise, famously brought his grandson, Tyler Shultz, into the company for an internship. Tyler eventually discovered that the technology could not perform the tests promised and took his concerns to the Wall Street Journal. Holmes’s legal team subsequently placed Tyler under surveillance, and despite his pleas for protection, George Shultz attempted to mediate between the two rather than siding with his grandson. Touting technology capable of performing medical tests using only a few drops of blood, she was still a teenager when she founded Theranos. That’s a question that still hasn’t been answered.”.
Scientific doubt also simmered beneath the surface. Stanford professor John Ioannidis, who worked near the former Theranos headquarters, published a 2015 critique in the Journal of the American Medical Association questioning the company’s methods. Holmes even attempted to pressure Ioannidis to recant and collaborate on a new piece of writing that would suggest he had finally seen the light.
The era of deception ended when Holmes resigned as CEO in 2018, leading to the company’s collapse. Her legal battles culminated in a 2022 conviction for wire fraud and conspiracy, resulting in an 11-year prison sentence. The current cultural fascination with her story is highlighted by the documentaryYou Can See Everythingwhich explores her life during the 34 days before she reported to the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, in May 2023. That transition from the green room to the stage – I had never experienced something like that before.”. Holmes’s shining career ended in disgrace and imprisonment. No, this is an unbelievable story, if some screenwriter had tried to manufacture this out of whole cloth people would be like.
Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film captures intimate moments of Holmes with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children. Lavalier microphones recorded her daily life, including bedtime stories read to her children, sometimes for 12 hours a day. Meanwhile, legal and business entanglements continue; in 2025, Evans sought $18.5 million for Haemanthus, a company allegedly holding patents for a device capable of scanning various biological samples.
You Can See Everythingis currently available in the US, with release dates scheduled for 12 November in Australia and 20 November in the UK.
