Elizabeth Holmes Tried to Change the World and is Now on Trial for Fraud

I wondered if my text exchanges were like hers.

I am addicted to following the Elizabeth Holmes trial. Holmes, nicknamed The Dropout, was a young, health-tech entrepreneur who left Stanford to found Theranos in 2003, a company she claimed built technology to revolutionize blood testing. A charismatic and passionate leader, Holmes convinced very rich and powerful funders to invest in her company and even struck a deal with pharma giant Walgreens to deploy Theranos’s technology in their stores. In 2015, Forbes Magazine named her as the youngest and wealthiest self-made billionaire.

When she was 18, before she entered Stanford, she met Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Nineteen years her senior, Balwani became Holmes’s secret lover and her business partner. The couple lived together in a multi-million dollar house while they worked together, building an incredibly lucrative, and dangerously fraudulent, company.

It all fell apart in 2015, with the release of a Wall Street Journal article exposing Theranos for misleading investors, business partners, and the general public. Holmes fired Balwani, the couple broke up, and the company dissolved in 2018. However their relationship, and the history of the rise and fall of a company, live on, in the cloud. Intimate exchanges between the power couple were recounted in 2017 SEC depositions and are presently articles of evidence in Holmes's fraud trial.

Hundreds of text exchanges between Holmes and Balwani offer a window into the simple, daily discourse of a couple. Their exchanges demonstrate the strength of their faith, their support of one another, their deep commitment to Theranos to their concerns and their fears over a business fraught with problems.

"Balwani: Missing u in every breath and in every cell. Holmes: Ditto

Holmes: Just walked in door. Going to open luggage and start bringing upstairs. How is your mom...

Balwani: Wish I could help you carry the stuff. Mom is ok. Trying to get her home.

Balwani: For me you are manifestation of love itself

Holmes: "In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine." Maya Angelou

Holmes: (3 smiling emojis with sunglasses)

Balwani: Should I order any food for you?

Holmes: What are your thoughts on sending DFJ even tho we've never sent them as an existing investor

Balwani: Projects include BS and 2013 numbers. I guess it is ok.

Holmes: Let me know where fishie food is. Had almost know food.

Balwani: :) biggie fishie came to eat xxx

Balwani: ru out there? I tht u r in bed" *

I listen, voyeuristically, to the trial, wondering what it was like for her to drop out of college, live in a billion dollar mansion, secretly love her second in command, and believe, with such fervor, that she was on the cusp of revolutionizing healthcare. I imagine how she now feels, watching her life's work in question, and intimate details of her life flipped inside out, exposed to a judge, a jury, a packed room of observers, and, well, the world. We like to think our online lives are private. We go about our days exchanging correspondence giving little thought to sharing the words with the world. Whether we are billionaire tech entrepreneurs or 9 to 5'ers putting food on the table, our modern technology leaves a continual trail of what we say and to whom we say it. I exchange dozens of electronic messages from my phone every day. I send photos of my kids to my mom. I let my boss know if I’ll be late to work. I send killer memes to my best friend. My newest pen pals are my children. My husband and I recently gifted phones to my tweens, who now fill my inbox with TikTok videos, selfie photos and household demands, like delivering a drink to their bedroom or asking if I've seen their favorite joggers and if so, could I deliver them to the bathroom where they are showering. My longest standing text relationship is with my husband. He was the first person I knew with a cellphone and has championed my technological acquisitions, from the Razr to the latest and greatest version of the iPhone. Texting is the easiest way for us to communicate during the day, correspondences easily read between meetings, while walking to the office after getting out of the car, or when stirring pasta sauce at dinnertime. The words can be written by thumb or spoken via voice to text. Sometimes, these are the only conversations we have during the day, as we are often rushing in the morning, working late in the evenings, and too tired at bedtime to talk. Like Balwani and Holmes, our phones are a vessel, holding space, and a record, of an intimate partnership.

Yet, I'm nobody. I am a 9 to 5'er and my life is nothing like Elizabeth Holmes's life. The closest comparison between us is that I've had my blood drawn before and I like wearing turtlenecks. Yet, I can’t help but wonder, what would people glean about me from my text messages? I scrolled back over the last three months to recall what exactly my husband and I texted to one another. The following exchanges best represent the central themes of our day-to-day conversations.

Husband: What do you think about bringing dinner back with you guys? Like five guys or it could be police or whatever. Husband: Moes. Not sure how it turned out to say police.

Me: We can do Moe's. We are at Walmart. Me: Junior burrito lettuce cheese black beans tomatoes.

Husband: Do you want chicken or steak on?

Me: Hi Ken

Me: OMG

Husband: Hi Ken it is.

Husband: What do you guys want for dinner?

Me: Whatever.

Husband: Ok. The girls can have cheese pizza and you and I can have leftover turkey.

Me: (7 images of gray paint samples).

Me: 1 can cream of mushroom soup. Milk. French fried onions. Frozen green beans. Veggies. Dip.

Husband: Let the dog in.

Me: (link to an article about Squid Game) Vaccines are required for indoor dining.

Husband: Text me what you all want.

Me: quesadilla. small calzone. Maybe a large fry to split?

Husband: Turn on the oven for me.

Me: (inappropriate, sexually-themed meme)

Me: sooooooooooo annoyed!

Husband: Because you forgot your lunch

Holmes's fate is yet to be determined, as her lengthy trial will continue into the new year. Balwani's trial has been delayed. I doubt either is sending text messages to one another anymore and they are both likely much more cautious about what they put in writing these days. As for me, my husband, and our text exchange trail, it looks like we have made no plans to build an empire nor do we describe our love in Maya Angelou quotes. Unless someone is deeply fascinated by the eating habits of a middle-class, American family, I don't think a judge, jury, or the world, would take much interest in our virtual exchanges.

*Deposition text messages can be found here.