Photo: Forbes
If you haven’t heard of Theranos, just wait. I’ve got a feeling we’ll be hearing quite a lot from this company in future. Elizabeth Holmes is their CEO and she is trying to transform the way blood diagnostic testing is done in the United States. Theranos is the Uber of the blood diagnostic industry.
Holmes is an interesting woman. I don’t know her, but her story caught my attention. It goes back to when she was nine years old. Her father was moving the family from Washington, DC to Houston, Texas and Holmes wrote him a letter. You can see part of it here from a screen shot I took from the CBS story on her.
Photo: CBS
The letter starts out, “Dear Daddy, What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn’t know was possible to do.” Now twenty-two years later, Holmes is realizing her dreams. Pretty cool. Oh, and by the way, she’s the youngest female self-made billionaire. Not too shabby.
Dear Elizabeth,
I recently saw a story on CBS about you and Theranos. I don’t like to get my blood taken – especially if it requires several large tubes. I always request to lie down. One time I fainted after the lab technician, who was obviously training, asked for someone to come and check that she was doing everything right. Ironically she was mad at me for passing out and scaring her!
What moved me to write to you was the handwritten letter you sent your father when you were nine. The curiosity and sense of sense of adventure in your words are inspiring. What did I tell my parents I wanted to do when I was nine? Probably play centerfield for the New York Mets (and I don’t play professional baseball in case you were wondering.) That’s ok though – what matters is making a difference in the lives of others. You are doing just that.
Congratulations and best of luck to you.
Reed