Thursday, June 2, 2016

$4.5 billion to zero

Forbes revises its estimate of the wealth of America's most successful female entrepreneur.
Last year, Elizabeth Holmes topped the FORBES list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women with a net worth of $4.5 billion. Today,  FORBES is lowering our estimate of her net worth  to nothing. Theranos had no comment.

Our estimate of Holmes’ wealth is based entirely on her 50% stake in Theranos, the blood-testing company she founded in 2003 with plans of revolutionizing the diagnostic test market. Theranos shares are not traded on any stock market; private investors purchased stakes in 2014 at a price that implied a $9 billion valuation for the company.

Since then, Theranos has been hit with allegations that its tests are inaccurate and is being investigated by an alphabet soup of federal agencies. That, plus new information indicating Theranos’ annual revenues are less than $100 million, has led FORBES to come up with a new, lower estimate of Theranos’ value.
Talk talk is all very well. But eventually, sooner or later, you're going to have to deliver.

26 comments:

Fifty Seven said...

Nothing? Not even in her checking account? House? Cars? Hockable shoe collection?

In other news, I am officially wealthier than Forbes' Richest Self-Made Woman! Go ME!

Steve Canyon said...

Funny how companies valued on ideology never seem to pan out in the market. Solyndra's soon to have a companion in the economic dustbin of history.

Anonymous said...

i think it's just fantastically awesome that we're finally taking advantage of all this unused mental horsepower in the distaff half of the population that previously we had just been letting go to waste.

think how much more productive and wealthy our society will be once we throw these chains of misogyny off of the rest of the women!

thirteen years Theranos has existed, and in all that time the only thing of value it has created is ... a lot of column inches of news articles extolling the benefits of women in the workplace?

hrm.

AJ Popo said...

One thing to note too is how several members of the Washington elite jumped onto their board. How easily these people follow junk just to appear fashionable.

modsquad said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
modsquad said...

@ Alexander Thompson said...
One thing to note too is how several members of the Washington elite jumped onto their board. How easily these people follow junk just to appear fashionable.


They know a good scam when they see one. Politics is all about using incompetence as camouflage for fraud.

Ceasar said...

With Revenues not even cracking $100 Million, even the current evaluation of approximately $900 Million is way too high. Should be more like $400-500 Million due to the company not having any Brand value. I guess she should have learned from Mark Cuban. Sell before people figure out that your product is no where near what they think it is.

JonM said...

Maybe it's Monday morning quarterbacking, but that woman has the eyes of a complete psycho. Every picture I can find she's got that wide-eyed, "once we drive this car off a cliff wecan be together forever" thing going on.

Dalrock said...

This Bloomberg article from last year has a hilarious graphic of what they call her "Fanboys". http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/can-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-fend-off-her-critics-

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

I saw here as one of these stupid "thought leaders" on LinkedIn. She was channeling Jobs in the picture or some Bind villain. Dressed in all black, black turtleneck, severe ponytail. The quote was something like "as soon as you think you need a backup plan, you have admitted you will fail". What horseshit. I thought she was a fucking idiot.

One Fat Oz Guy said...

Women: the Dane Cook of men in business.

Bob Loblaw said...

Funny how companies valued on ideology never seem to pan out in the market.

That's not really fair. The stock was valued based on the information coming out of the company. As an investor that's what you have to work with. If the product had worked as advertised it would have opened up a pretty lucrative market.

It's true the adulation came from the fact that she was a relatively attractive young woman instead of a middle-aged man, but that crap was mostly from journalists looking for a female hero and not from investors.

RobertT said...

OK, but on the other hand, she is hot.

RobertT said...

OK, but on the other hand, she is hot.

Matamoros said...

Off topic but on Women:
Their marriage is going down in flames! Moment fed-up wife burns her luxury designer bags caught on camera as her desperate husband begs her not to divorce him
http://dailym.ai/1sqBDy1

Jew613 said...

If this turns out to be a con, as I expect it will, among the victims will be Holmes own parents who gave her the money to start Theranos. Holmes herself said her parents could have retired on that initial investment.

liberranter said...

Funny how companies valued on ideology never seem to pan out in the market. Solyndra's soon to have a companion in the economic dustbin of history.

Now I beg to differ here!

Someday, when with the passage of time history has had time to digest all of this, the stock shares (well, the ones not used for birdcage liner, kindling starter, packing shread, or Venezuelan toilet paper anyway) of this company and others like it will be worth real money on eBay as collectibles.

Imagine having original copies of Solyndra preferred stock, or Enron preferred ... or an original first-class ticket from the Titanic's maiden voyage.

Anonymous said...

OK, but on the other hand, she is hot.

Bro.

Photoshop, makeup and some camera angles is all it takes. Sad!

(I know that feel.)

MichaelJMaier said...

Seriously... why do so many folks pony up loot for "groundbreaking technology" that apparently doesn't exist? How hard can it be to verify that there is a THERE there?

And I really need to fine-tune my BS-O-Meter better. My first thought reading about these blood tests was "Wow! That's great news!" It never even crossed my mind so many idiots could put so much money into vapourware.

But at least I found out about STAR CITIZEN well after the original Kickstarter ended...

liberranter said...

It never even crossed my mind so many idiots could put so much money into vapourware.

Clearly you've never spent much time in the technology consulting world. Never will you encounter so many companies selling so many products claiming to do the same thing while NEVER being able to substantively demonstrate the capabilities of any of them in a realistic production environment. Several years of having to deal with these companies left me convinced that there are a lot of VCs out there with more money than common sense.

Lucas said...

The Patriarchy always wins.

LTD said...

"OK, but on the other hand, she is hot.

Bro.

Photoshop, makeup and some camera angles is all it takes. Sad! "

Eh; I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

YIH said...

From what I've seen of this on ZeroHedge being 'broke' is the least of her problems. I wouldn't be surprised if she makes it to a prison cell before The Lizard Queen does.
And that's not even counting all the lawsuits...

Kentucky Headhunter said...

So what exactly was her contribution to this enterprise? "Wouldn't it be great if you could do a bunch of blood tests with just a pin-prick's worth of blood?" Yeah, it sure would! That's a (multi-) billion dollar idea you got there, that no one has ever had before for some reason ... You should start a company to do that.

No, I meant really do it, sweetie...

john03063 said...

Another one of feminism's failures (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-10/can-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-fend-off-her-critics). She does look hot in the lab coat - especially with that "dog watching television" expression that indicates she has no idea what is going on in her company....

Bob Loblaw said...

Seriously... why do so many folks pony up loot for "groundbreaking technology" that apparently doesn't exist? How hard can it be to verify that there is a THERE there?

Quite hard, actually. It's not that the technology doesn't exist. It does. And it's not necessarily that the test kits don't work. If you have some homogeneous reference sample you can probably get good numbers by siphoning off a few drops and running tests.

The problem is the blood in your body isn't homogeneous. For a lot of tests the result you get depends a great deal on which specific drop you're using. So you have to run your tests on a larger volume of blood so you can get a good average.

This is the classic in vitro/in vivo problem pharma companies run into all the time. The allegation in Theranos' case is they cut some corners between lab testing on reference samples and clinical use, which is not something you're going to catch if they're willing to lie.

Post a Comment

NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS.