Billy Evans, who is Elizabeth Holmes's partner, the subject of the forthcoming documentary You Can See Everything, has had an unconventional love story with her fiancé Billy Evans. The couple first connected as federal authorities were investigating Holmes for fraud and conspiracy connected to her failed blood testing startup Theranos.
A new documentary is offering an unprecedented look into the life of Elizabeth Holmes, the tech CEO turned convicted felon.
At the center of a massive multi-year fraud.
Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced today to 11 and a quarter years in prison, four counts of criminal fraud.
The disgraced tycoon and her fiancé Billy Evans.
Please welcome Billy Evans.
Welcome.
Have a seat. Have you ever done a live interview like this?
Dude, I've never done an interview.
You've never done an interview.
Thank you guys all for being the guinea pigs here. I appreciate it and apologies.
You're Elizabeth Holmes's husband?
That's typically not how I love to be introduced. Um, yeah, my name's Billy Evans and yes, Elizabeth Holmes is my wife and best friend and partner.
You and I met at a party.
Um, about a year and a half ago, I think.
Yeah, around F1, I think in Austin.
Yeah, that's right. Um, and we started talking and that kind of got us chatting about Elizabeth and the case and the history.
Yeah, I think I came up to you and I said, David, my name's Billy Evans. Uh, you guys talk about my wife a lot on your podcast. And you've got a lot of the story pretty fundamentally wrong. So, if you're ever interested in learning some more details, I'm happy to read you in.
I'd had a couple drinks. I'm like, 'Sure.'
I'll hear, I'll hear the story.
And one thing led to another, we talked on the phone, and I ended up getting on a plane to Texas. And I went and visited Elizabeth in prison. I spent the day with her and you,
and her parents, and the kids, going quite deep into the whole thing, and there was a lot more to the story than what I think had been portrayed. And I was aware of the documentary. I had heard in Hollywood that this documentary was happening. And I had heard that it...
But it was a pretty well-kept secret.
Yeah, well, I don't doubt it. Look at the crowd.
Yeah. And well, so the secret got out.
I want to get to that. We're not going to litigate the case today, the Theranos case. That's Elizabeth's story to tell when the time is right. And she was under a gag order until last April.
So from the time that the DOJ began their investigation, Elizabeth was under a gag order through the trial and through the appeals process, which ended last April, I believe.
Yeah, so one thing for people to know about her, which might shock you, is that Elizabeth follows rules maniacally, like to a T. So when the judge said that we are going to litigate this in the courtroom and not in the media, she held true to that.
But she never spoke to the media.
No, for the entirety of the process. She remained silent.
A lot of articles being written.
Yeah, and movies being made and podcasts.
Um, so, you know, there's a lot to the story which we're not going to talk about today, the trial and the case. But I'm curious to hear a little bit about the experience. Okay, so maybe we can go back. How did you and Elizabeth first meet?
Yeah. Um, Elizabeth and I met at a Fleet Week party in San Francisco on the roof of some venture capitalist. He was trying to hire me and date her. Um, I was going to be there for like maybe 5 minutes. I had 100 people coming over to a house I lived in with four other guys and we were going to throw a big Fleet Week party.
And he called me when I went out to go grab ice and he said, 'Billy, you know, are you coming by our event today?' I said, 'Of course.' I'd totally forgotten. So, I drove over to his place, I parked my car in the red, I went up the elevator, and a few minutes later, he introduced me to Elizabeth. And that killed my whole afternoon. I mean, the next, I don't know, two and a half, three hours, her and I just spoke and we started a conversation that really has never ended. Um, and I don't know if I can say I fell in love with her in that moment, but she was just incredible. Her ability to listen and really care about everything that you're saying. She made you feel so seen. She was infinitely curious about the smallest things that nobody else really cared about or was too cool to pretend like it mattered. Um, as the planes flew overhead, she was just amazed by them with this like childlike wonder. And when I first met her, I didn't know she was Elizabeth Holmes. She was just Elizabeth. She was wearing a big floppy hat and dark sunglasses and had a band-aid on her face because her puppy husky had just scratched her. And somewhere through the middle of the conversation, it turned to where we worked, like physically. And I told her that I worked on Page Mill Road. She said, 'Oh, no way, where?' I said, 'The 1891.' And she said, you know, 'I'm 1790' or something. She was two doors down and then that's when I really put it together.
And what year was this and what was the state of the Theranos story at that point?
Yeah, so this was October 7th of 2017 that we first met. Um, it was peak like bad.
So, this was after the DOJ the case...
It was before she was indicted.
Before she was indicted. Yeah. It was the Carreyrou article machine had started.
A hundred of them. Those were already out there.
They had been out there. So, she had this reputation...
Fraudster, all this sort of stuff.
And so, you're saying that when you first met her, it was her, who she is, that you kind of engaged with, not the story of Elizabeth Holmes, and then you found out it was her.
Yeah, I mean, it's like the, you know, 30 people that I've spoken to while I've been here, where I know nothing about their story. I'm just seeing the person in front of me.
So, then when you found out who she really was,
did you not just shut down and say, 'What am I doing talking to her?'
It was pretty hard to grok. I mean, it was like a hard thing to come to terms with, because you get to know this person separate and apart from how you're supposed to feel about them. And then, you invariably go back to this idea of like, this is who I've been told this person is. And those two things were so radically different from one another. Yeah, it was really challenging.
We didn't like just start dating, you know, like I met her, and then there was, um, you know, I was looking at renting her building. Because we were right next door, and our business was kind of doing this, and hers was doing this at that time. So, we were looking at renting the Theranos HQ, and that was kind of the context under which she gave me her business card, and, you know, she crossed out her cell phone number on it, and wrote personal cell. Like, 'Huh, maybe this just isn't business.' And that's how we originally...
Did you guys start hanging out?
Yeah, so when I first met her, she told me that she had this husky. And I told her I had a dog. I didn't really have a dog. Uh, it was my roommate's dog, but he was like mine. And the first times that we hung out, we'd just go on walks. And I was really curious about the circumstance, like probably many of you are, but it was...
That put me off at the time. You're curious to understand what's going on.
I think I was most curious to understand the difference between the person that I experienced and the person that I was told existed. And they were so different. Um, I was really curious, and I was interested in her, and she made me feel good, because she listened so intently.
But basically, we were friends for 6 months. We'd go on walks, um, with her dog and my like rent-a-dog that was my roommate's.
And then there was a romantic turn.
Yeah, and it moved super quickly. Like, it went from us being friends... I was traveling a lot at the time. So, I was working for a company that built LiDAR and we were selling to car companies around the world. So, that year I spent maybe 12 trips to Germany and...
Uh, I was just solving the most important problems the CEO didn't want to solve. Kind of like a startup type of special projects. Um, so, everything from kind of sales to big automotive manufacturers to hiring executive team members to raising capital at times. Just really anything that needed to get done. You know, a startup. There's a lot of problems that need to be solved and I was just really willing to say yes.
So, you guys kind of this becomes more serious, becomes emotional, and she's going through this court case. Right, the indictment started?
Yeah, I think like 3 weeks after we started dating, she got indicted. I mean, it's like one hell of an experience to fall in love with somebody so quickly and then immediately come to terms with like... I didn't even know what an indictment was, okay? Like, I was really unfamiliar with the entirety of this whole...
Was she going through a period of crisis in her life during this kind of courtship period?
She is like cool as a cucumber.
So, while this was happening, all the articles are coming out before the indictment, she was just... she didn't feel super phased or...
No, I mean, there's certainly things to be freaked out about, but you have to put yourself in her mindset, which, you know, I don't want to speak for her, but I can share with you kind of the perspective that I saw, which is this is somebody that fundamentally believes in their innocence. Um, and was being told at the time prior to the indictment like you're never going to get indicted. Uh, you did nothing wrong. The company did nothing wrong. And I know that's hard for you guys to like comprehend and believe, but yes, this is what was kind of going on behind the scenes. Um, so, I think at each of these chapters in which, you know, like shitty thing after shitty thing happened, we're kind of perpetually surprised.
It wasn't supposed to go this way.
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way of describing it.
Um, and then she gets indicted.
That's the first night I met her parents. Like, it's a tough way to meet your in-laws. Um,
How was she? It was obviously so... she... it was mounting. There was a lot of articles and press about this, but...
Of infinite press. But, she wouldn't read it. You know, we like... I've seen, I don't know, maybe an episode and a half of The Dropout for reasons maybe some of you guys will understand in the future.
No, but I like, you know, I skimmed Bad Blood because like my lawyers told me to for other reasons. Um, but otherwise, I really didn't consume any media on the subject. Uh,
And then she gets indicted. And how was this for you guys in your relationship at this point? I mean, now...
I was three weeks into a relationship with somebody. But, we were so close already because we'd spent six months like really being friends. Um,
It was intense, man. I mean, I think part of it is if I knew what I know now, like how painful the process was, I probably would have responded differently at the time. But, I was in new territory. I mean, let's see, this was 2018. Um, I don't know, I was like 26 years old, 27 years old.
Yeah. And then the trial began.
Well, it took a while for the trial.
Right, because there was...
Right. So, we had like a long period of time in which there was this impending thing, and there was an enormous amount of time spent with lawyers and her working like late into the night to go through hundreds of thousands of records and try and piece together a story that she didn't fully understand that was being told about her. Um, so, it was a really intense time, but there's also some really beautiful moments in there, too. Like, you know, one thing that nobody knows, but I guess you guys are the first to know, is Elizabeth and I spent 8 months traveling the country in an off-road RV. We had our dog, Balto. He's a husky. And if you've never seen a husky like in the wild, it is a sight to be seen. Because that dog lived. And we just went to trailer parks and we went to national forest where you're allowed to stay and park your car for 14 days without moving it. And we would just hike all day and work at night, sit around the fire, and just be together.
Well, at that time I had already left the business and I was starting something else. So, I was kind of working for myself.
'Let's go be free, get away from all this.'
I think a part of it was just the enormous attention by the media when we were in San Francisco. I've got an entire collection on my phone of... Here's how the situation works. We'd go into a restaurant and within 30 seconds six people would pull out their phones. And some of them were sneaky and others were pretending like they were taking a photo of their friend, but it was obvious. It was so uncomfortable. We couldn't go anywhere without immediately being recognized, immediately being judged. We go to a restaurant for a friend's, you know, dinners celebrating their anniversary or their engagement and then we'd have articles written about how Elizabeth Holmes is gallivanting around San Francisco. And it's hard to know how to act when every action that you take and every decision that you make and every place that you go is being judged through the eyes of a thousand angry journalists.
There was this period of time when everyone talked about Elizabeth Holmes being manipulative,
in wearing the turtleneck and talking with a deep voice and having this kind of character that she played where the idea was if she's playing a character for everyone else around here, you know, clearly she's playing a character all the time and that might be the origin of the fraud, of the manipulation.
A lot of things that have been said about that and some of them, I think if you just look back like with as much clarity as you can muster, um, and try and disassociate Elizabeth Holmes from the situation as much as possible. If you just say it, like some of it's pretty crazy. You know, like that she would manipulate people with her big blue eyes and that her deep voice would immediately have people give her, you know, $100 million. It was like she was like a man. I mean, it's incredibly sexist. One. Um, but yeah, I mean, I read a lot of this stuff. No, you'd never say that about a man. No, Liz would have a meeting with somebody like, oh not insert name here, but think like one of the biggest family offices on Earth. It would be a 45-minute meeting. They'd commit $100 million by the end of the meeting. And any guy that did that, people'd say, 'Wow, what an incredible ability to tell a story. What an incredible ability to have deep conviction in the thing that you believe in that this person wants to support your mission and your vision.' And when it's Liz, it's, 'Wow, she fleeced that person in 45 minutes.'
Okay. Um, but then there's these stories about things that were misrepresented. The machine does this and then it doesn't do that. Again, I don't want to litigate the case. But was there any experience you had where Elizabeth stretched the truth, where she was kind of pushing the boundaries, where the imagination in her mind maybe became the reality?
That's a good question.
Where the imagination became the reality. Liz is somebody who like so deeply believes and until you've met somebody like her, it's really hard to understand what that's like. Um, but I think a lot of the things that are kind of most litigated in the press at least and most described, uh, this is not like the machinations of a single person. This was hundreds of employees working tirelessly for 16 years to solve a really difficult problem. So, you know, one of the things that I think has been largely described as fraudulent behavior was missing revenue numbers, right? She missed her revenue numbers. She should have known that that was going to come. And if you look at like where that comes from, just, you know, a brief bit of the case, they had contractual obligations with Walgreens to pay them that amount of money. And then when bad press came out, then they defaulted on those obligations and then the business didn't fulfill those revenue obligations. So, then they missed it by a large number, but it wasn't like a made-up number. This was a number that was obligated to be paid by a company that they had a contract with.
A number of Walgreens stores...
It's like 800 Walgreens stores. A million dollars a store.
They had done this contract to do that.
And Walgreens stopped doing that after the Carreyrou article came out.
You guys then start going through this process of preparing for the trial. Is that when you got pregnant?
Sorry. I mean, this is like I don't know the right term. Did she get, you know, like it's always like you guys got pregnant. I'm like I didn't really do...
I'm always about five words away from being canceled. So, I'm going to watch myself.
Yeah, I think my X profile says already canceled. Um, the question was what was like preparing?
Did Elizabeth get pregnant?
Well, our son was born on July 10th of 20...
It was supposed to start well before, but this was COVID. Like it was a really weird experience because we were all masked going into the courtroom. There's all these discussions about whether or not...
You settled down and had a kid,
knowing that there was this trial coming up. Was that ever a debate or a discussion about we've got potentially this case...
Not like a planned and decided thing, just to be clear, okay? You know, sometimes God gives you gifts that are unexpected.
Um, and I mean, it's been the greatest experience that I'll ever know.
We have two children, yeah. So, my son is now five.
So, how was it going through the trial with these little kids and...
It was so gnarly. Like, you know, anybody... so many people say, you know, the reason why she did this or they did this was to get sympathy. Tell you what, first of all, the jury had no idea that this was happening. Like, Elizabeth was militant about not letting people see her in like a place of weakness at this time. So, we would wake up at 4:30 every morning with a baby, Wills is his name. Um, and Liz would feed him and we'd change him and we'd get him ready and then we'd put him back down and then she would start getting ready. And Liz like isn't very good at doing her hair and I like bought a Dyson Airwrap and would help her with that after watching YouTube videos and we'd get all prepped and get into the car with our family. So, typically her mom and myself and sometimes my mom and just our closest friends to go to what felt like war. Um, it was really hard and she would pump milk all the way down with these like mobile pumps because our son was 3 months old when the trial started and he needed milk throughout the course of the day. And she bought, you know, a special diaper bag so it wouldn't look like a diaper bag so people wouldn't be able to say anything about it. And then during breaks in court, she would go to the bathroom and pump more milk and then I would collect it at lunch and I'd send it up in an Uber to the house and then my mom or Liz's mom who was at the house would then feed it to her son. But it was crushing to spend the first, you know, two months away from this thing that you love more than everything in the world without the ability to hold them all the time. It was a really tough time.
