Meet The World's Latest Self-Made Multi-Billionaire: Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos
07-10-2014, 05:59 PMQuote: (07-08-2014 10:06 AM)Basil Ransom Wrote:
You can draw inspiration from the smallest of accomplishments, and you can demean man's greatest feats - it's your choice as to which kind of person you want to be. Do you want to learn or do you want to hate?
I find Elizabeth Holmes's story very, very strange. I am not demeaning her entrepreneurial accomplishments, but rather her scientific ones. Or, more to the point, I am not demeaning. I am merely extremely skeptical, which is the natural reaction to a story that sounds just too good to be true.
How does a sophomore know enough to solve a real-world problem? Even for a grad student, it is almost a miracle to be able to do work with serious real-world impact. Of course, grad students have to publish and are constrained by academia's straightjackets.
Prof. George Whitesides of Harvard, one of the most famous chemists in the world, has been working on paper-based low-cost diagnostics technology for several years, and his non-profit, Diagnostics for All, hasn't yet taken off, despite being funded by Bill Gates's foundation:
So, what does Ms. Holmes have that Prof. Whitesides does not? Is Ms. Holmes's father a partner at a venture capital firm, by any chance?
"The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her." – H.L. Mencken