Elizabeth Holmes, Jailbird

Elizabeth Holmes and I go back a long way. I've written about her several times since June 2016, most recently last September, when the question was whether she was 'schemer or naif.' I went with schemer, and it looks like the law felt the same way. And now she's about to add another descriptor: jailbird. 

In truth, I was surprised that she got 11+ years. 

I thought she'd get a heavy fine, and a light sentence. Maybe even home confinement, which would let her play with her babies - the son born in July 2021, and the baby she's pregnant with how, who may end up being born in prison. 

Instead of wearing an ankle bracelet and playing with her kiddos, she'll be behind the bars. Her second child may be born while she's there.

The entrepreneur — who started Theranos as a Stanford University dropout and grew it into a company with a peak valuation of $9 billion — was convicted in January of misleading investors that her technology could run hundreds of tests from just a few drops of blood. In reality, the company was relying on technology from other companies to run the tests.

She was convicted of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud after a four-month-long trial that featured testimony and tales of billionaire investors, former U.S. officials’ endorsement and patients who had used the company’s technology. Holmes also took the stand over the course of seven days in emotional testimony defending her actions as being in good faith and denying that she was aware of the fraud. (Source: Washington Post)

Part of her defense was to blame Theranos problems on her partner (both in business and in pleasure), Sunny Balwani, who was portrayed in court by Holmes' attorneys as something of a Svengali to her poor, little ol' Trilby. (Balwani was also convicted and awaits sentencing. I'm sure he's sweating plenty, just about now.)

What a terrible waste...but, boy, did she have it coming. 

Everyone puffs their products, but there's a line between puffery and deliberately misleading others (investors and customers). And the line here wasn't all that fine.

Holmes might not have fallen so hard if she'd been bullshitting about software that helped boost productivity, an app that helped walkers count their steps, an online system for organizing recipes. But she was bullshitting about something - the potential for a faulty diagnosis based on bogus test results - that could have been life or death. 

And Holmes might not have fallen so hard if she hadn't risen so high: billionaire, genius, cover girl (Forbes, Fortune, Inc....Glamour). The apple of the eye of a number of famous old men: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis. Everyone's darling. The "It Girl." The female Steve Jobs, whose black turtleneck uniform she copied.

And one of the only women entrepreneurs to have risen quite so high.

If she hadn't been so arrogant, so full of hubris, so fully convinced that an attractive young white woman who had been befriended by Kissinger, Shultz, and Mattis would ever do time. If she hadn't decided to have another child after she was convicted, in what looks like it may have been an attempt to garner some sympathy. Oh, that poor mother of two babies...Oh, those poor babies. 

Sigh.

Elizabeth Holmes has lost so much.

Wealth, reputation, freedom. Even her weirdly pretty looks.

But mostly - assuming her appeal fails - the opportunity to watch her children grow up.

She's going to prison in April. Her son won't even be two. His first memories of his mother will likely be of her behind bars. So will the first memories of child #2. Memories forged in those grotesque family meeting rooms with the bolted down plastic chairs and the vending machines selling too sugary, too salty snack foods. 

This is not a slap-on-the-wrist sentence.

Eleven years and change. 

And that translates into a lot of change that she'll miss seeing. First steps, first words, first day of school, first soccer game, first overnight. Outings, vacations, hanging around the family room eating popcorn and watching movies, birthday parties holidays. Her kids becoming adolescents. 

If she serves her full sentence, Holmes will be nearly 50 when she's released.

The separation from their kids happens to a lot of parents, of course. But mostly not to willowy blonde Stanford dropouts. 

A lot of what her kids will know about her, they'll find online, once they're old enough to google and/or find a way around parental streaming controls. 

Now the subject of an HBO documentary, a Hulu TV series, a best-selling book and multiple podcasts, Holmes has become one of the most famous tech start-up CEOs, as well as a cautionary tale for how badly an ambitious start-up can spin out of control.

Especially if greed, ambition, and a palpable desire to change the world are in play.

Although she was pretty stoic during her trial, Holmes became emotional and cried when her sentence was handed down. 

“I take responsibility for Theranos,” she said. “I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”

Too little, too late. (One of the reasons she got such a harsh sentence was that she hadn't appeared especially contrite.)

Holmes's partner and father of her children is Billy Evans, who wrote to the judge on Holmes's behalf, somewhat oddly:

...seeking to describe a different Holmes than had been portrayed in the media. He extolled her “willingness to sacrifice herself for the greater good is something I greatly admire in her.”

What sacrifice? And for what greater good? 

Even more oddly:

He also wrote that “earlier this year, while pregnant, she decided she wanted to swim the Golden Gate Bridge,” something that concerned Evans.

“Rain or shine she practiced, and her determination was overpowering the odds against her,” he wrote. “Two weeks before the event she made the cut off time, swimming the breaststroke. I was wrong, you would think by now I would learn to not discount her perseverance.”

I know that Alcatraz is closed for prison business, but am I the only one who read this and thought of the fact that, while a dozen or so inmates tried to escape Alcatraz and swim to shore, none is thought to have succeeded? Is something like that what Evans means by us not "discount[ing] her perseverance"?

Elizabeth Holmes, jailbird. What. A. Waste.