When you say, "no record", it seems you haven't read (among other things) the New Yorker profile linked above.
Per that account, by the time Theranos raised its first $6 million in late 2004, Holmes had been working on it for over a year, had at least one patent in process, and had convinced her chemical engineering professor, a dean of the Stanford engineering school, to be an advisor and board member. (He's since joined Theranos full-time.)
So it's not, "kid with nothing but idea and moxie handed money" – but rather "star researcher impresses and recruits a bunch of domain-experts, which then attracts investments".
I have read that, and to me that is "no record". By record, I mean a demonstrated ability to actually turn an idea into a product.
When she got that first $6 million, and another $10 shortly after, she had no product, no experience, and it wasn't even clear if the technology to do what she proposed was feasible.
I've read her first patent, it's super broad and covers a huge number of possible implementations. There was no way for her to know at the time if any of it was really feasible. And none of it was feasible at the time--it just wasn't ready yet as evidenced by the fact that it took 10 years before anyone heard anything about it.
It took 11 more years of research to get to anything remotely commercially viable. She basically convinced people to pay her to do 11 years of pure R&D. Name me one other founder who has been able to do this with no academic credentials, and no record of success--much less a founder who was 20 at the time.
>"star researcher impresses and recruits a bunch of domain-experts, which then attracts investments"
She wasn't a star researcher at the time. She had almost no formal training, no publications, and a year of experience as an undergraduate.
Then, it's probably a good thing those scientists and investors back in 2004 trusted their own expert judgements about what a suitably promising "record" would be, after actually meeting her and reviewing her proprietary research.
Had they waited for the decade-later opinion of a layperson web-developer who's skimmed the first patent abstract, they might have missed out.
It's a good thing that another layperson web-developer is on hand to let them know that their investment, which still hasn't made a profit after 11 years, and has no credible evidence that it ever will, was a wise decision.
What the company does now has almost nothing to do with her original patent applications, so it looks like her original proprietary research didn't amount to much.
They paid a smart person millions of dollars to essentially build a research lab. And after 11 years of research, they now have a way to maybe do some blood tests with a finger prick instead of a blood draw. But there are still questions remaining about the accuracy of these very small sample sizes. Some of the doctors and lab techs opinions I've read, say that even if the technology is flawless small finger drawn samples are much more prone to contamination. The article mentioned on HN even mentions that their tests would be more sensitive to inaccuracies caused by poor operator technique.
How many PhDs out there could have done something similar with 11 years and $400 million.
Theranos reports being cash-flow positive, with customers in hospitals, drug companies, and the US military (in addition to their retail blood testing).
I'm not affiliated with Theranos, but I see that they are hiring for a large number of open positions, including some related to your areas of professional expertise: https://www.theranos.com/careers/software-development
Per that account, by the time Theranos raised its first $6 million in late 2004, Holmes had been working on it for over a year, had at least one patent in process, and had convinced her chemical engineering professor, a dean of the Stanford engineering school, to be an advisor and board member. (He's since joined Theranos full-time.)
So it's not, "kid with nothing but idea and moxie handed money" – but rather "star researcher impresses and recruits a bunch of domain-experts, which then attracts investments".