7 Ways Elizabeth Holmes Displayed Her Obsession With Steve Jobs

Perhaps the most notable and obvious characteristic Holmes adopted from Jobs was his attire. The Apple founder was notorious for his simple clothing, which usually consisted of a black turtleneck he wore to company presentations. As Theranos grew, Theranos employee (and former Apple employee) Ana Arriola recommended Holmes change up her look. In John Carreyrou’s tell-all book, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” he wrote, “People in her entourage like Channing Robertson and Don Lucas were beginning to compare her to Steve Jobs. If so, she should dress the part, [Arriola] told her. Elizabeth took the suggestion to heart. From that point on, she came to work in a black turtleneck and black slacks most days.”

Along with her clothes, Holmes also hired personal security like Jobs did as Theranos grew into a billion-dollar company. Jobs used to lease a new Mercedes car every six months to avoid license plates, and Holmes took after him, hiring security to drive her in a black Audi with no plates, according to The Daily Mail.

Following Jobs’s death in 2011, Holmes started to incorporate his business and management practices into her company. She incorporated different techniques from Walter Isaacson’s biography on Jobs, and everyone could pick up on it. “In Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” author Carreyrou wrote that employees at Theranos “were all reading the book too and could pinpoint which chapter she was on based on which period of Jobs’ career she was impersonating.”

As a means to further model her business after Apple and Jobs, Holmes hired Apple’s advertising agency, TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles. According to AdWeek, Stan Fiorito, a former managing director at the company, said Holmes “spoke of a desire to follow the famously ‘intimate’ relationship between TBWA and Apple.” Holmes would go on to mimic Apple’s signature advertising style in Theranos ads.

As if changing her style to that of Jobs and hiring Apple’s advertising agency wasn’t enough to emulate him, Holmes hired former Apple employees at Theranos to help create a similar aesthetic to the tech giant. In podcast “The Dropout,” Arriola spoke on this, saying, “Elizabeth was very obsessed with Apple. A lot of the folks that she hired in during my period were ex-Apple.” Arriola was partially responsible for creating the iconic look of the iPhone.

Holmes found ways to incorporate the influence of Jobs and Apple into just about everything at Theranos. According to Carreyrou’s book, she called the Theranos blood-testing machine, the Edison, “the iPod of healthcare.”

Another way Holmes mirrored Jobs in her everyday life was that she took a liking to juicing. According to Vanity Fair, Holmes “adhered to a strange diet of only green juices (cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, and celery).” Jobs had a similar diet and frequently consumed fruit juices following his 2003 cancer diagnosis, per Business Insider. While it’s not officially known if Jobs was the reason for Holmes’s diet, judging by her other behavioural tendencies, it wouldn’t be surprising if that was the case.