Part of me wishes I had never heard of the Theranos scandal. 

Part of me wishes that Theranos’ science was real. Maybe now, in 2024, we would have a new frontier of diagnostics.

Maybe I would have stayed (extremely) bullish on biotech, rather than shrinking back, panicking over the stability/legitimacy/funding potential of the area for years, and coming back with, admittedly, still a tinge of fear, impatience, and anxiety. One foot in, one foot out. 

It’s for selfish reasons. 

— 

When I first heard of Theranos in 2014-15, I was 12 years old, and had a fairly firm grasp over human biology and medicine. The same way math is a universal language and comes naturally to some, biology just made intuitive sense. I joke that I did well on my first gastrointestinal/digestive systems exam because, after swallowing a gulp of water, I could physically pinpoint its pathway through my body.

This is where I implore you to read with a grain of salt, and understand that, from the years 2015-2018, I was aged 12-15. 

Elizabeth Holmes was so…cool to me. First, the vision to revolutionize a decades-old system of phlebotomy made sense to me, even as a kid. While many medtech and health tech startups use jargon that is unintelligible to most, Theranos was so simple and digestible that I became hooked, perhaps partly because it fuelled my academic ego. 

(Ironically that (over)simplification would be part of its downfall.)

Second, it was incredible seeing a young woman - who started building the vision at 19, coming from Stanford, so intelligent and so well-rounded technically and non-technically, that I wanted to embody. It made everything seem tangible. If she could start at 19, and I was 12 - who was to say I couldn’t do something amazing within 7 years? 

I wasn’t too interested in startups and entrepreneurship at the time, but Theranos and Holmes, particularly the cult of personality she built, was part of what pushed me deep into biology. After my mother underwent an AVM operation the year after, I threw myself specifically into neuroscience, going so far as to conduct medical research at the university, work on an advisory overhead board at the hospital, and join 3 federal/provincial government health tech teams.

All before 10th grade. 

Gosh, I wanted to make it so bad. Almost as if to make Elizabeth proud (maybe one day, I had hoped, we could’ve been on a real first-name basis). 

—

It’s commonly known that Theranos’ bust affected adjacent companies, large and small. There was a ripple effect felt throughout everything med/health-tech, regardless of how close to the diagnostics sector a company was. Startups faced much higher scrutiny. Investors pulled out. Teams were cut. 

Perhaps most critically, public respect for biotech ventures dropped.

But people in startup/venture world weren’t the only ones affected. This is where decisions affect a generation. 

The life sciences path I had carved for myself began to crumble simultaneously with Theranos. I panicked - biotech is unstable now? How many other companies are using deception? Which company comes next? Is the money going to flow? Am I going to be broke if I pursue this? If I work for someone else, are they going to lie to me too? Is anyone even going to invest? Are people going to associate, even inadvertently, all female founders in bio to Elizabeth Holmes? 

And in the freakout that ensued, I derailed my focus. My career certainty lost footing, and so did my confidence in my own scientific abilities (if she couldn’t do it, what made me think I was competent enough, especially technically?). I started to go down a bunch of tangents, with one foot always in biology, but one foot out. Medical law. Health policy. Healthcare consulting. Later in college, healthcare VC. 

Some people scoff when I tell them this. Their argument is, usually, that at that age, I had nothing to worry about. To find different industries.

And they’re right in all those things. I’m still young, and have time to figure it out. For every one bad apple, there are thousands who are (hopefully) honest with their work. 

Except the struggle wasn’t about industry or losing a role model. It was the planting of a seed of fear that if I chose to build or take on a leadership role, I would also be a fraud. It became a fear of responsibility, leadership, and the things that came with it, especially in life sciences, where, as the name suggests, lives are at play. It was a rooted distrust of the people in an industry that I knew I wanted to explore more - that Holmes wasn’t (and isn’t) the only one playing a deception game. Everything else, like anxiety around funding, were there, but secondary. 

I struggled to commit. I struggled to decide. I couldn’t fully invest myself into one thing, project, or team, always putting my eggs in multiple baskets just in case someone else, like a supervisor or manager, turned out to be a liar. 

—

It’s taken me a few years to finally find some stability with life sciences and biotech again. Although I don’t think I’ll ever reach the same level of idealism, hope, and trust in the industry I used to have, and I’m still very, very very thorough with the teams/ventures I get involved with (especially now that, every day, there’s a new consumer health app or wearable or something coming out), I think enough people - my generation especially - are painfully aware of consequences and tread with caution. 

Build like your younger self is watching. 

Onto the next.

/jg

06/02/24