Written by By E, r, i, n, , o, o, b
Basking in public love on Instagram, what would you do if you were Elizabeth Holmes? Is your secret your relationship with serial entrepreneur Billy Evans?
With an estimated net worth of $200 million, venture capitalist Ellen Pao was once the toast of Silicon Valley — and the star of the reality TV show “Great Chefs of Instagram.”
According to Forbes, Pao’s net worth has shrunk with a high-profile 2015 lawsuit against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. (The lawsuit was settled out of court.)
Elizabeth Holmes Photographer: Nir Elias for Bloomberg
Elizabeth Holmes Photographer: Nir Elias for Bloomberg
Less is known about Pao’s boyfriend Billy Evans, but for Evans, his former life as CEO of a biotech firm might prove to be not-so-slowly slipping into the past. And along the way, he may come to know that the spoils of the Kardashian-Jenner empire and high-profile lawsuits can bring unexpected scorn.
“Billy has made some big mistakes with Elizabeth,” said Harvard Business School professor Joshua Rosenthal. “Most of them are documented.”
As of March 19, Evans’ profile was still listed as active on Instagram. His 1.8 million followers liked photos of him fishing with friends, often shirtless, and cycling in Southern California. He’s posted about his #StakesFocused campaign, his love of skateboarding and even a portrait of himself and Holmes standing in front of their home.
Much of his Instagram account shows his relationship with Holmes, a 19-year-old CEO who recently amassed a $4.5 billion company.
“I can’t say that we met completely by chance,” Evans wrote on Instagram.
At first glance, Evans appears to be the opposite of the COO who filed a lawsuit against her employer.
As CEO of the Two Rivers-based health care startup NanoString Therapeutics from August 2014 to May 2015, Evans earned more than $6 million, including stock grants, according to SEC filings. Before that, he was CEO of Brooklyn’s Gotham Project until 2013.
NanoString Therapeutics was one of the first biotechnology companies to go public as a private company in 2016.
Moran addresses investors about controversy around two payments involving him and Two Rivers Therapeutics
But the drug company’s payment history has been a point of contention in recent weeks — at least on Twitter. In January, a doctor found leaked documents on the forum Reddit that revealed two payments companies made to Evans to access a large pool of client data.
“He admits to doing the back-channel equity-to-dilution deal that was mostly shady,” Whitman said, “but if he did a lot of shady things, why has this been hidden from investors for so long?”
Rosenthal, author of “Perfect Timing: Recalibrating for Life After Success, Activating the Power of Self-Interest,” suspects Evans’ company never informed investors the clients were a private cancer research center and a women’s health organization — neither of which are listed in its SEC filings.
NanoString Therapeutics did not respond to requests for comment.
The company’s first stock offering was $17 million in February 2016, which many investors say was already well below the business’s worth. The company brought in $55 million total in 2016, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Despite the value of the first offering plummeting during the market crash last October, the stock has skyrocketed since then.
A shareholder called on the SEC to investigate its employee-management compensation and “directorship chairs” practices last week.
Earlier this month, the co-founder of a portfolio company of NanoString Therapeutics sent his own letter to the SEC to voice concerns about the deals his company signed with the two companies.
“I find it highly suspicious that our company should have paid over $2 million to a firm with little or no established business and no technical expertise in acquiring confidential clinical information and data from private companies,” Andy Blau wrote.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has received a slew of similar complaints against NanoString Therapeutics, according to filings. In February, an employee’s attorneys said on its website they received a subpoena from the SEC seeking information about “certain agreements and agreements between NanoString Therapeutics and two entities,” according to FINRA’s records.
The company has not filed to go public, but it’s currently valued at more than $1 billion.