Ol' Dirty Basement: True Crime and Vintage Movie Reviews
Join Dave, Matt and Zap every week as they cover a true crime or compelling story as well as Vintage Cinema and Album Review where they break down some of the best movies and music from the past.
Ol' Dirty Basement: True Crime and Vintage Movie Reviews
" Blood, Lies, And Silicon Valley: Inside The Theranos Scandal" Part 1
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Picture a young girl plotting to become a billionaire before most of us finished our long division homework. From sketching time machines to acing a Stanford-level Mandarin class while still in high school, Elizabeth Holmes was never your average student. Her early entrepreneurial spirit was rivaled only by her relentless drive, fueled by an insatiable curiosity and competitive streak. We trace Holmes' journey from these formative experiences to her college days, where a dislike for needles sparked a groundbreaking idea—Theranos, the company that was supposed to revolutionize healthcare with its lab-on-a-chip technology.
Have you ever wondered how someone could convince George Schultz and Henry Kissinger to back a company that ultimately unraveled under scrutiny? That's exactly what Holmes did, and we explore how she managed to amass such influential supporters, despite the looming controversies and the precarious "fake it till you make it" culture of Silicon Valley. From her billionaire lifestyle to the pressures faced by rising entrepreneurs, we discuss Holmes' rise and fall with humor and skepticism, leaving no stone unturned in this captivating tale of ambition, innovation, and deception. So, join us in "The Old Dirty Basement" and keep an eye out for more thrilling insights in our future episodes.
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This is the old, dirty basement Home to debauchery, madness, murder and mayhem. A terror-filled train ride deep into the depths of the devil's den.
Speaker 3:With a little bit of humor, history and copious consciousness.
Speaker 1:I'm your announcer Shallow Throat. Your hosts are Dave, matt and Zap. I love you, matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 4:All right, all right, all right. Hey, this is Dave, matt and Zap, and welcome to the old, dirty basement.
Speaker 2:Where every week we cover a true crime murder or compelling story.
Speaker 4:So sit back, relax and comprehend. Hello, hello everyone and welcome back to a excellent edition of old dirty basement. With me always is dave and zap. Uh, good, good evening, good afternoon, good night guys, how you doing. Good morning, all of those.
Speaker 2:And you know guys, this is cutting into my fantasy football prep time. Oh. Because this is Sunday morning, this is going to be fresh off the presses.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hot off the presses Sunday morning cast. Sorry to put you to work.
Speaker 2:No, that's how much I love this. We're talking about a 15 hour turnaround and it's going to be fresh out at midnight yeah, man so tonight tonight at midnight.
Speaker 3:How do you do? It's going to be hot off the vocals hot off the vocals.
Speaker 2:But uh, this is zaps pick this week and this story was crazy. Man, I don't know how I missed this in the news at the time. Yeah, when it came out. Yeah, matt, did you know about it?
Speaker 4:yeah, I heard a little bit about it, I remember, but it's nothing. I, like you know, took super to. It was something I've heard of, but yeah, it's a very interesting, compelling story, like we do here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my wife actually brought this one to my attention, probably a year or so ago, maybe a little more, I think it was when. Well, okay, so to bring everybody up to speed, here we're talking about Elizabeth Holmes, who was the founder and CEO of Theranos.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm not going to lie, when you sent the text like we're covering Theranos, I thought it was like a Greek dude or something. I was thinking like a business owner, it comes off like a Marvel.
Speaker 3:Yes, a Marvel hero.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was looking at it. When I went to look it up, I was expecting an individual named Theranos name.
Speaker 4:You know, that's what I originally thought. I thought I thought it was like a Greek restaurant in Harrisburg. Have you ever ate at Theranos. No, they got a great great hero.
Speaker 3:The Greeks had it right, man, they, they like. You know you have share or sting, or Madonna. Look, these people were doing it. You know thousands of name. That's it socrates, theranos, yep, you name it stamos there it is, there it is. So, yeah, man, when, when it comes to these, you know our true crimes or our compelling stories, I more often than not will gravitate to a financial crime or some kind of fraud or something like that, just because I mean for me that just it blows my mind when these things happen, and for damn sure this one was one of the biggest. This reminds me of the guy that did the Z-Best carpet.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I remember that guy. I can't think of the name either.
Speaker 3:The guy had literally no product, no, nothing. He was offering nothing. It was all smoke and mirrors.
Speaker 4:And that's exactly exactly what Elizabeth Holmes did with Theranos, and this is this is also like a lady true crime which we hit on every so often.
Speaker 3:This is an inclusive environment. Yes, that's right, we are here for you know, we do not discriminate with even the ladies can commit crimes.
Speaker 4:That's right. That's right. Yeah, miss Holmes is a crime committer.
Speaker 3:Well, speaking of Holmes there, Sherlock, why don't we get into Nice? I like what you did there. Let's get into Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos so quickly. On her background, she was born on February 3rd 1984 in Washington DC. A young buck, Dude, 84. Wow, it's like last year, dude. Fun fact we just celebrated our 30-year high school reunion that, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:So so if we were born in like 76, let's just say so. This chick was eight years after us and did an incredible amount of stuff and is now doing whatever she's doing. But damn, it just really ages, you also a hell of a good album 1984 incredible album. Incredible also a good book oh, yes, and good movie and yeah, and good night wow 1984 it's all coming together, man, it's all coming together.
Speaker 3:So her and her family moved a lot of times when she was growing up, she didn't have many friends. Uh, she was oftentimes just left to herself and her imagination. It sounds like a lot like me growing up, did you move a lot?
Speaker 4:No, but I didn't have any friends. Yeah, I don't believe that for a second.
Speaker 3:I had read, you know, in, in some of this, uh, in the prep for this, like she had her friends were books. Or again, like her friends were, again, her imagination, like I'm not saying that she had an imaginary friend right but instead she just had a lot of time to herself to just, you know, expand and just go off and do whatever she wanted to do.
Speaker 4:Now, this is a smart kid yeah, that's especially reading that much her magic like. Yeah, she let um kids that read at that age a lot usually grow up to be very well read spend a lot of time well spoken, smart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, you learn a lot. I watch a lot of tv, as you can see oh my god yeah, the little boob tube yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3:I'll get into conversations with whomever and I'll pull out some kind of old reference, I mean an old quote or old something or an old commercial like uh, oh, that, like a great example, is the psa the, the hankering for a hunk of cheese time for timer.
Speaker 2:I don't remember that. Come on hanker for a hunk of cheese no, the more you know that one I know, the more you know this was a cartoon.
Speaker 3:That would be on saturday mornings. Uh, you would see this psa between cartoons or again, like in commercials. And it's this guy. It wasn't. It was to encourage kids to have a snack, like a cheese and cracker snack, like, instead of eating candy or doing whatever. Some cheese, have it, have some cheese and crackers no, I don't remember that one time for timer I'm gonna look it up though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, look for a hunk of cheese.
Speaker 4:Gi joe. Public service announcements are always fun, yeah. The more you know um actually getting together with you guys with with these podcasts, I realized that I did watch a lot of tv especially like with john, like some of the references we make towards like or you have like a memory, like me, when you see these things growing up like I, they just stored somewhere in my head but still trap, yeah, but it's. It's funny like how much tv the three of us actually did watch.
Speaker 3:We've talked about this before. We've certainly talked about this before. The longer we get in the tooth, the more we forget. I like to think of it as, basically, until one got into I don't know, let's say high school, I can remember almost the entirety of my childhood with with fondness and great memory and all that good stuff. But once you get into high school, you start going to beer parties, you start smoking. Your memories things get fuzzy.
Speaker 4:That's like the 33 union. You're like, yeah, I went to high school. I know some of these people.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure I went to high school yeah.
Speaker 4:And then, and then some of the people you run into are like, did we hang out in high school? They're like, yeah, I remember and I was like no, but yes, I kind of remember and it's one of those things.
Speaker 2:It's distorted, but it was fun.
Speaker 4:I think, like for us, yeah, our 30th was a good time and, yeah, our school just won their third state championship.
Speaker 3:First. First in class 5a yeah, congrats, bishop.
Speaker 4:Yeah, back in my day it stopped at 4a. When did they add 5 and 6? No, we, our first one was 2a, I think, and then it went to 4. Yeah, 4a was the top when we were in high school. Yeah, but I think they got so many more schools, so many bigger schools with like thousands of kids.
Speaker 2:They had to expand eligible kids?
Speaker 4:yeah well, kids from like other states and other districts such imagination, such such fondness. That's Elizabeth Holmes imagination.
Speaker 3:Oh, she did in fact have an imagination. So let's see, I know her. Her dad traveled a lot in in 1993. This is when she is nine years old. Her family made its way to Houston Again. After all of this relocating and traveling, this is where her family's longest residence would be. They basically finally settled down in Houston. She ended up graduating high school in 2002. Over the summer she took a trip to Beijing and after that she went on to Stanford in the fall. That's a smart kid there, stanford's a pretty prestigious place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually checked out an audio book. I didn't have time to watch the documentary that you mentioned on HBO. There's a couple but yeah, there's one on, and I guess, hulu they had a movie but there's a book called Bad Blood and it was a good book. I got through most of it. But there were some cool things about her, like her background, like her family. Did you hear about the Fleischman yeast?
Speaker 3:So indeed, her family had money, didn't they? Well, initially, yeah, yeah, her family came from money, so her dad just with the moving around and stuff. So her dad, named Christian, went by the handle of Christian. He was a fun fact, he was a VP at Enron.
Speaker 2:Yes, of all things.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So where this story is going to end up going, it is not without its hilarity of coincidence that this guy was a VP at Enron, of all places Foreshadow yeah, indeed. So nowadays he's working at the US Agency for International Development, which is basically, that's, whoever administers foreign aid.
Speaker 2:Right. And then her other grandfather. He started a. He was a World War I vet and you know he won. I forget what, what the award was, it was a Medal of Honor but something along that. But he also went on to start like a zoo, like a real that's awesome. No, but this guy was like an entrepreneur and then he developed uh, this uh island over in Hawaii. That was like a resort area, that so he like developed a resort.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but these guys, like, like she came from, uh, like you know, genetically, like these people that she was related to, they were all you and usually people that go south in the business area.
Speaker 4:They usually come for money and they know the ins and outs, the inner workings of business.
Speaker 3:You mentioned the Dave. I think it was you who mentioned the Fleischman.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So that was her great, great great grandfather on her dad's side. Dude was named Charles Lewis Fleischman. He was the founder of Fleischman's Yeast Company. I promise you you go to the grocery store still to this day you're gonna find fleishman you can grab a packet yeah, we use it for uh pizza dough yeah, we use it also.
Speaker 2:Yeah and hell yeah, put in the old mixer there and yeah, but here's a couple other things from her childhood I thought were interesting. So when she was seven, uh, she designed a time machine and had like like detailed drawings in this notebook. And, and she was seven, she designed a time machine and had like detailed drawings in this notebook and she was very creative like that from a young age.
Speaker 4:Was it shaped like a?
Speaker 3:phone booth. Was it shaped like a DeLorean? Yeah, it might have been, I didn't get details on that.
Speaker 2:But that would have been 1984. So that would have been like 94. Those movies would have been out. So maybe she got the idea from that.
Speaker 2:But also when she was nine or ten they said a relative asked her like what do you want to do when you grow up? And she told him I'm going to be a billionaire. So from that young age she had the drive to make money. Um, and then also the relative followed up the question with well, don't you want to be president? And she said well, no, if I'm a billionaire, the president will marry me. Basically.
Speaker 2:Okay. So she had that mindset already that like money kind of runs the world Hell yeah, it does. And you talked about her parents and coming from money, but I think by the time her parents, what they ended up inheriting wasn't enough to be, like you know, rich, wealthy, I would say rich, maybe well off, but not wealthy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, they certainly weren't hurting, but they weren't.
Speaker 4:Yeah, rich, maybe well off, but not wealthy. Yeah, I mean, they certainly weren't hurting, but they weren't yeah exactly the kids going to beijing.
Speaker 2:They're like why don't you here's? Here's some tickets to beijing for for graduation. The kid was smart, I think she was over there like on um oh studying and stuff like that. But the parents like. Growing up she had the parents had a lot of resentment to, like friends of theirs that were very wealthy, that drove like porsches, had money, and she noticed that from a young age and I think that's why it drove her to to you know I got to make money, yeah, um, and then one other thing I wanted to cover and that's that's so foreshadowed to her competitive edge.
Speaker 2:Yep, they said in the book there was a story it was a cousin told that they would play Mon competitive and when she would lose she would run. She ran through the screen door. She was so upset and competitive that she lost. That she you know, you see in a cartoon when somebody runs through a wall, sure, there's like a like bugs, bunny the shape of their body remains with the arms still sticking out right so something along those lines that pissed her off so much that she lost that she ran through the screen door.
Speaker 3:Interesting, yeah, monopoly is such a simple game. I, you know I actually have grown over the years very tired of playing monopoly, because it's just, it's so simple you make so many back deals, though, that the game doesn't end, no, and it lasts forever it's? It's basically like playing war with cards yeah you're look, whoever has the high card ultimately?
Speaker 4:that's really what happens in monopoly and if anybody has said that they never cheated in monopoly, they are liars, a liar, big liar. So we had said, we had said somebody had said, I said that she went cheated in Monopoly.
Speaker 3:they are a liar. They are a liar, big liar. So we had said, we had said somebody had said I said that she went to Beijing over the summer.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's in China.
Speaker 3:So when they had moved to Texas, her father had been spending two weeks, two weeks per month in China. Two weeks a month, dude See that's a baller job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a biger job. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a big company job. His job there was helping american companies invest in chinese development. So at the age of nine, this is again dad's going to china. I want to. You know, miss my dad. I want to be able to talk with my dad, I want to do whatever with my dad. So at the age of nine, she took up mandarin as a language.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's got to be a tough one she started learning mandarin so she later went on to take Mandarin at Stanford while still in high school. While in high school she was taking Stanford level Mandarin courses. While in high school they make fantastic oranges. They do, they do Excellent. So how could some high school kid, how could some high school kid get or have the ability to take collegiate level classes, one, two from stanford? Now around here you could do that at the community colleges.
Speaker 3:I know that happens like what you go to hackwell and that's correct you can absolutely do hack courses, maybe even penn state courses penn state yeah, because they're around here while you're in high school.
Speaker 3:This one, however, stanford, that's a bigger deal. So this chick, she kept over and over and over calling the admissions office for information, like how can I, despite being in high school, how can I take Mandarin, how can I take that? Over and over and over, like almost every day, and every time she was told that, look, we don't offer this shit to high school students. You got to get into Stanford to be able to take, you know, stanford courses. So the head the program, the head of this Mandarin program, became so annoyed that one day she called up and she would do it like clockwork, like every morning, 10 am, you name it. He ended up grabbing the phone from the secretary, the admin assistant, whoever that was talking to her, and said, basically in a fit of frustration, he gave Elizabeth the admissions test, right there on the spot. Over the phone he would ask questions in Mandarin and you know, she, instead she, in turn, she answered fluently, fluently, like it was like a fish to water, kind of like Wayne from.
Speaker 3:Wayne's World he accepted her right on the spot. Yeah, that's a skill there how would that be Wayne from Wayne's World?
Speaker 4:Remember he learned Mandarin.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, oh my God, how did I forget that?
Speaker 4:You're absolutely right. It just popped into my head when you were speaking.
Speaker 2:She's like oh, you learned Mandarin from me Was that that Kareem of so Young Guy and all that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember that. When remember the good, I forget who the actress was Tia.
Speaker 2:Carrera.
Speaker 4:Yes, but he took her on a date or whatever and he ordered in.
Speaker 2:Mandarin oh, that's impressive. And she's like oh my gosh, he's like. I learned it for you.
Speaker 4:If only yeah, he was fluent though.
Speaker 3:It's great Holmes, yeah, just like miss Holmes, who ended up completing three years of college Mandarin while still in high school. That's three years of it. Thus, this is why she went to Beijing. Hmm, while she was the summer between high school and college. Now, fun fact. Fun fact now, also during that summer this is now the summer of 2002. What this is to be very important? While in beijing, china, she met a guy named ramesh sunny balwani.
Speaker 4:Uh balwani, I don't think he was born there.
Speaker 3:No, so the sunny definitely was not born there. Uh, in fact sunny at the time was married and he had. He was 19 years and still is 19 years older than Elizabeth Whoa that same year.
Speaker 3:he would go on to divorce his wife later, I wonder why, I wonder why, all right, well, anyway, now, having made her way to Stanford, she majored in, of all things, chemical engineering. That's a smart person, way to go, right. She's not majoring in art. She went on to chemical engineering. That's a smart person, way to go right. She's not majoring in art, she went on to chemical engineering. So by the end of her freshman year in 2003, she landed herself a job at Singapore's Genome Institute. Now again, let's bring this all back together. She just finished her freshman year of college. She's now got a job overseas, in china, working in the genome institute. Yeah, that's impressive, say singapore. That's a pretty baller, uh.
Speaker 3:So while she was there, uh, her job was to test, you know, patients for what you know, severe acute respiratory syndrome, at the time commonly known as sars. Testing was performed over there and even over here. At the time, the testing was performed in a traditional manner. You'd take big vials of blood out of somebody's arm, you'd do the swabs of mucus, but you would have so much sample data again, a whole vial of blood that you could drop by drop. You could test it for by drop. You could test it for this, you could test for that. You could perform 100 different tests, but you needed so much blood in order to do that did they put those in the spinny things?
Speaker 4:yeah, centrifuge, yeah, it looks cool.
Speaker 3:Do you guys remember sars?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, I do remember that you shouldn't mix it with uh, what the what was it? Um, oh my gosh, what was the thing that the remember?
Speaker 3:like we couldn't go anywhere we couldn't, for damn sure we couldn't go to fucking china no with with the sars.
Speaker 4:You can't mix it with. Uh, what was the stuff he got shots for? Like everybody needs a shot tuberculosis? No, I don't remember aids. Oh no, covid, oh covid. Yeah, I remember people with the sars were dying with the covid.
Speaker 2:You guys don't remember that but this one's from like way back.
Speaker 3:Well, so, matt, you're not far off. So when you say the COVID, we all know with great fondness COVID-19. So COVID is whatever COVID is, but the 19, of course, is indicative of the year when it was discovered and when it came out, sars was actually the COVID of 2003.
Speaker 4:Yes, that's right. Yeah, Thank you for. Yeah, it was in my mind. I didn't know how to explain it. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3:No, no, you, you nailed it. I mean it was. It was the 2003 version of COVID-19. It was just a 13 or, I'm sorry, 16 years earlier. So many of them correct. There's like that's the 19th one.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's part 19, that is to say, the year in which it, the year in which it came out, gotcha, uh the sars. For anyone who who doesn't remember the, the indicators were, the symptoms were you had muscle pain, headache, fever, cough, difficulty breathing and ultimately, uh, pneumonia. In fact, with sars, there was a 9% average mortality rate across all the age brackets. It hit the old folks the worst Usually, but, yeah, across all ages on average. Basically, 1 out of 10 people would die from SARS. And remember, we are all made of SARS, that's right, we are all SARS. Okay, you are my moon and stars. You are my moon and stars.
Speaker 3:Uh, during her freshman year at stanford, uh, elizabeth had been exploring uh, what at the time was an emerging technology that has since become known as a uh, it's called lab on a chip, and this is basically. It allows for multiple tests from very tiny amounts of liquid on a single microchip. So I was talking earlier about you'd have to take vials and vials of blood, like when you go to get blood work done at your doctor, like annually. They'll do your blood work. They'll take a vial of that shit, maybe even two. At the time. There was this again, this emerging technology, this lab on a chip, where onto a microchip, you could just drop a drop and it would do a lot of of the testing right there, or I should say, it would do a lot of the testing with a lesser amount of quantity.
Speaker 3:So as, for example, we see people that have, uh, like diabetics right, they have these patches that are consistently now on their arm taking yeah samples always monitoring, always knowing, and that's that's now what it'll inject the insulin based on the the blood level, like it's essentially almost an automatic type thing yeah, your glucose drops and goes up and it just monitors it that's right, that's exactly right do you know that?
Speaker 2:uh, she this all started because of her fear of needles. Like she hated needles, is that right? Yeah, and then she had mentioned when she was over in was that Singapore? You said Uh-huh To a couple of her colleagues over there I don't even say colleagues, they were professors and different people she was working with Like hey, I have this idea, and they all told her like that's not going to work. And she still didn't care. She's like I'm going to pursue this, but they fairytale shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the technology's not there you might as well draw that with your time machine but she hated needles and she figured, oh, let me come up because they were doing that sars testing, like you mentioned, with all the vials of blood, yep. And she was like there's got to be a way to like streamline this not just streamlined.
Speaker 3:It not just streamlined, she wanted to. Knowing that this lab on a chip technology was emerging and and it's coming out, and knowing all the work that she had seen done over in singapore, things started. Things started clicking into place for her. She wanted to basically create this, a one stop shop that not only performed the test and not only have the dosage of the drug delivery that was available, that was based on the patient's blood, but she also wanted to have the results automatically sent to the patient's doctor, like wirelessly. It's like you're wearing a phone.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And this is all before cell phones, like the phones, as we know, before Apple Health and before all of that other bullshit. You're not linking the chip to your phone at this time she wanted to create again that one-stop shop, basically just enable an incredible amount of efficiency. That, dave, as you would aptly mentioned, that her colleagues or her professors would would were saying lady, it's not possible. What you're saying is not, it is impossible.
Speaker 2:Right, and this is 20 years ago.
Speaker 3:Maybe now we're at the point we're getting there, I'm sure, but even now I don't think we have it.
Speaker 2:No, there's a well we'll.
Speaker 3:Before she returned for her sophomore year, which would have been in the fall of 2003, she filed a patent for her idea and conveniently also in late 2003, she became romantically linked with that, Sonny Balwani guy yeah the Riz 19 years, bro.
Speaker 3:Come on, man A little creepy In March of her sophomore year, so she's now in her sophomore year. This is now 2004. She's almost finished. She dropped out and started her company, theranos, which is one of my favorite words, a portmanteau of therapy and diagnosis. Yeah, it's pretty slick, which makes sense. It's all right. It's that one-stop shop. You're getting the therapy, the diagnosis all in one, quickly, easily, just one and with just a very little amount of blood yeah, I, uh, I found out here too.
Speaker 2:She had named the company before that.
Speaker 3:It's called real time cures oh, that was the name before. That's a, that's a button or that's a push in the envelope yeah, and there was some and they decided the cures.
Speaker 2:Part of it was and it might be a little too aggressive to say like because correct.
Speaker 3:So don't go promising cures man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there was that there was some kind of mess up too when they initially sent out um like stationary and different things. I forget what it was that they had printed up that it was all it said real-time curses.
Speaker 3:They spelled it wrong on on all their initial paperwork you don't want that yeah, there was something paperwork or stationary I forget what it was so of real-time curses. It was real-time curses, curses.
Speaker 2:yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Get your blood taken, you get a free voodoo doll Right, that's awesome, okay. Well, so while at Stanford, there's this dude. His name is Channing Robertson. He was the dean of Stanford School. I don't know if it's chemical engineering, but it's definitely something with the sciences. Could have been some sort of science. Now, again, this is one of her mentors while at Stanford, so, having already become friendly with him by the time she dropped out, she ended up persuading him to spend one day a week as a technical advisor to the company and ultimately to serve as one of its board members. Fun fact that Robertson dude, that Channing, would go on to retire from his tenured position at Stanford. He believed in this so much and he went to work for Theranos full-time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a lot of that I saw in this story like people leaving and leaving companies and I have one later I'll talk about but it was amazing Like she was very well spoken with his company and people believed in what she had going on, I think she was, and we will see this over and over and over.
Speaker 3:She was really good at selling the dream. She had a vision and she again was so.
Speaker 4:She believed in it so desperately and so profoundly that it was it was reality to her absolutely probably offering, like you know, talking to these people with, like these paychecks, like you can make this to start this year, and then you know this is our vision for three years. Down the road, these guys like, oh hell, we're gonna be making bank and did you guys hear her talk?
Speaker 2:like her speak, she's got a I was gonna. She's a man, maury, she sounds she got a voice like you, matt, and I'm not even kidding, like it's that come join my company. I mean, did you know a voice like you? Man, she does.
Speaker 4:She sounds like she's just such a, such a matt voice. I saw?
Speaker 3:I did, I saw a couple of clips or or whatever, and I'm sorry I I tried to watch that, that thing on hbo. I ended up falling asleep because I just didn't care enough. I should say, to be clear, I had already done so much of my research that, as you guys well know, I try to avoid the Netflixes and the. Hbo stuff, because I think there's always a bias or a slant. Having watched a little bit of it yeah, dude, that's a man Mari.
Speaker 2:Maybe she had a lot of male hormone. Was that a lot of uh testosterone? She was high t well, there was questions of whether it was put on too like if she was doing it for I don't know.
Speaker 3:To sound, oh, to sound more assertive, maybe, yeah, yeah, you're in a room.
Speaker 2:It's a man's world but uh, yeah, it was like herman munster, you know what I mean. Like just like a ho, like I can't even do it. It it's like listening to Sam Elliott.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's not. But that would have been amazing if it was. So, matt, it's incredible. It is with its great coincidence that you mentioned about people getting paid. So what was good about having this Robertson guy, this Channing? He had a lot of connections with venture capitalists and you're going to have that at Stanford, like Stanford, harvard, any of the Ivy leagues Like these are. These are basically uh breeding grounds for like what's that thing? Incubators.
Speaker 2:Incubators yeah.
Speaker 3:They're basically incubators Like the. The biggest and the brightest and the best are coming out of there.
Speaker 4:So there's Stanford's, basically a public ivy.
Speaker 3:I think they would consider that sure, but nonetheless you're just saying they're involved with a lot of money sure. So people are coming out of there with their great ideas, ways to, you know, help humanity or just make the biggest amount of money doing something. There are a lot of people out there with a lot of money that want to invest in that early on and you know be a part of that. So again, this channing robertson dude, I'm sorry every time I say channing, I got it.
Speaker 2:Tatum, correct, correct, magic Mike.
Speaker 3:I thought he was like the only one in the world named Channing was Tatum.
Speaker 2:No, I guess not, clearly not.
Speaker 4:Isn't that a song that they're like white boy wasted? Channing Tatum. What song is that? I don't know. White boy wasted.
Speaker 3:It's, I don't know it's on, I don't know, my kid listens to it. Some artist out of stanford probably, yeah. So this, uh, this robertson dude again knew a lot of venture capitalists and so he started introducing uh elizabeth to these venture capitalists. And it was basically she was again. Not only was she selling the dream, but he was, she was also selling a promise. The promise was look any would-be profits of this company as we go along, you know, until we're really mega huge, I'm going to reinvest all of that into the company to just to grow the company. And by the end of that year so she dropped out in March of 2004 and started that company. By the end of that year, by December of 2004, she'd raised $6 million in startup money. Like that's pretty good man. That's big money. That's well her going. It kept the ability for her to develop and start up this company and do whatever it would do for her and Sonny. Big money, but it gets better it does get better.
Speaker 3:Bigger money. In 2005, Elizabeth and Sonny moved in together Scandalous In 2009,. Four years later, Sonny was named the chief operating officer at Theranos. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:I'm shocked.
Speaker 3:I'm sure he earned it. He did.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did.
Speaker 3:So, dave, you mentioned about it, would get bigger by the end of 2010,. Theranos would go on to raise more than $92 million in venture capital. Theranos would go on to raise more than 92 million in venture capital and they were already doing clinical trial tests for I'm sorry at its labs for Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.
Speaker 4:Once you get them, pfizer contracts man yeah big time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's big With 92 million. As that venture capital the company had was now had a, it had a valuation of more than $8 billion Car doors go like this.
Speaker 2:And you were talking about all the great companies that come out of Stanford. One, for instance, is Google. Google started on the campus of Stanford and they're one of many Did. Facebook, I believe as well.
Speaker 3:Facebook was out of Harvard.
Speaker 4:Out of Harvard okay.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but Google, for instance, same concept, though.
Speaker 3:It's everything we just talked about really, really smart kids just hanging out. Yeah, dude, like for damn sure, like why didn't thanks for nothing.
Speaker 2:Mcdevitt, right and go, and google is funny.
Speaker 4:I just said it my phone wasn't even that good at football, mcdevitt I know right, my phone just woke up because I said google, because I said google and it I mean just to show company, you know. Oh, is that why you look? Startled there for a second. Yeah, I was like oh shit, my friend, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 2:And talking about football in Stanford, shout out John Ritchie, local boy around here, Great football player and a great and a smart, very smart guy.
Speaker 3:Very smart guy. He went to Stanford.
Speaker 2:Yes at um, or actually friends on facebook sent him a friend request and he accepted it, so I'm friends with a famous guy, but we saw him over at the farmer's market on the west shore, oh nice, and my son had an eagles jersey on.
Speaker 2:This is like 10, 12 years ago. He was like six years old and uh I was like that guy over there played for the eagles and he was sitting like across from us and he's hard to miss, he is a big, big dude. But uh, he sat down. You know, my son went over, we talked to him. He was like super nice, just like a great guy, real nice guy.
Speaker 3:John ritchie shout out to john thank you, john ritchie. He runs he. He does a podcast, doesn't he?
Speaker 2:uh, I believe I'm sure he does with with sports and I know he's on the rate. He was on serious, I think at one. That's it.
Speaker 4:That's it, yeah, I think I think everyone who's ever retired from any sport now has a podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much, yeah, that's what we're competing with. Ross Tucker, another local guy. He has one I listen to. I've heard John Ritchie on Sirius.
Speaker 3:I remember when John Ritchie ran me the fuck over on the football field. Yeah, we all did A couple of times.
Speaker 4:I think we were all there I think we all have that story, we all made that tackle.
Speaker 3:it took all three of us to bring it down. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 4:Jesus. Well, I know it was on special teams, so there was a possibility.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so all right. So we got this chick right. So, elizabeth, she one thing. The first thing that clicked was all right, I need venture capital. How do I get that? I got to sell the dream and I got to meet the venture capitalist check with Channing Robertson. Next it hits her she needs a, an impeccable board for this company. I mean, she needs a board that has just a great, a great amount of credibility, a huge swath of other connections to make more or to get more venture money, and again you get a good board, a respectable, reputable board, the the sky's the limit, yeah not just a two by four for this one correct?
Speaker 4:this is a big board well, that's the thing.
Speaker 3:Like you're not getting your you know aunt, tessie or you whomever, to be on this board just because they might know something. No for a board. You're getting people with connections. So in july of 2011, elizabeth was introduced to george schultz. You guys remember this guy peanuts. Yeah, just like him.
Speaker 3:That's charles schultz okay so he was the former secretary of state under uh ronald reagan uh. In fact, prior to that he was the secretary of treasury uh and the director of omb and the secretary of labor under nixon this guy knows the way of the, uh, the way of the world, almost.
Speaker 4:He's pretty, pretty smart guy.
Speaker 3:I just remember being a kid. You know we talk about the, what we were talking about earlier, about you. Just you have this, the, the first x number of years of your life. You can remember with quite with a good amount of clarity. I remember watching the, the national news, with my parents every night every night. Every night at 6 30 was tom brokaw whatever.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we didn't have many stations back then, so that's pretty much on and you couldn't touch the tv the one tv you had because your parents were watching the news.
Speaker 3:No, but I just remember over and over and over again, like every other day somebody would say secretary of state george schultz, secretary of state george schultz, like it's just a name you just don't forget, and certainly not so much so that this lady look man. I want a guy like that on my board. This guy is seen a lot. I mean, the man came out looking, I don't want to say like a hero, but he came out unscathed from all of the Nixon shit that went down Watergate, you name it, the tapes he came out Teflon, teflon.
Speaker 4:How old was Schultz at this time? So she got it. I mean, he was probably in his 70s right, 70s, if not 80s, not 80s yeah, damn.
Speaker 3:So he became uh one of theranos's first outside board members and would go on to help again. You get that name appeal, it's like. It's like when we were we did the review of uh sneakers. You get robert redford on board. We can put anybody on this. He will pull people in same thing. You get former secretary of state george schultz on this board. You're going to get a lot of other good people on this board. This guy ended up helping to go on to recruit a stellar list of board members with impeccable corporate, military and diplomatic backgrounds, including former chairman and ceo of wells fargo richard kovacevich, was he the basis for nirvana?
Speaker 4:yes, yeah, he was, that's right what was his first name?
Speaker 2:chris novoselic.
Speaker 3:Chris, that's chris novoselic, that's it close thing so former bechtel group chairman and ceo, riley bechtel, his own namesake, former us oh, bechtel group is uh another engineering. It's a engineering construction. You, you name it all that good stuff. Uh. Former us secretary of state, henry kissinger yeah, it's a big name, we all know him. I mean, dude, he's not uh american, he was born in, uh, I think uh germany kissinger was yeah the germans.
Speaker 3:God, listening to him talk. Christ, you give it 10 seconds, you're asleep, you're absolutely asleep. Monotone, just whatever. Um, it's like listening to him talk. Christ, you give it 10 seconds, you're asleep, you're absolutely asleep, monotone, just whatever. It's like listening to our podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 3:You had former US Secretary of Defense William Perry.
Speaker 2:The refrigerator, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. William Perry Not only played for the Chicago Bears, but also the Secretary of Defense under President Clinton. Former US S Senator from Georgia, sam Nunn. Former U S Senator from Tennessee. Bill Frist. Retired Navy Admiral Gary rough head.
Speaker 2:That's not good.
Speaker 4:I imagine going through the Navy with that last name.
Speaker 3:Man, I'm not bunking with him. Yeah Right, and he must've had braces, use some soap. Sad braces. Yeah right, you must have had braces, use some soap. He's had braces, thanks. And retired Marine General Jim Mattis, who would later go on to serve as a Secretary of Defense under Trump, trump's first.
Speaker 4:Was that Mad Dog Mattis or whatever they called?
Speaker 3:him, yep. So, with this miraculous board now in place, you do this with purpose, right? So now you have the, the retail and commercial collaborations are going to fall into place right after. In 2012, a deal was struck with safeway supermarkets to outfit 800 of its locations with in-store theranos blood tests 800. That, that's a big fucking risk. That's huge. Yeah, in 2013, a deal was struck with Walgreens to begin a pilot blood testing program at 40 of its locations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you better have your shit together at this point. This is I mean you're selling.
Speaker 3:Like you're absolutely selling. You're going to these places and you're like, look, man, we got this tech, we can make it do anything you want. We'll shape the box any way you want to do it. And that's really what this was. It was this magic box. Like they were going to all of these presentations to the Walgreens of the world, the Safeways of the world, the GlaxoSmithKline's the world, the Pfizer's. They were saying, look, we've got this tech and we've got this magic box and we use these little. All it takes is a little right off of the finger prick of blood and we can do all this crazy shit with it because we have this magic box do you think it was as much the tech in the magic box, or was it the connections?
Speaker 4:that you just mentioned these you know what I'm saying you, you mentioned it. She had a, a baller, cast behind her on this board. So all the connections they made throughout their time in politics which you know, people say, oh, it's all about politics I mean the connections that they had.
Speaker 2:Well, they were loving this and they could have pushed it through for probably. Yeah, we can make we get approved. Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 4:You don't need you don't need that thing here. We'll just we'll just get rid of that there for you.
Speaker 3:We'll just push this through I'm picking up what you're putting down. But at the end of it, all these companies the, the gsk's, the visors, the walgreens, the, the safeways, you name it these people need to be, they need to have some kind of product, but it's, it's. It's one thing to say hey, man, I got this great board and I'm smart, you need to buy my product. Like nobody, nobody in a for-profit world's going to say, okay, that sounds good. Just, you know what, since you have george schultz on your board, you don't even need to show us what the product looks like. We'll just say, yeah, we'll fucking buy it.
Speaker 4:I think we said like they had the product but they these names, like with connections they had, they can. They can push this product through 100 a lot quicker that and that was the whole thing.
Speaker 2:It boosted her and the company's credibility well, look at the uh recently with the crypto. Uh, it was like tom brady. A couple people backed it and they're like well, if brady's backing it and this other name's backing it we're. You know it must be legit like it can't be fake.
Speaker 2:So if you get the right people involved, I mean, look at it with shark tank like if they would have took this on shark tank oh my god and uh, you know there's mark cuban and all them would have got behind it like they get this shit pushed through and you'll end up in walmart's and all kinds of stores if you have the product.
Speaker 3:CVS in no time.
Speaker 3:So, again, all of this, while this woman is selling this product, selling the dream, selling the thing. We've got this thing. It's amazing. You can't believe what this thing does. We'll show you. It's revolutionary. With those deals in place, by early 2014… Theranos had raised more than 700 million in venture capital and private investments. So by now, the venture capital got her the deals with the venture capital and the stellar board got her the deals with the Safeways and the Walgreens and the GSKs and the Pfizer's. Now she's got outside people that are seeing this thing growing and it's like the second round of investing when you got the people that see this and thing growing. And it's like the second round of of investing when you got the people that see this and know. These board members include uh, the cox family, which is a cox media group. They invested a hundred million dollars. Rupert murdoch invested 121 million of his own dollars. Uh, the walton family that's's Walmart. They invested $150 million by early 2014. After all that investment, theranos' valuation had risen to $10 billion. Cardos go like this.
Speaker 2:Going back to what you said 2004,. It was $6 million they started with and now we're at $700 million. That's the investment money, right.
Speaker 3:That's the cash in, and now we're at 700 million.
Speaker 2:That's the investment money. Right, that's the cash in Yep and their valuation now from 92 million or was the 92 million the venture capital?
Speaker 3:Yep, so I'm with you. So they had raised by the end of 06 or, I'm sorry, by the end of 2010,. They had raised 92 million with a. With that 92 million, that gave their company a valuation of 1 billion.
Speaker 2:So 1 billion, and we're now at 10 billion. 10 billion.
Speaker 3:Just three years and change later. Just three years and change later. The value is now at 10 billion and the raising had gone from 92 million to 700 million.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 4:You see the Walton family involved in that. I don't think people realize how much money the Walton family has.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just funny.
Speaker 4:Like the investments that they must have.
Speaker 3:There's the shit that we might see like with Forbes valuations and stuff. Like the richest people Look, they got a lot of shit.
Speaker 4:that people don't know about.
Speaker 3:Don't know about Exactly 110% Dang.
Speaker 4:It's like it's yeah. One of the Waltons just snuck up. They own owners of the daughters. I think they just gave it to her. They're like here, you can take this team, go have fun with it.
Speaker 3:This reminds me of a Simpsons episode. Yeah, so does anybody remember that Simpsons episode?
Speaker 2:No, I sound like I remember when they bought the Broncos. I didn't really watch the Simpsons like that. I've seen episodes, but fill me in on that.
Speaker 3:So I forget the guy, his name, but Homer. His whole life changed, his whole life completely changed, like he moved to a whole different town with this posh house. Marge developed a drinking habit because she had nothing to do Nothing to do all day, Robots were cleaning her house. Again, beautiful house, beautiful town. Oh, it's in the Hammock District. I need a hammock. Oh it's in the Hammock.
Speaker 2:District. I need a hammock. Oh, I need a hammock. This is later episode. No, this is one of the earlier ones.
Speaker 3:Anyway, it turns out that this guy damn, if I can't remember his name was a spy. He was just absolutely this international. He was like the Dr Evil.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Of the Simpsons world. Anyway, at the end of it all the guy was really thankful that Homer had helped him out as much as he did, so he bought for him the Denver Broncos.
Speaker 2:Oh holy shit, but he's like dull.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Matt, help me out here. This is at a time when the Broncos were very good. They had either made it and lost it a couple of times, or they just weren't making it anywhere. I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Not like this year. They're looking good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're looking pretty decent this year. I think it was towards one of their downward movements. The Broncos always would come close.
Speaker 2:They're like one of them teams, but they never made it at the time. Oh, so just back, like always early on, yeah, early on. Before 97, 98.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 97, 98 when it went back to back.
Speaker 2:But you know also I but, uh, you know also I brought up earlier like people that were connected with this company that got them to got them to this point, like she was so good at recruiting people, like you showed here with the people that are involved. But there was a. This board was insane. The board was insane, but the people working for her that she recruited she was very big on apple, like she loved apple and steve jobs and that was a big um influence of how she dressed, even, and you're saying like she wanted to emulate, emulate steve jobs, dressed like a man.
Speaker 2:She, she sounds like a goddamn man well, she had brought over an employee, uh, for an interview from apple. That was this girl, I think her name was anna and she was in charge of development of the iphone, the uh, chief design officer of the iphone, I think, for apple on the ip. Um, and she brought her in and was like, hey, I have this company. And kind of gave her the pitch. And the girl was like you know, I don't really want to leave Apple. I have 15,000 shares of Apple stock that I'll lose, uh, if I leave. And she's like well, I want to bring my partner along. Um, you talk to her and bring my partner along. You talk to her and if we can come together to a you know a decision to do this, I'll do it.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, elizabeth was able to like, woo her partner and say go ahead and do it, leave Apple. And I agree with this. And she left Apple and left 15,000 shares of stock behind at Apple to go start for this startup. And this is at the time the iPhone one had just came out, you know what I mean. And and Apple was doing really well. So for her and that's just like one person that she was able to to to lure over. So she was very good at that and just think about what that stock would be worth today. I'm sure that girl is still well off. She's very intelligent, smart person. I'm sure she's working for some other company, but it just goes to show she might even be retired by now.
Speaker 4:I mean she might be All of her money, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I just thought that was amazing how good she was at that.
Speaker 3:She's good at convincing people. Again, it's that idea we've talked about before. It's that selling the dream, it's selling the idea. It's like, look, this is a and it's. It's amazing that you had actually, that you bring up the steve jobs thing. That's all steve jobs ever did like he would. He would say, hey man, I have this product, I or I want this product. This is what I want to see happen, like I want to see, instead of walking around with a walkman and a disc and carrying all these other tapes and CDs and bullshit Fuck that. I want all that digitally on a little little USB drive, on a little chip, and I want to be able to scroll through a hundred songs all at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like to have that vision.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what I mean. And I want to make that happen and I want it in the smallest device possible.
Speaker 4:Who was? Uh, who was the man they busted a few years back on the big ponzi scheme? He was the hedge fund manager. Um, bernie madoff made off, yeah, yeah, but he, he did the same thing, like he had no money, but anytime he'd be. Like you know what? I'm dropping you as a client, like I don't want your money anymore, your money's no good. And the guy's like no, no, no, no, here here, take another two million he threatened them and they, yeah, he'd like threaten them.
Speaker 4:but he was so good like just bullshitting people, yeah that, yeah, they threatened me like all right, fine, I'll give you all your money back. I don't need it.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, Fake it till you, make it.
Speaker 4:That's what they.
Speaker 2:Uh, the motto is out there in Silicon Valley. But the other thing is, in Silicon Valley you're dealing with apps and things that are like oh, if Spotify is not working, it's not a huge deal, but this is medical, like, this is your life and your, your health, and they're developing this stuff, so it better work. I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess we will find out. So news of this. We've mentioned the Safeway and the Walgreens deals. Of course, something like this now is going to make national headlines, which is interesting, because until now Theranos had operated like way, way, way under the radar with little to almost no media attention. But you would see maybe something here, some blurb there, if you're lucky, maybe in a shareholder report, but otherwise these guys just kept it quiet, absolutely kept it quiet, and that was with purpose, absolutely with purpose.
Speaker 3:These guys, theranos, operated in what's called a regulatory gray area. So in the CPA world or accountant world you have, you know, black or white, everything's black or white. Well, in this case things were kind of gray, like so many other regulations. Like you talk to oh man, just talk to any attorney, talk to JW. Yeah Well, it depends, is going to be the answer. It depends. So what how? Theranos operated in a gray area. So they offered diagnostic services using their own patented, you know, diagnostic products or their their own machines. Now, diagnostic service providers who don't have their own devices have to purchase, obviously, devices from other manufacturers. So, like a diagnostic service provider I know they're the biggest one, I think is like quest medical.
Speaker 3:There's another one lab, lab lab corp, lab corp yeah so there's two service providers, but they don't make the equipment. They buy their equipment from other manufacturers like siemens is one, um, siemens is one, there's a. There's a couple of them out there, but there's only a select couple. Right, because this is a really big fucking deal to get the, to get the, the, the approvals and stuff and so with that, in order for you know, other device manufacturers to sell their devices. Again, they're not performing the test, they're just selling their devices. Those devices have to be rigorously tested and approved by the FDA. But again, theranos manufactured their own devices for their own diagnostic work. As long as they didn't attempt to sell their devices or move their equipment out of the labs, they did not need FDA approval. That's some shady shit.
Speaker 3:So that's a really big fuck a deal and I kind of believe it Again, that was done with purpose, like it wasn't just oh hey, what a convenience. Yeah, well, this is decidedly convenient that we don't need fda approval for this, because we're just you know what? I liken it to matt you mentioned it earlier about her having high t and I I likened this a lot to, uh, all of the and there are a lot of the low testosterone commercials or the substitutes for Viagra or whatever kind of pills out there, like blue chew, like you name it. These people don't need to go through FDA approval because they're not looking to, they're not saying that it cures anything, they're not saying that it does anything else, they're not using anybody else to manufacture it and they're not doing anything else with it.
Speaker 4:They're just like a magic, magic bean.
Speaker 3:Correct, yeah, all they're doing is selling vitamins. That's it. Right? This is the Theranos. Situation is not dissimilar to the extent of we're not selling it to a third party that is going to make claims that it's going to, that it it's operating in their fashion, but the way that, like, let's say, an fda approved fashion, we simply have this product with this breakthrough technology. It's our machine, it's our system of delivery. We don't need fda approval, which is absolutely true. I think there's a level of classes involved in that with fda, like there's a class one, class two or class three. Uh, approval in the fda world? I don't know, I'm no scientist.
Speaker 4:I might have to talk to shybie about that if you go to any um, cvs or anything like that, you look on none of those pills or whatever you get at like a cvs store, unless you go back into the pharmacy section yeah or like fda approved, it's all just stuff that you're like, oh, but you don't ever see them advertise that you don don't think about that Like oh this must meet FDA approval.
Speaker 2:Saw Palmetto.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right, some fish oil, that's right.
Speaker 3:Exactly, Exactly. It's like the shit vitamins you can buy or the not shit vitamins.
Speaker 4:I can't say. Some of them are Supplements, some of them are shit.
Speaker 3:Some of them are good Supplements versus a pharmacy Right.
Speaker 2:That big muscle head back there. Hey, you got this new creatine.
Speaker 4:You got this creatine or, like the kids now, vanilla flavor Honey sticks or whatever. Did you guys see that? Yeah, honey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have them at the front counter.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh. By the end of 2014, theranos employed nearly 800 people. Good job, theranos Dude. They maintain their corporate that's good man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's good for them. Good on you including. I'm guessing that chick from apple yes, she's one of them for went her 15 000 shares yeah, the baller board, and they probably got some smart people working underneath them.
Speaker 3:I gotta believe it, it's all labs all day. Uh, they maintain their corporate offices a fun fact in facebook's former headquarters in palo alto, california, and they occupied a 265 000 square foot manufacturing facility in newark, california. Where's newark? Oh, I saw that too.
Speaker 2:I had no idea it's like carjack capital yeah, that's a newark new jersey yeah, 265 000, that's like, well, probably 1500 of my houses or my, is my math right?
Speaker 4:you know it's 15 million of your homes you might be right, dude no, I was at 100, 150 265, let's just say my house is around 2 000 square feet well, you look at some like mansions are like 6 000 to like 12 000 square feet, right it'd be 100 of your house, 100 100, that's our neighborhood.
Speaker 3:Like 130 of your house. That's our neighborhood.
Speaker 4:But it looks like in Palo Alto or this place, newark, california. It looks like they're finding these places. They can build these huge warehouses for nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and fun fact on Palo Alto. I didn't know that, but there's like two parts of it. There's like a shady ass part, ass part really. And then, like the nicer part and I've never crossed the tracks yeah, at one point.
Speaker 4:I guess their offices were in like a shady part, so it's like gangster rap palo alto and then there's just like regular palo alto but there was a day that she went to work and her window got shot out.
Speaker 2:Somebody shot at her, I guess jesus on the way to work. That's how rough it was. Yeah, that's pretty gangster yeah, that's gang so when she moved up in the I'm assuming this Facebook wasn't a nice part.
Speaker 4:What if she had like a 64 Impala? Yeah with hydraulics, with like hydraulics, she's rolling her 6'4". Yeah, that'd be dope.
Speaker 2:Fun fact they did say one of the employees she would pull up to work blasting rap gangster rap and shit. She'd weigh into like hip hop, which I like that. Yeah, that's cool. Good, yeah, that's cool good for her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wonder if that's a foreshadow. It might be, it might be. What on the home is saying uh, before we move on, what was? What was the truck that the track that had blast a shot?
Speaker 2:that was ice cube, yeah, it was.
Speaker 4:Uh, he hit the, our heads ringing that's oh that was drake ding dong yeah, ding-a-ling ding-a-ling keep the heads ringing there.
Speaker 3:It is there. It is okay. Gangster rap. In early 2015, elizabeth holmes again now. They were under the radar for a long time, let's. Let's not forget, but you know, time goes by. In early 2015, elizabeth holmes was named the world's youngest self-made female billionaire by forbes magazine at the time, having a net worth of four and a half billion dollars so yeah, being in the pages of forbes as like somebody, that that's huge yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 4:That's big baller. Trace commas.
Speaker 3:Trace commas, that's right, that's exactly right, that's a. Was that tequila or vodka?
Speaker 2:Uh, I forget the drink, but that was uh. Russ Hanneman's drink. Russ Hanneman Tequila. I think Right, that's right.
Speaker 3:Dude, that is just the best when he's driving around a car that has normal hinges and he's just laying into Richard like this is what you did to me. This is, I'm driving a car like this. I'm only, you know hundreds of hundreds of millionaire, I'm not a billionaire anymore.
Speaker 2:He dropped it like 996 million or whatever. Oh trees, commas.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was pissed. So this woman I mean out of nowhere, out of nowhere this company had been, you know, under the radar she became this instant sensation in the business world, medical device world, all of it, Out of just nowhere yes, it was quick, and she's on magazine after magazine. She's doing interview after interview. Once you got that press, once she got that Forbes magazine press, it was just. She became basically the next Steve Jobs.
Speaker 4:Everybody wanted to talk to her and she was like, hey, what's up? Hey guys, can you wrap it up? Damn man, there's a lot more to talk about.
Speaker 3:This is what we get for doing this on Sunday morning.
Speaker 4:I know right, I guess we got to go to church. Yeah, I'm missing church right now.
Speaker 2:I had to laugh at the reunion. Doc went up to her and was like I'm waiting for you to yell to wrap it up. She heard because he hears her on the podcast. He said actually the first time he heard it he thought it was legit, for real, that she was doing that. Yeah, and he was pissed. Yeah, he's like man. Shout out to RJ down in North Carolina. He's like man. When she comes on, you guys are usually really getting into it. He's like man. You leave me on a cliffhanger. Our apologies, rj, sorry, man.
Speaker 4:About the reunion. I just wanted to add it was nice seeing everybody, but there was a conversation I was having with Trung oh yeah, before Trung, and it trung, oh yeah and uh, it was bobby t yeah and uh, doc and uh. I guess we were talking about growing up and we go back to that stuff and some of them were saying, like, when we talk about like our age with a lot of guys like our age, they can go back and reminisce. And uh, they were talking about like being at a friend's house or mom's house, like having their breakfasts or like certain things that they cooked, like trung was naming about. Like like Bobby T's mom made these strombolis or whatever, and they were like the most amazing things and I just remember you know some of your friends' houses like what their moms made or if they had, like you know, a snack that you liked this is one of the things that kind of takes you back.
Speaker 4:You know mom's, sweaty mom's spaghetti funny.
Speaker 2:You said that I had a friend, craig, who rest in peace he passed away, but his mom made chef bordeaux pizza. Yeah, and I just remember I was like an eight, nine, ten year old loving chef bordeaux it was the cheese that was on.
Speaker 4:It's not even real.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah so I can relate. And you know who wasn't eating chef boyardee pizza elizabeth holmes absolutely no, that's real pizza that's at a four and a half billion cars does go like this with a, with a valuation like that yeah, do you still eat pizza?
Speaker 4:if you're like a billionaire shit, yeah, you're sure.
Speaker 3:Like I don't know, I'd be like I'm good warren buffett every day or every other day or so. Stop, he drives a shit toyota yeah, he drives a toyota yeah, he buys a fucking cheeseburger.
Speaker 4:He's a different dude, though well that.
Speaker 2:And I saw a picture of, uh, bill gates out in front of like a burger joint waiting in line. Sure, you know what I mean. These people eat normal shit. Yeah, and talking about Elizabeth Holmes, there was a thing they were talking about her. She wouldn't really sleep, she would eat, like you know, she would order takeout, stay up all hours in the morning working.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:You know working on ideas and her company so.
Speaker 4:I don't think.
Speaker 2:I don't think they always have the best diets.
Speaker 4:I'd be getting good Thai food and stuff, but I don't know if I'd be eating pizza all the time.
Speaker 3:I wonder when she's doing all of this up late. I get it. When you own a business like that, especially something that big, that's your life. Forget the idea of floating around and doing whatever You've got to get this thing up and off the ground. I just can't help but wonder what was she doing with all that time, was she? I just can't help but wonder what was she doing with all that time, like, was she thinking of the next thing? Or was she thinking of how to really, you know, make this happen? Or or how to deliver all of these things to all of these new, these new clients and these new customers? What was she thinking about?
Speaker 2:I think she was putting fires out. I have a little bit on that which I mean that was like one part of it, but but which?
Speaker 4:I mean that was like one part of it. But don't you think anybody in her shoes, like you, constantly have to be thinking?
Speaker 2:ahead, like there's no time to rest if you're making billions of dollars.
Speaker 4:That's why I think a lot of these people burn out so quick or have to do things differently or, like Dave said, you're putting out fires all the time because you don't want to lose that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'll bring that up in the next episode. But speaking of putting out fires, uh, I think she might be lighting a match up there we better get going, but you guys got anything else quick before we go no, no, no, just looking forward to finish this and getting further in this.
Speaker 3:Let's see, we'll see what happens next all right. Well, I guess that's it for now, so we'll catch you where on the flip side if we don't see you sooner, we'll see you later.
Speaker 4:Peace thanks for hanging out in the old, dirty basement. If you dig our theme music, like we do check out the tsunami experiment, find them on Facebook. Their music is available streaming on Spotify and Apple and where great music is available.
Speaker 2:You can find us at old dirty basement on Facebook and Instagram and at old dirty basement podcast on Tik TOK Peace, we outtie 5,000.