Based on more than 1,000 emails, slides, texts, and documents released during the United States v. Elizabeth Holmes trial, Extend engineer Bo Lau created a website that simulates what it would be like to become CEO of Theranos before everything fell apart.
(I am grateful every day to the American legal system for opening up the discovery process.)
The environments Lau has created are ambitious and detailed, taking you directly back to 2016, when iPhones had a home button and you had to slide your finger across the screen to unlock it. Even the MacBook Air runs OS X El Capitan.
Clicking on the environment will allow you to view documents released in court on the screen of Holmes’ iPhone or laptop. You can also run the company’s ill-fated Theranos Edison machine, a device that was supposed to be able to extract vast amounts of health data from a single drop of blood.
Although this project appears to have been made primarily for laughs, it’s actually an interesting way to peruse the documents of one of the most infamous court cases in the history of technology. It’s much easier to navigate this way than trying to get thousands of PDFs from the court’s website.
However, I have other plans. Ms. Lau is promoting a watch party her company is hosting for “You Can See Everything,” a new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes directed by Nathan Fielder.
Of course, she also promotes the company itself. So what exactly does Extend do? Apparently, it can “parse, extract, and split the most difficult documents with unparalleled accuracy.” (I’m not sure what that means, but I think it means I’m bullish on B2B SaaS if something like this Holmes desk simulator becomes possible.)
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