The rise and fall of Theranos, the blood-testing startup that went from a rising star in Silicon Valley to facing fraud charges

Theranos' star was shining bright going into 2015. 

The darling blood-testing startup had racked up a $9 billion valuation with its big vision to test for a number of conditions off just a small sample of blood, and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes was featured on the cover of business magazines and lists of top executives. But then questions started being raised about how the company's technology worked. 

As Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou details in his new book, "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," the events leading up to the imminent downfall of the company started unraveling even years earlier. The book gives a behind the scenes look into the events propelled the biotech startup, Theranos, into chaos and deceit.

In June 2018, Holmes stepped down as CEO of Theranos, remaining with the company as a founder and chair of the board. She was also charged with wire fraud by the Department of Justice. On Tuesday, Theranos told investors that it was shutting down, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Here are the events that contributed to the rise, the fall, the pivot, and now criminal charges of the once promising company founded by Holmes. 

SEE ALSO: The reporter who broke the Theranos saga wide open pinpoints the moment he knew he had a big story on his hands

DON'T MISS: The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, who started Theranos when she was 19 and became the world's youngest female billionaire before it all came crashing down

Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19 to start Theranos, which was then called Real-Time Cures. She was inspired both by her grandfather's medical career, and her summer 2003 internship at the Genome Institute of Singapore. Briefly after the internship she wrote up a patent application for an arm patch that had the ability to diagnose and treat medical conditions.

Shaunak Roy, a PhD student Holmes was assisting in Professor Channing Robertson's lab, joined her at Theranos in May 2004 as its first employee. Robertson joined the company's board as an adviser.

In order to raise initial funding, Holmes leveraged several family connections. The first two investors in Theranos were Tim Draper, the father of her childhood friend and former neighbor, and Victor Palmieri, one of her father's long-time friends. By the end of 2004, Holmes had raised nearly $6 million.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Contributer : Tech Insider https://ift.tt/2NpnZcV

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