New Documentary You Can See Everything Follows Elizabeth Holmes as She Prepares for Prison

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, is the subject of a new documentary, You Can See Everything, which captures her final weeks before beginning an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors. The film, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, provides an intimate portrayal of Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, as she attempts to reframe her narrative.

Tarun Mottlia

Editor, Lazyfounder

Published Oct 23, 20264 min read

New Documentary You Can See Everything Follows Elizabeth Holmes as She Prepares for Prison — Image: MIT Technology Review via source

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 at age 19 after dropping out of Stanford University.
Theranos was valued at $9 billion in 2014, and Holmes was named the youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes.
Holmes was sentenced to over 11 years in prison in 2022 for defrauding investors and began serving her sentence in May 2023.
A new documentary, You Can See Everything, follows Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, as she prepares for prison.
The lack of peer-reviewed data was a major red flag in Theranos’s claims, with much of its work classified as a trade secret.

A Final Attempt to Shape the Narrative

Filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim began documenting Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, about a month before she was set to begin her 11-year prison sentence in May 2023. The resulting documentary, You Can See Everything, offers an intimate look at Holmes at home with her two young children as she prepares for incarceration.

According to MIT Technology Review, Holmes invited the cameras into her life in what appears to be an effort to reframe her public image. The film captures her positioning herself as an "honest person with an unusual mind," a stark contrast to the fraud allegations that led to her conviction. The documentary does not include interviews with Holmes’s critics, such as whistleblowers or journalists who exposed Theranos’s failings.

The Rise and Fall of Theranos

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University at 19. The company claimed to have developed technology capable of running over 100 diagnostic tests using just a few drops of blood, a breakthrough that attracted hundreds of millions in investment. By 2014, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, and Forbes named Holmes the youngest self-made female billionaire, estimating her net worth at $4.5 billion.

However, the company’s claims began to unravel in 2015 when investigations by the Wall Street Journal revealed concerns from former employees about the accuracy of Theranos’s tests. Reports indicated that the company’s flagship device had not been properly tested and that samples were often analyzed using third-party machines. MIT Technology Review later named Theranos one of the biggest technology failures of 2015.

In 2018, Holmes and Theranos’s former president, Ramesh Balwani, were charged with "massive fraud." Holmes was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to over 11 years in prison. Her net worth, once estimated at billions, was revised to $0 by 2016.

Red Flags and Broader Lessons

One of the earliest red flags in the Theranos saga was the lack of peer-reviewed data supporting its claims. Much of the company’s work was classified as a trade secret, shielding it from scrutiny. In scientific and biotech fields, peer review—where anonymous experts evaluate research—is a cornerstone of verifying claims. Without it, Theranos operated in a vacuum, relying on narrative and investor confidence rather than evidence.

The Theranos case underscores broader concerns about the reliability of scientific claims, particularly in industries where proprietary technology is prioritized over transparency. The article in MIT Technology Review notes that even peer-reviewed research is not foolproof: over 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 alone. Additionally, many scientists now publish preprints on servers like arXiv, medRxiv, and bioRxiv before formal review, further complicating the verification process.

What this means

Lazyfounder analysis — our interpretation, not reported fact.

The Theranos story remains a cautionary tale for founders, investors, and operators in the biotech and diagnostics sectors. Holmes’s ability to raise billions on the strength of a compelling narrative—without peer-reviewed evidence or transparent validation—highlights the risks of prioritizing hype over substance. For startups in regulated industries, the lack of published data or third-party validation can be a critical vulnerability, particularly when competing for funding or market trust. The documentary’s release also serves as a reminder of how high-profile failures are revisited and reinterpreted, often with new perspectives that may not fully address the underlying issues.

Key takeaways

Founders in biotech and diagnostics must prioritize transparency and third-party validation to avoid repeating Theranos’s mistakes.
Peer review and published data are critical for building credibility, especially in industries where proprietary claims are common.
The Theranos case demonstrates how quickly investor confidence can erode when promises outpace evidence, a risk for any startup operating in a high-stakes field.

Sources

MIT Technology Review · 2026-10-23
In the biotech world, you can’t see everything

This story is an original summary drafted with AI by Lazyfounder from the reporting listed above and checked by automated validation. Facts are attributed to their original publishers; sections marked as analysis are Lazyfounder's. Where a source is in another language, facts were machine-translated and quotations are reported, not reproduced. Read the original coverage via the links, and see our AI policy and corrections policy.

About the author