How a start-up worth Sh935b crashed and burned in six days

Three years ago, Elizabeth Holmes, now 33, was tipped by a fawning media to be the next Steve Jobs. And this baptism, to some extent, stuck because of the obviously Jobs-eque dress code this new kid on the tech block adopted: black turtleneck and an aura of supreme mystery.

Holmes’ academic trajectory also bore an uncanny resemblance to Jobs’. Tech-whiz Jobs dropped out of Reed College to innovate gadgets that are still, six years after his death, changing how we view the world. Holmes dropped out of Stanford University to form a biotech firm that would, in her own words, “change the world”.