HBO’s documentary The Inventor tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the woman whose Silicon Valley profile and star were rising along with her company, Theranos, which was supposed to alter health care forever. Her idea (and her product, which was called The Edison) was that you could get a blood test with only a drop of blood from the tip of your finger, which was so much better than the traditional way (i.e. with needles – ugh). Her product was a machine that could run 200 tests at the same time.
However, this wasn’t true. Today, Elizabeth Holmes could get 20 years in prison as she and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani (the COO of the company) were charged in 2018 with nine wire fraud counts and two conspiracy to commit wire fraud counts.
The Inventor tells us a lot of details about how Elizabeth Holmes fell from grace, but there are some things that aren’t mentioned. Here are eight things that the documentary leaves out.
Elizabeth Once Wore Holiday Sweaters
Anyone who has watched HBO’s documentary or even just seen some photos of Elizabeth Holmes definitely knows one major thing about her: she wears a lot of black turtlenecks. In fact, she doesn’t ever seem to wear anything else. People say that this is because she is such a massive fan of Steve Jobs who was fond of that look, too.
The Dropout, a podcast about the Elizabeth Holmes story, mentions that Elizabeth Holmes once wore holiday sweaters. As Ana Arriola, who worked at Theranos said, she “would wear these frumpy Christmas sweaters…things you would only see during the holiday season.” This is something that the documentary left out, and it’s a really interesting fact to hear.
Employees Were Hired And Then Gone
While the HBO documentary does get into the culture at the office and how employees would mention what was making them feel weird and uneasy, the doc doesn’t mention that employees were hired and then they would be totally gone.
Justin Maxwell worked at Theranos, and he has been quoted as saying, “Elizabeth did do a great job of recruiting amazing people. I would watch those people that I trusted disappear. Our office was right next to the general counsel and the head of business development, both of whom were people I had tremendous admiration for. They were extremely sharp and knew the industry very well and they just vanished."
Elizabeth And Sunny Knew Each Other Before
While The Inventor explains that Elizabeth and the COO of Theranos, Sunny, were in a relationship (and that it wasn’t something that they actually told anyone, from investors to the other employees), there wasn’t any discussion of their backstory, history, or how they met.
It turns out that they actually knew each other before. The podcast The Dropout explains that Sunny and Elizabeth met way before she created her company and came up with her idea. The first time that they came across each other was in 2002 in China, and there was a striking age difference as he was 37 to her 18.
It would have been cool if the doc had gone into this kind of detail, especially since this hidden relationship is one of the most fascinating parts of the whole story.
Elizabeth Ran Into A Former Employee And It Was A Strange Moment
Justin Maxwell also says on the podcast The Dropout that after he left the company, he ran into Elizabeth near a CVS. It’s always super awkward to see a former boss or manager (or even coworker) after quitting, especially when you leave for a certain reason, but this went beyond that. Justin says that he had been hit by a car and he was literally bleeding… but he saw Elizabeth and she said hi and said it would have been great if he had still been working at the company.
Needless to say, Justin thought that was really strange, and it’s safe to say that anyone listening to that podcast episode would say the same thing. Maybe there simply wasn’t time to add this into the documentary but it would have been a good moment. It’s certainly dramatic enough.
Elizabeth Is Engaged Now
There are a few different things that people focus on when talking about Elizabeth Holmes. Besides the fact that her company was a scam, people talk about how she always wears a black turtleneck and that she has a very deep voice. Of course, even if we haven’t seen the HBO documentary yet, we have heard people talking about how her voice probably isn’t actually real.
One thing that people are focusing on right now is that Elizabeth Holmes is engaged. His name is Billy Evans and he is 27 years old.
Vanity Fair Special Correspondent Nick Bilton tweeted, “For everyone asking about Holmes’s social media. It’s private. But here are a few screenshots of her and her fiancé we found online. (I personally find it crazy that she’s being charged with 11 felony counts, thousands of people’s lives were harmed, and she’s as happy as can be.)”
Elizabeth’s Travel Budget Was Massive
According to a February 2019 profile of Elizabeth Holmes in Vanity Fair, it sounds like Elizabeth had a massive travel budget. The publication writes, “By late 2017, however, Holmes had begun to slightly rein in the spending. She agreed to give up her private-jet travel (not a good look) and instead downgraded to first class on commercial airlines. But given that she was flying all over the world trying to obtain more funding for Theranos, she was spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on travel.”
While the documentary does mention that Elizabeth and Sunny would fly for meetings, they don’t go into details about the money that was spent.
Elizabeth Is Looking To Share In Her Own Way
Vanity Fair also wrote of Elizabeth Holmes, “She has recently held more meetings with filmmakers to try to collaborate on a documentary about her ‘real’ story. And Holmes desperately wants to write a book.”
This is something else that HBO’s The Inventor leaves out: while the documentary is very much about the entire timeline of her company’s problems and features interviews with former employees and journalists who covered the story, the movie doesn’t ask Elizabeth what she’s going to do now. It would have been interesting to hear her talk about her plans to have a documentary come out and that she is looking to share what happened from her perspective.
An Employee Decided On The Black Turtleneck Look
According to Elle, in 2007 Elizabeth Holmes went to Ana Arriola and wanted to know how to get the look that she loved so much on Steve Jobs (aka the black turtlenecks). Ana told Elle, “I’m like, ‘Hey, this is who designed [his turtlenecks], this is the aesthetic, and we can go after it. And, sure enough, she did.” She continued, “But it wasn’t her own personal style. She copied other people… She was 120 percent fake.”
While The Inventor does mention that Elizabeth wore black turtlenecks and, of course, anyone watching the film could see her wearing them, we don’t get to hear this story, which would have been a really great addition.
