I’m not sure what my favorite part of the Elizabeth Holmes story actually is.  It is tempting to focus on the welizabeth holmes fortunehole “self-made billionaire” bit, or the “billionaire before the age of 30“, or that she has 84 patents to her name while also running a hyper-growth company.  There is also the fact that she recognized that her age would be an obstacle for investors, so she assembled what some have called the most impressive board of directors ever. Of course there is also the “female version of Steve Jobs” angle, as he is apparently also her idol, and she is doing a killer impersonation.

But no.  Instead, my favorite thing about Elizabeth Holmes is that she and I share something important – we are both wusses. According to Inc., Holmes has a deep seated “aversion to needles“, which helped inspire her to approach the blood testing market from a new angle. The focus of most business model innovation is identifying unmet value that can be created for customers, and she used a well-established fear as a starting point. From there she has guided her ideas into some pretty awesome directions, guided by cutting edge science, to destroy the typical business model for the $73 billion diagnostic-lab industry with extremely inexpensive blood tests that can be conducted with no-pain blood draws of tiny samples that allow a huge range of tests from a single sample. All of this is then implemented in tiny labs, outside of the typical doctor’s office setting. Now she and her company (Theranos) are racking up FDA approvals to bring this all to market, starting with a huge partnership with Walgreens.

Starting with a clear value proposition, and then driving that insight into transformative new directions guided by research-driven science, Elizabeth Holmes has the world at her fingertips.  She has her sights set on creating a new market and ecosystem that does not yet exist – one that focuses on a more democratic approach to medicine with an empowered and informed patient that better monitors their own health throughout their life at a reasonable cost. I’ll bet this is just the beginning.