Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Theranos & the Power of a Good Story

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Theranos promised the world a breakthrough in blood-testing technology, until everything came crashing down in early 2018. Alex Gibney, director of the award-winning documentary The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley, discusses Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ talent for telling a story.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Hill. With The Motley Fool Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. Elizabeth Holmes was compared to Thomas Edison and hailed as the next Steve Jobs. She dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19 and started Theranos, a company touting a breakthrough blood testing technology. At its peak, Theranos was worth $9 billion. But in early 2018, the SEC charged Elizabeth Holmes with fraud, and the company's value dropped to zero. The rise and fall of Theranos and its founder is the subject of a documentary from Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney. When we talked last year, Gibney reflected on how good Elizabeth Holmes was at telling people a story, even when that story was a lie what surprised me really was how effective she was

how many people fell for it and and how often when it came to a tipping point all elizabeth had to do was to talk to them and people would be convinced tyler schultz himself talks about it like he knew how bad things were in the lab what he called the tiled world. And then he would go up to the carpeted world and have a conversation with Elizabeth and she would just convince him. And then she had convinced his grandfather to basically doubt his own grandson. That's, you know, so you realize the power of storytelling, how effective it can be despite all the evidence. The trial of Elizabeth Holmes is set to begin in March of next year. Until then, you can find Alex Gibney's award-winning documentary,

The Inventor, out for blood in Silicon Valley on multiple streaming services. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.