Elizabeth Holmes: The Woman Who Refuses to Believe She Failed

At a Glance

• You Can See Everything is an A24 documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, in theaters from October 16, 2026.
• The film follows Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in the period before Holmes entered federal prison in 2023.
• It runs 174 minutes and is rated R.
• Michael Travin's take: the film is less about corporate fraud than about a founder who may not believe she failed.

I saw the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything, and one word immediately came to mind. Fascinating.

Not because I suddenly believed Elizabeth Holmes was innocent. Not because I felt particularly sorry for her. And certainly not because I thought Theranos had been unfairly portrayed. I found it fascinating because, after nearly three hours of watching Holmes explain herself, I walked away wondering whether she genuinely understands what happened to her company. More importantly, I questioned whether she believes she failed at all.

I don't necessarily think Holmes believes she succeeded. I think she may believe she never had the opportunity to finish. In her version of reality, perhaps the technology wasn't a failure. It was simply incomplete. Perhaps, in her mind, outside forces prevented her from completing something extraordinary. And if that's how she sees what happened, then she doesn't have to acknowledge failure. She can continue believing she was on the verge of changing the world.

The documentary provides remarkable access to Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, during the period leading up to her imprisonment. What unfolds is less a conventional documentary about corporate fraud than a psychological exploration of truth, ambition, self-perception, and the extraordinary power of believing your own story. And I have to admit, I left the theater with more questions than answers.

My wife and I came away with completely different interpretations. She believes Elizabeth Holmes is a 100 percent scam artist. Someone who knowingly deceived investors and business partners and who continues to manipulate anyone willing to listen. I certainly understand that conclusion.

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors. The promises Theranos made about its blood-testing technology were not supported by what the technology could reliably deliver. Those facts are not in dispute.

But I saw something else. I saw a woman who appeared so disconnected from the consequences of her actions that I began questioning whether she genuinely believes much of what she says. There were moments when her behavior seemed almost impossible to reconcile with her circumstances. I'm not a psychologist, and I wouldn't attempt to diagnose Holmes from a documentary. But I did wonder whether something about the way she processes reality is fundamentally different.

What if she isn't simply lying to everyone around her? What if she has convinced herself of a version of events that allows her to preserve her identity as a visionary? Those are very different questions from whether she committed fraud. And they are what made the film so compelling to me.

Three things stood out almost immediately.

The smile. Elizabeth Holmes seemed to smile constantly, even when discussing subjects that most people would find devastating. Her company collapsed. Her reputation was destroyed. She was convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to prison. Yet there was that smile.

The anger that never came. Where was the frustration? The embarrassment? The visible recognition that her entire world had collapsed? I didn't see much of it.

The remorse I didn't see. Perhaps most strikingly, I didn't see what I would describe as genuine remorse.

That doesn't mean Holmes feels none of these emotions. A documentary gives us only selected moments, and people express emotions differently. But the impression she left on me was extraordinary. She seemed saddened that she couldn't finish her dream, rather than visibly devastated by the consequences of pursuing it. That distinction stayed with me.

Consider this: If someone offered Elizabeth Holmes another $100 million tomorrow to pursue the same vision, would she genuinely believe she could make it work? My answer is yes. Absolutely. Not necessarily because she wants to steal the money, but because I suspect she still believes in the original dream.

Of course, sincere belief does not excuse misleading investors or making false claims. And someone who believes passionately in a product that doesn't work can still cause tremendous harm. But there is an important psychological difference between believing you are deliberately selling a fraud and believing you are building something revolutionary while misrepresenting how close you are to achieving it.

Could Holmes have known she was misleading investors while simultaneously believing her ultimate vision was achievable? I think that's entirely possible.

As someone who has spent much of his professional life building businesses and evaluating investments, one aspect of the documentary particularly troubled me. Holmes never seemed able to provide a sufficiently convincing technical explanation of her machine. Theranos attracted enormous amounts of capital and support from influential people. Yet watching Holmes discuss the technology, I kept asking myself a simple question: How did sophisticated investors become convinced? She wouldn't have convinced me based on the explanations I saw. I explore that question in full in my companion commentary, "The $700 Million Question."

As fascinating as Elizabeth Holmes is, I found her partner, Billy Evans, equally intriguing and, frankly, more unsettling.

My reaction to Evans was immediate. I questioned whether his primary motivation was love and loyalty or something considerably more ambitious. Watching him, I had the impression of someone deeply interested in power, influence, and, perhaps most importantly, money. That's my personal reaction, not a claim that I know his private motivations. But the film gives that reaction one concrete moment to hold onto: through Nathan Fielder, the comedian who co-directed the film and conducts its interviews, it reveals that Evans had negotiated a share of the documentary's profits with A24 before filming began.

What makes the relationship so interesting is the possibility that the two of them are motivated by very different things. Holmes may be driven by an almost unshakable belief in her vision. Evans may see commercial opportunity in that belief. What I found myself wondering was whether the people closest to Holmes were challenging her version of reality or helping preserve it. The documentary doesn't definitively answer that question. But it certainly made me ask it.

There's a broader business lesson here that extends far beyond Theranos. Entrepreneurs need conviction. They need to believe in ideas that other people dismiss. They need to tolerate setbacks, rejection, financial pressure, and the possibility of failure. Without that determination, many extraordinary companies would never exist. But there is a line between conviction and refusing to accept reality.

A successful entrepreneur needs to know when a product isn't working, when the strategy needs to change, and when the evidence contradicts the original vision. That, to me, is the most interesting aspect of Elizabeth Holmes. She appears to have constructed an identity around being a visionary who would revolutionize healthcare. And I wonder whether acknowledging the failure of Theranos would require her to abandon that identity entirely. Perhaps that's something she simply cannot bring herself to do. But it may help explain why Holmes continues to speak about her ambitions in ways that seem so disconnected from the historical record.

The danger comes when belief becomes so powerful that facts no longer matter.

I walked into You Can See Everything knowing the basic story of Theranos. I walked out thinking much more about human psychology than corporate fraud. My wife remained convinced that Elizabeth Holmes is a calculating scam artist. I remained fascinated by the possibility that Holmes genuinely believes she was prevented from completing something extraordinary. Perhaps my wife is right. Perhaps I'm partially right. Perhaps both interpretations can coexist.

The truth is that no documentary, regardless of how much access its filmmakers receive, can tell us exactly what another person believes in the privacy of their own mind. And I think that's what makes the film so unusual. It doesn't simply ask whether Elizabeth Holmes lied. The courts have already established her criminal responsibility. Instead, it raises a question that may be even more difficult to answer. What happens when someone becomes so invested in a dream that they can no longer distinguish between what they hoped to create and what they actually created?

For me, that question is what makes the documentary worth seeing. I didn't leave feeling particularly sorry for Elizabeth Holmes. I left feeling that her reality simply didn't match the situation. And perhaps the most revealing thing about her is this: Elizabeth Holmes may not believe she succeeded. But I suspect she genuinely believes she never failed.

Michael Travin is the founder and CEO of Resident Media. His commentary explores luxury, culture, business, travel, and the personalities shaping our world.