At age 31, Elizabeth Holmes is the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Her uncle’s death from cancer moved her to develop a way to detect diseases earlier. She dropped out of Stanford University her sophomore year and founded Theranos in 2003 to make cheaper, easier-to-use blood tests. With a virtually painless prick of the finger and a few drops of blood, her labs can quickly run a multitude of tests at a fraction of the price of commercial labs. Holmes raised $400 million from venture capitalists in 2014, valuing the company at $9 billion; her 50% stake is worth $4.5 billion.
Her company Theranos was valued at $9 billion. At the time of publishing, its 31-year-old founder and CEO was worth $4.5 billion, making her the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire.
Here are five life lessons we can learn from the Californian girl who made saving others her life’s mission.
1. Overnight success is a myth
In her commencement speech at Pepperdine University in May 2015, Elizabeth recalled how she started Theranos alone in a tiny basement. She gradually moved to a tiny office that also functioned as a laboratory and that could fit no more than six people. Later, they moved to a bigger office.
“Over the entry to one of the buildings was a sign that read, “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” We named our project The Edison because we felt we would have to fail 10,000 times to get it to work the 10001. We set ourselves on fire. There is no short cut.”
2. When a door shuts, knock again. And again.
Elizabeth, who speaks fluent Mandarin, wanted to take summer classes in Mandarin at Stanford. The program does not accept high-school students but she refused to back down and repeatedly called the admissions office until the exasperated program head spontaneously conducted a Mandarin test over the phone.
She was accepted on the spot and went on to complete three years of college Mandarin while still in high school. She later told Glamour that it was like building a company where you make a decision to “figure out to do this, and if they say no to me a thousand times, I am going to keep on trying for the next thousand.”
