WHEN PARLOFF’S COVER STORY was published in the June 12, 2014,
issue of Fortune, it vaulted Elizabeth to instant stardom. Her Journal
interview had gotten some notice and there had also been a piece in
Wired, but there was nothing like a magazine cover to grab people’s
attention. Especially when that cover featured an attractive young
woman wearing a black turtleneck, dark mascara around her piercing
blue eyes, and bright red lipstick next to the catchy headline “THIS
CEO IS OUT FOR BLOOD.”
The story disclosed Theranos’s valuation for the first time as well as
the fact that Elizabeth owned more than half of the company. There
was also the now-familiar comparison to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
This time it came not from George Shultz but from her old Stanford
professor Channing Robertson. (Had Parloff read Robertson’s
testimony in the Fuisz trial, he would have learned that Theranos was
paying him $500,000 a year, ostensibly as a consultant.) Parloff also
included a passage about Elizabeth’s phobia of needles—a detail that
would be repeated over and over in the ensuing flurry of coverage his
story unleashed and become central to her myth.
When the editors at Forbes saw the Fortune article, they
immediately assigned reporters to confirm the company’s valuation
and the size of Elizabeth’s ownership stake and ran a story about her
in their next issue. Under the headline “Bloody Amazing,” the article
pronounced her “the youngest woman to become a self-made
billionaire.” Two months later, she graced one of the covers of the
magazine’s annual Forbes 400 issue on the richest people in America.
More fawning stories followed in USA Today, Inc., Fast Company,
and Glamour, along with segments on NPR, Fox Business, CNBC,
CNN, and CBS News. With the explosion of media coverage came
invitations to numerous conferences and a cascade of accolades.
Elizabeth became the youngest person to win the Horatio Alger Award.
Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential
people in the world. President Obama appointed her a U.S.
ambassador for global entrepreneurship, and Harvard Medical School
invited her to join its prestigious board of fellows.
As much as she courted the attention, Elizabeth’s sudden fame