Yes, that Andreessen. Her hubby is Marc. And yes, that Arrillaga, her dad developed something like 10% of the land in Silicon Valley and is also a billionaire.
And with comparisons being drawn between the frauds of Bankman-Fried and Ms. Holmes, who received an 11-year prison sentence on Friday, here's a flashback with one of the most understated editor's notes of all time appended.
From the New York Times Magazine:
Five Visionary Tech Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World
By LAURA ARRILLAGA-ANDREESSEN OCT. 12, 2015
These brilliant minds blur the lines between big business and social impact, harnessing goodness through technology.....
....Today’s young, socially motivated entrepreneurs question why we even have sectoral boundaries that need to be crossed. They don’t respect the walls between business, government and nonprofits. They want to put social good at the heart of the for-profit companies they create. As an ever-increasing number of nonprofits compete for the world’s limited charitable resources, this new generation sees creating a revenue stream as an acceptable, even essential, component to a successful social-change strategy. In some ways, this will make life for nonprofits more difficult. These new donors want the organizations they support to produce robust results that verify their social impact and financial sustainability. For many nonprofits, this means upping their game when it comes to the effectiveness of their evaluation process.
But whether we’re talking about nonprofits with new businesslike approaches or for-profit entrepreneurs with a social mission, it’s all good news. Given that the world’s philanthropic funding will never be enough to solve all the problems we face, this hybridization of social and economic entrepreneurship has enormous potential.....
*****....Elizabeth Holmes
It’s hard to overestimate the potential benefit of what Elizabeth Holmes has developed with her tech company Theranos. Blood tests cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. At Theranos, a complete blood count and electrolyte test, taken by a single finger prick, costs $10.17. Her goal? To democratize health care. Turning a blood test into an inexpensive, accessible and even (almost) pleasant experience — rather than an expensive, dreaded and time-consuming procedure — makes people more likely to get tested. As a result, medical problems can be identified earlier, enabling the prevention or effective treatment of diseases ranging from diabetes and heart ailments to cancer.Holmes, 31, has always been a bit of an outlier. As a child, she studied with a tutor to become fluent in Chinese. She applied for her first patent at 19, a wearable patch to help administer drugs and monitor variables in one’s blood while adjusting the dosage as needed. (She currently has 27 U.S. patents in her name.) Since dropping out of Stanford’s School of Engineering during her sophomore year in 2004, she has spent nearly every waking moment working on bio-engineering breakthroughs in diagnostic testing and persuading lawmakers that every person has a basic right to information about his or her own health. (She only pauses in her work to run — seven miles a day.)/
Holmes talks about Theranos in the context of traditional philanthropic institutions: ‘‘Foundations work to significantly subsidize medical tests for developing economies at lower costs; our work is in developing tests at lower costs than have been available through these mechanisms in the past. Our model and objective is delivering equally effective tests with greater accessibility and at a price those in need, in developing economies or in the United States, can afford.’’
Theranos has already run millions of tests for individuals, and currently offers its lab services at its Wellness Centers in California, Arizona and Pennsylvania, along with its national partnership with Walgreens. This year, it announced additional partnerships, raising the value of the company to $10 billion. But the impact of Holmes’s work extends far beyond the United States. For example, Theranos has developed a finger-stick test that rapidly detects the presence of the Ebola virus as close to the actual time of infection as clinically possible. Because the test can be performed in the most basic of settings, it can serve the people most in need, who are often the last to benefit from new technologies. ‘‘I believe that you can build a business that does well by doing good,’’ she says.Holmes is also promoting full transparency in lab pricing, working to reduce Medicare and Medicaid rates for lab tests, to the tune of potentially hundreds of millions in government savings. This year she helped draft and pass a law in Arizona that will act as a national model for allowing more people to take charge of their health through the ability to obtain and directly pay for any test without first being required to get a health care provider’s order or work through insurance eligibility. Once health care information becomes accessible, Holmes envisions a system based on preventative medicine, versus the status quo of diagnosis and treatment only after symptoms have developed....
Update: After this profile was published online, there were new developments involving Theranos.
....MORE
—linked in our post "NYT Public Editor Blasts Arrillaga-Andreessen Magazine Feature for ‘Clear’ Conflict of Interest"
It's the same damn pitch. I've re-read this bit a few times:
"These brilliant minds blur the lines between big business and social impact, harnessing goodness through technology....
....Today’s young, socially motivated entrepreneurs question why we even have sectoral boundaries that need to be crossed. They don’t respect the walls between business, government and nonprofits. They want to put social good at the heart of the for-profit companies they create. As an ever-increasing number of nonprofits compete for the world’s limited charitable resources, this new generation sees creating a revenue stream as an acceptable, even essential, component to a successful social-change strategy."
And can't help thinking, it's the same damn pitch.
