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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Written by John Carreyrou
Narrated by Will Damron
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Start ListeningEditor's Note
Riveting journalism…
So, you watched HBO’s “The Inventor” and now you can’t get enough of Elizabeth Holmes. Get the inside story in detail of the meteoric rise and scandalous fall of Theranos from the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story.
Description
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.
A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.
Book Actions
Start ListeningBook Information
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Written by John Carreyrou
Narrated by Will Damron
Editor's Note
Riveting journalism…
So, you watched HBO’s “The Inventor” and now you can’t get enough of Elizabeth Holmes. Get the inside story in detail of the meteoric rise and scandalous fall of Theranos from the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story.
Description
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.
A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.
About the author
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Reviews
Essential reading and probably the best "corporate thriller" since Barbarians At The Gate. Carreyrou peels away all the layers of the Theranos scam - the bullying of staff, the callous disregard for patients, the non-existent technology breakthroughs, the litigious secrecy, and the old rich fools, easily flattered and parted with their money, to reveal an empress with no clothes. Theranos was little more than a Mechanical Turk for our times; to anyone who looked closely, the promises Theranos made really couldn't be true. But few people did look closely - they were too busy being distracted by Elizabeth Holmes the ingenue tech start up genius, a much need photogenic female Bill Gates for our times, with her obsessive drive, Steve Jobs polo necks, and her massive, ostentatious security detail. The fact that it just had to be too good to be true, didn't convince many that it was. The key question remains - and its one Carreyrou doesn't really address - was this a scam from the start, or was it just a case of smoke and mirrors that went too far? I tend to think the latter. Or perhaps Holmes, in her desperate desire to emulate her tech start up heroes, truly believed that any tech problem could be solved, with enough hard work and doggedness. You just had to want it enough. You just had to keep overselling the dream until there was genuine product to sell.Holmes and her partner (in both senses of the world) Balwani, certainly wanted it. It was, as one of the people interviewed in the book calls it, a Folie A Deux. There was never product, there was never realistic prospect of product. But as the great and the good queued up to lionise her and hand over fistfuls of easy VC dollars Holmes could be forgiven for thinking she was somehow touched with genius and that it would all work out in the end. Thanks to Carreyrou and some very brave whistleblowers, it didn't . But its a great story
Rating: 5Best for:Anyone who enjoys a true story about shady people who (for the most part) get what’s coming to them.In a nutshell:An experienced Elizabeth Holmes convinces a lot of people that she is on to the next big thing in biotechnology. She isn’t, and she gets VERY touchy when people point that out. Also, lots of powerful old white guys make some absurd financial decisions.Worth quoting:N/AWhy I chose it:I listened to the podcast “The Drop Out,” which is just a few episodes long, but was definitely enough to get me interested.Review:Oh MY god did I love this book. I purchased the audio version and planned to listen to it during some long runs I have coming up. Instead, I could barely put it down, and listened to it every chance I got. It is a meticulously researched book, and Carreyrou explains complicated things (like how blood tests work) in ways that are not condescending or difficult to understand. The story develops slowly but never drags, as Carreyrou lays out the entire fiasco step by step.What it comes down to is the Elisabeth Holmes was — is — a fraud. I think she started out with an idea (blood testing without the needles), and then became like a dog with a bone. She couldn’t and wouldn’t accept anyone disagreeing with her, because she was going to change the world. I don’t believe she was motivated by greed or money; I think she was fully motivated by her ego. She couldn’t dare admit that she was in over her head, or that her company Theranos wasn’t able to do what she promised; she just kept lying to others (and possibly herself) in the hopes that everything would work itself out.The story is at times unbelievable. The number of attorneys involved. The cloak and dagger way the company treated its ‘trade secrets.’ The threatening letters. The lawsuits. The firings of anyone who questions anything. To think that people act this way — and think it is justified — is distressing to say the least. And frankly, I reserve about as much disgust for the attorneys who did Elisabeth Holmes’s bidding as I do for Holmes and her C-suite colleagues. The way the tormented people is offensive.One area I think could have been developed a little bit more is the exploration of what the failures of the blood testing did to people’s lives. Carreyrou does share some stories of those who were harmed — such as a woman who ended up with $3,000 in unnecessary medical bills — but that can at times get lost in the story. And of course many of the whistle-blowers were motivated by the danger that faulty blood testing can cause, but it still wasn’t necessarily woven in as much as I would have liked. But that’s a very minor quibble, because it’s definitely discussed.A little more than halfway through the book, the author become part of the story. It’s a slightly dramatic moment, but I think it is handled very well. The investigation of the Wall Street Journal article that predates the book is a huge reason why Theranos has been sued and why some of its leadership have been charged with crimes. It would be impossible for him to stay out of it, and the book would have suffered greatly without his perspective being shared in this way.There were many moment when I got so angry at the things people were getting away with, but the last couple of chapters — I mean, there are some serious just deserts being served. It’s chef’s kiss come to life.Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it: Keep it. And probably listen again soon.
Rating: 5A dense read--investigative journalism, after all--but absolutely fascinating. If you're thinking that CEO's of multinational corporations are smarter than the rest of us, this book is a reality check. The interesting thing is that in every organization that Elizabeth Holmes defrauded (including the United States Army), there was one person who smelled a rat. And couldn't get anybody to listen.
Rating: 4This story is fascinating. Yes, how was she able to rationalize lying and endangering so many -- investors, Walgreens, and especially the general public? It was good this book went into her family of origin. Holmes' father expected her to do something that would change the world. Did Elizabeth feel pressure to be some sort of genius influencer? She had this idea that couldn't work. She was told that it couldn't work by experts. Did some experts give her false hope? Did she intend to run this fraud forever, or did she have some hope that it would eventually work?All this money, once again WASTED on a single 'vaporware' company, when it could have gone to support at least 1000 start-ups that actually have viable new technologies and products! What's wrong with American innovation in the 21st century? Apple didn't need this kind of money when it first started? Real innovations don't require this kind of money. These are just modern versions of Ponzi schemes - that's all they are. How stupid are these investors? Please stop all this nonsense and start investing in many more real companies and products (such as alternative energy technologies).WHY? Probably because in these situations, someone is making millions off the pie-in-the-sky company whether it materializes into a reputable lab or not. That's the point. Money. Today people can still make a lot of money 10x quicker with vaporware as opposed to sticking in for the long haul. Talk to the people making a killing and ask them ;)American Medicine is either profitable to shareholders, investors and founders or it is scrapped. When a new drug or technology appears, Wall Street is watching. This has NOTHING to do with patient's health or quality of life. This is the way of Big Pharma. Simple biology: A drop of blood may or may not contain all substances and pathogens within the blood-provider's body. That is the why of the blood draw - it takes that much blood to assure a complete picture of what is actually present in that sticky red stuff we run on. Some tests need more than the usual 5 - 7 cc's of blood to be accurate. Some need as much as 100 cc's to provide the image of blood chemistry. We can determine sugar levels (diabetes testing) from a drop of blood because that drop isn't tested for sugar; it's tested for a specific acid that sugar creates in the blood by making the drop into an electrolyte for a simple one-use battery (the test strip). Nobody likes to see their life-juice sucked into a vacutainer, but if accurate results are needed, that's how it has to be done. That blood, by the way, isn't just tested for one thing; a single sample can be used for as many as four tests as well as finding bacterial presence and microscopic examination of who's properly at home in the blood and who shouldn't be there.Investors get hung-up on eye wash "due-diligence" process or their special "signals" which have nothing to do with the effectively reducing measurable risk, mutual relationship or being honest about expectations, rights and responsibilities on all sides of the proverbial table.... there are some risks you simply can't mitigate or foresee (popularity), only reduce risks by limited, representative trials and experimenting. Basically, it's non-business value hazing to see if founders are willing to overcome hoops.On the other side of the fence, investing well is difficult because it's a hard-to-scale, lifestyle business model... keeping founders honest, motivated, team together and help just enough without stepping on too many toes... there is never enough people bandwidth with sound business judgement, experience and motivation to monitor every dollar spent. Investing in startups is basically throwing money most of the time until WhatsApp M&A's to recoup the IRR for the fund. Even worse is going IPO (which rarely happens any more) or crowdfunding, because not only does that signal inability to raise capital from moderately rich people (which may hurt valuation), it adds tons of complexity and requirements to satisfy even less savvy investors.Walgreen, what were you thinking of just signed contract without doing any due-diligence to have the product live?? We have to think twice from now on at these pharmaceutical stores with what they offers to the public. They acted against the advice of their own consultant that they hired to do due diligence on Theranos, greed gets even the big companies who couldn't resist.Finally, valuation is very malleable ... it's however much a buyer can be convinced to pay for it. Games like transactions and changes merely to polish balance and income statements are rife to optimize for M&A activities.We forget the last batch of scams in about ten years. It used to take twenty years to generate a new generation of suckers. Yes, a sucker is born every minute, but it takes a while for the suckers to earn enough money to be scammed for more than 10 cents. This highlights knowing science before investing. If a black turtle neck fools investors, they deserve it. Land of the free, home of the brave. Sell a few grams of cocaine and you get 20 years. Do a 9 billion dollar scam and walk away free?Many mysteries. How did this 19-year-old con-artist extraordinaire fool people like Kissinger, Shultz, the K brothers, etc.? And Federal inspectors? Even Walk Street? For more than a decade? More than 1 million fake blood tests voided at the last minute? Truly incredible! One can only deduce from Theranos, Enron, Madoff, Lehman Brothers, and TRUMP that Americans just love snake-oil salespersons, and tricky lawyers. A simple test by an assistant professor in a university lab would have exposed this scam.Kudos aplenty to this down-to-earth journalist!Bottom line: She should go to jail! Fraud is fraud - business must be discourage from bilking investors and taking risks at the cost of investors and the public! Remember nothing she had worked! She wanted to be Steve Jobs but ended up being Madoff. A pathological liar and quite cold blooded schemer who quite easily tricked powerful but already semi-senile old farts like George Schultz and Henry Kissinger. And all those Fortune magazines and Washington Posts who took their opinion at face value and spread the fake news. Most part is just comical: when the launch deadline was approaching and they didn't have a remotely working product Theranos engineers bought 6 refrigerator-sized mammoth blood analyzers at 100 grand each and tried to rig them to adapt to Theranos finger-stick samples. And even THAT didn't work. She never had the technology or even the path to get there! Nearly $1 billion with nothing to ever show, ended up with nothing to show! I’ve never been a Steve Jobs fan, but it’s interesting that her idol had a masterful, intuitive sense of what was possible from both a software and hardware standpoint. Despite initial objections from his engineers, he knew that single-button devices, touch screens, keyboards on the screen, swiping, etc., were all possible. He knew what could be done, and just how far he could push his people to accomplish it, because he himself had enough experience and sense to know what was in the art of the possible. Holmes, on the other hand, was an amateur who didn't cut her teeth designing devices. She tried to follow in the steps of Jobs by putting up a reality-distortion field, and thinking she could will things to come true. She simply lacked Jobs' innate sense of what could be done from a technical and engineering standpoint. If only she had been able to link up with a medical engineer who was a genius like Steve Wozniak...Fraud 100% all the way.NB: That Balvani character should be criminally indicted as well.
Rating: 5When I was working in product development for a technology company in the 1980's and 1990's, we had a term for new products that sounded great, but weren't ready for the public to use as vaporware, and this is what Elizabeth Holmes was selling with her company, Theranos and its so-called blood testing technology.John Carreyrou paints a story of fraud and deceit perpetrated by a beautiful and intelligent psychopath who had the ability to mesmerize a whole cast of older, wealthy men who she got to both invest millions into her company and to sit on the Theranos board and enable her to carry on her deception far beyond the point where it should have failed.The first half of this book needs a good edit. Like a lot of investigative reporters, Carreyrou seems to have a problem with editing out extraneous information from his story. As a result, the reader is inundated with too many characters and too much detail. However, once the story starts focusing on the story being printed in the Wall Street Journal, and the over-the-top reaction of Holmes and her company, he book reads like a thriller and it keeps you turning the pages to the very end.
Rating: 4I will admit, I wasn't initially jazzed about this book, but once I started reading I couldn't put it down! It was weirder than fiction. How could someone build an empire on lies that was harmful to those seeking medical health?!? Elizabeth Holmes started Theranos, a company that promised that one drop of blood could be tested for up to 800 different things in one small device. The problem is that that device didn't exist, it just wasn't possible, but she kept promising her investors that is was and thought she could fake it until she made it. They had prototypes, but they were YEARS away from even being able to make good on half the promises that Holmes alleged her machine could do. The blood tests they ran on their prototypes were riddled with errors and working for this company was causing employees some PTSD and major ethical qualms. Turnover was high and people were fired left and right for questioning anything. In short it was a nightmare, but no-one outside those walls knew anything was wrong; they were charmed by Elizabeth Holmes and her vision. She charmed so many investors that soon she was worth over 5 billion dollars. Things started to unravel though as disgruntled former employees and disillusioned investors started opening up and the Wall Street Journal launched a major investigative piece into their company and practices. What they discovered was worse then they could have imagined. A roller coaster of crime and ambition. A must read!
Rating: 5This is outstanding investigative journalism into the 2003-2018 biotech start-up, Theranos, whose wunderkind founder, Elizabeth Holmes, claimed that hundreds of laboratory-medicine diagnostics could be performed quickly and inexpensively via small home-based or pharmacy-based analyzers, using drops of blood from a fingerstick instead of vials of blood drawn from a vein. Um, no! The Wall Street Journal's Carreyrou presents a riveting business case study that’s as good as any suspense novel -- fascinating, shocking and discouraging, especially regarding how many influential people and companies invested, partnered, or served on the board of directors without due diligence and despite whistleblowers.
Rating: 5This was a fascinating story. There are clear villains, and heroes, and geniuses and hucksters playing on the best and worst in people all set in the land of instant billionaires and world changing technology. Sadly for me, I didn't think the story was particularly well told, there were weird digressions, the same notes were hit over and over, and we learned nothing about Elizabeth Holmes herself, there is no insight at all about what motivated her to do anything. Further, there is very little to explain how she seduced investors like George Schultz, Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch to invest and companies like Safeway and Walgreen's to let her do her thing unchecked. (Note: knowing Betsy DeVos lost money in this almost made me cheer for Holmes.) That is, for me, the most interesting part of true crime. Understanding what motivated everyone to do what they did. I want to do a whole lot more reading about this. It is by understanding that we have some hope of preventing things from happening again. This book gave us a story at which to gawk, but no additional understanding of how and why these things occurred and can be prevented in the future
Rating: 3Extremely compelling but flawed expose of failed start-up Theranos. Halfway through Carreyrou abruptly transitions to first person, which is jarring. Granted, Carreyrou's reporting is itself part of the Theranos story, but the shift in focus from Theranos activities, and especially from the various employees whom to their credit quit or became whistleblowers out of conscience, to Carreyrou's investigation, is distracting and, ultimately, unsatisfying. Carreyrou's epilogue raises more questions than it answers (for instance, what's it like to be a former Theranos employee trying to find a job in Silicon Valley?). Worth reading despite its flaws.
Rating: 4Very interesting and powerful expose on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. The lies and secrets that she told and kept and the bullying that was done to honest employees is beyond compare. As of May 2019 the trial has not started yet, and she is blaming the government for being too hard on the company. This is what sociopaths do, they blame others and then play the victim card to the hilt. Having her serve a long time in jail along with her paramour, Balwani, her partner in crime would be a positive step towards support ethical behavior in business.
Rating: 4Elizabeth Holmes was a silicon valley phenomenon, a young woman who was hailed by many as the new Steve Jobs, a role she was extremely eager to fill. And she had an incredible-sounding product to do it with: a machine that could supposedly run an impressive array of blood tests quickly and conveniently in a patient's local drug store or even their own home, all with only a small drop of blood from the finger. It was a great idea, but there was just one problem: it never worked the way it was supposed to. But that didn't stop Holmes' company, Theranos, from bringing these devices to market and using them on real people with real medical problems.I'd vaguely heard of the Theranos debacle, but didn't really know the details of it. Well, now I do, thanks to John Carreyrou, the reporter who initially brought Theranos' misdeeds to light. (He himself appears as a character in this non-fiction account of Holmes' rise and fall, about three-quarters of the way through the story.) And it's one hell of a cautionary tale about the worse excesses of capitalism, the cult of personality, and the pernicious idea that all one needs to succeed is to sufficiently believe in oneself and the infallibility of one's efforts, no matter what reality might have to say in the matter. Carreyrou's writing is always very measured, calm, and factual, but the story he's laying out for us is just utterly infuriating. Which may, I suppose, be a good reason to read it.
Rating: 4I heard about this book from someone on Facebook after sharing that I had watched the HBO documentary "The Inventor," about Theranos. It's hard to know what to say about the book, the documentary, the company, and the woman behind it. I wish people like Elizabeth Holmes weren't able to perpetrate such a fraud upon people. Are we really that gullible? She has no college degree, no technology experience, she lies as easily as she breathes, and her "invention" of a machine that makes blood testing faster and easier, with a tiny amount of blood, simply never existed. I don't really feel sorry for the investors who lost money--they kept buying her lies and enabling her. But I do feel sorry for anyone who believed inaccurate blood tests. Her case has not come to trial yet, but she is still proclaiming her innocence. Carreyrou's articles in the Wall Street Journal helped to bring the truth about Theranos and Elizabeth to light. But the real heroes are the former staff members, and the defrauded doctors and patients who spoke to Carreyrou despite threats, surveillance, and lawsuits.
Rating: 5This book was definitely eye opening. It is amazing how so many intelligent people and large companies and the military were taken in by Elizabeth Holmes. It is disturbing how the company bullied its employees thereby letting the company's lies continue for so many years. The courage of the people who finally stepped forward is to be applauded. It caused them a lot of anguish and cost them a lot of money in legal fees. But at least these people can stand on their morals and ethics.The one thing I would love to know or see is statements from people like Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, etc. on there thoughts after everything fell down. Did George Schultz ever apologize to his grandson and have they mended fences? My list goes on and on.
Rating: 4I had read so many good reviews about this book that I went out and bought it. The book was a great investment unlike the Theranos stock. I loved the book. It was well researched and Carreyrou did an excellent job in telling the story of an ill fated start up. I can see why this book will be made into a movie.
What struck me about this book was that so many people were fooled. Supposedly smart people who were investors, analysts, reporters, CEO's of Safeway and Walgreens, Theranos board members (Kissinger, George Schultz etc.) Why weren't investors and business partners concerned about the incredible turnover within Theranos? Where was the due diligence by Safeway, Walgreens, the US Army before doing business with Theranos?
It looks like all the hype about Elizabeth Holmes clouded the judgment of many investors, employees and partners. How evil was Theranos to threaten their employees constantly even when they resigned.
Theranos was fake news. The author showed various instances that their product did not work and their ads and pronouncements were full of lies.
Rating: 5What struck me about this book was that so many people were fooled. Supposedly smart people who were investors, analysts, reporters, CEO's of Safeway and Walgreens, Theranos board members (Kissinger, George Schultz etc.) Why weren't investors and business partners concerned about the incredible turnover within Theranos? Where was the due diligence by Safeway, Walgreens, the US Army before doing business with Theranos?
It looks like all the hype about Elizabeth Holmes clouded the judgment of many investors, employees and partners. How evil was Theranos to threaten their employees constantly even when they resigned.
Theranos was fake news. The author showed various instances that their product did not work and their ads and pronouncements were full of lies.
schadenfreude
Rating: 4"I want to be a billionaire . . . the President will marry me because I have a billion dollars" (p. 9) These words were reportedly spoken with utter seriousness by the young Elizabeth Holmes before she reached her teen years. By the time she was nineteen she had a patent and had founded a start up with the aim to revolutionize the blood testing industry. By 2004 she had begun to raise funding in the millions of dollars for her enterprise which she christened Theranos. Within less than a decade the company was worth Billions in valuation and by 2017 it no longer existed.John Carreyrou's book is the story of how the spectacular rise and rapid fall of Holmes' company occurred. The fundamental problem was they never made a product that worked the way it was described and sold to investors. In the process Holmes misled investors and retail partners such as Safeway and Walgreens, hiding the fact that her technology was flawed and had serious limitations that were masked by company representations.In the technology arena software companies often market "buggy" products that do not work perfectly, yet these are often improved through use and further testing leading to successful results. With medical technology this approach does not work because people's health and lives are at stake. At Theranos false test results seriously jeopardized the health of patients in many cases.The book reads like a detective story as the author seeks out whistle-blowers and patients who experienced the nightmare of false test results. One of the key informants was Kyle Shultz, the grandson of George Shultz, former Secretary of State, who was on the board of Theranos. Kyle joined Theranos right out of college, but soon found himself questioning the practices within the company. When he raised his concerns with Elizabeth Holmes her response was merely to tell him he was ignorant. After a discussion with his grandfather, who refused to believe him, he decided to resign from the company. This led to further difficulties with the lawyers for Theranos that included partners of the law firm of David Boies whose tactics were aggressive in an unseemly manner to put it politely. There were other people who gradually came forward through Carreyrou's determined investigation. All the while Holmes was gracing the cover of Fortune Magazine and wowing interviewers with her sales pitch. Her charisma held sway even as the product she was selling continued to fall short of the image she was creating.I found the book an electrifying read, although it did not explore the life of Elizabeth Holmes in enough depth for her to become anything more than a cipher. At best she had noble dreams of helping people with her blood testing device. But noble ideals do not warrant the lies and deception that endangered people who used the flawed equipment. The why behind her actions is not apparent from the story told by Carreyrou. That story, however, is fascinating and is well worth your time to read and think about what you might have done if you were part of the startup that was created out of Elizabeth Holmes noble lies.
Rating: 4Much of this book is the measured retelling of the employment horror stories as waves of recruits to Theranos were ground up in a corporate culture of bullying, and lies and spat out bound by non-disclosure agreements. Not pleasant. Once the founder Elizabeth Holmes is introduced as a driven young undergraduate, she is removed to the rolls of vicious upholder of her own myth and economic seducer of elderly male supporters. It must have been the combination of promising something that is so desirable, seeming to be a silicon valley first female, so attractively packaged, and tying the self interest of powerful men to her cause with charm and stock options. That the powerful men were in their 90s and out of their field of expertise is probably what allowed this nightmare to survive at least 4 or 5 times as long as it should have.
Rating: 3It's hard to say how differently I would have thought about this book before the major era of Trump began. Comparisons to Trump immediately popped into my brain in reading about Elizabeth Holmes. There are some differences, to be sure, but the similarities are striking, nonetheless. As I read further, my thoughts shifted to how much I have been exposed in my own life to the actions portrayed in this book. I served as a human resource manager for many years and was well versed on how various executives and managers try to manipulate, often degrade, and occasionally try to ruin their own employees. I also served several years in a medical research laboratory (in a different capacity), so the environment described and the activity reported was similarly very familiar to me, and, yes, there would have been an abundance of underlings who saw and would have noted shady activity. I even had another job where the two top bosses were a bizarre WASPish woman and her Indian male partner (though, in my case, it was the woman who screamed at you and not the man). There was really nothing "exposed" in this book's reporting that surprised me. And, so, toward the end of the book, my thoughts shifted more toward the overwhelming number of otherwise prominent and "successful" individuals who failed miserably at performing "due diligence" and bought into the scam big time. People often comment about Trump's belief in his own natural abilities to size things up, assess other individuals, and take the wisest actions to manipulate, if necessary, others to his will. Clearly, this book points to a vast number of prominent people who also have overestimated their ability to see reality and act appropriately. Are they equally narcissistic? Probably not. Just overconfident in their abilities. The author deserves high marks for his detailed investigations and perserverance in face of classically Roy Cohn-like legal aggression. I'm guessing this book would be much more compelling to someone without my work background, which is not to say I didn't find the writing and reporting very well done.
Rating: 4This story of how a bright, entrepreneurial, Stephen Jobs "want to be" perpetuated a failed process and made millions demonstrates clearly the power and value of our free press. The WSJ reporter who pursued an outstanding investigation while assailed by relentless, notable but with questionable moral and ethical values, attorneys deserves to be highly lauded.
Rating: 5Oh, this one was a good one. Did it live up to the hype? Absolutely it did. It's one crazy story after another, and the crazier part was reading this knowing now that Theranos became what it was while I was in high school and in my early college years - and I was none the wise, so oblivious to that world in Silicon Valley (and not caring a bit because, high school and college). If you like a good piece of investigative journalism that'll take you on a whirlwind ride, this one's for you.
Rating: 4It's a very well written book. As Bill Gates said in his review, it's like a thriller. It was hard to put the book down.
Yet Elizabeth Holmes, and all the investors, and people who empower her, are banal to me. I work as a contractor in Turkey. I've worked in startups and corporate environments. It's too familiar. Power- grabbers, wishful thinkers, people who don't really understand and pretend to be understanding... There are too many similar stories around us, they are just at different scales.
Having said that, I congratulate John Carreyrou for his journalism. It's people like him who make us hopeful for the future.
Rating: 4Yet Elizabeth Holmes, and all the investors, and people who empower her, are banal to me. I work as a contractor in Turkey. I've worked in startups and corporate environments. It's too familiar. Power- grabbers, wishful thinkers, people who don't really understand and pretend to be understanding... There are too many similar stories around us, they are just at different scales.
Having said that, I congratulate John Carreyrou for his journalism. It's people like him who make us hopeful for the future.
A very interesting and horrifying book about how the culture of exaggeration and ego met with the medical world ... how bluster and connections can promote and build false confidence... and put lives in danger. A quick and infuriating read in this time of lies and manipulation. I cannot believe these people were allowed to get as deep as they did AND that the company still exists. The (valid) desire to revolutionize medicine, *but* in a Silicon Valley culture created the definition of Deplorables.
Rating: 4I recall first reading the authors WSJ article and being amazed that the Theranos had abandoned basic science so completely. I am tempted to believe of their money had been spent on science and research they might have come close to realizing a good part of their dream. It is hard to see what trade secrets they thought they were guarding. The village of her non scientific backers is disheartening. And these are the people claiming to run the country.
Rating: 5This book was a page turner for me. It is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and how she used deceit, sleight of hand, nondisclosure agreements, and litigation to commit fraud, and medical abuse through her fantastical blood testing system.The fact that she conned men like George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, General Mattis, Rupert Murdoch and many more into giving her money and serving on her board is jaw dropping. The most unsettling thing about the story is not that it was the rule of law that brought her down, it was good investigative journalism that brought her to the attention of the regulatory system and the legal system. I came across this book because of an interview of John Carreyrou on Preet Bharara's blog: Stay Tuned with Preet. Am so glad I did!
Rating: 5Elizabeth Holmes is a vampire, in Carreyrou's telling a black and white monster. It's so rewarding to read about her comeuppance. I wish it explored more her psychology, the power she had over old men, feminism. I wish it delved more broadly into psychopath CEOs because this is not a 1-off case. Nevertheless the system seemed to work - journalism exposed the lies, regulators intervened and courts shut it down. This is why attacks on those institutions by politicians (Trump) are so disturbing, people like Holmes would take over given the chance. The story of Holmes is not over, she is talented and may not go down so easily. Giving three point five stars because it was rushed to print before the "rest of the story" and lacking broader context - which is understandable given the upcoming court cases to get the full story out to the public. A movie is in the works. A straight factual account well told, so far.
Rating: 4A great book on the rise and fall of Theranos. I read the original WSJ article a few years ago but loved all the additional detail in the book. The author does a good job of providing the science needed to understand the company at the level for non-scientists. There is also a wide range of individuals and levels interviewed in this book which provided a unique perspective. Definitely recommend this book to people who have read Barbarians at the Gate, Too Big to Fail, The Smartest Guys in the Room, etc.
Rating: 5It is a very detailed timeline of the events that happened at Theranos. A great example of salesmanship without any actual leadership. It was surprising to see how far Holmes got through political charm and intimidation.
Rating: 5This was exactly like reading an exciting novel---a case of life being stranger than fiction---and frankly, horrifying that one young woman could wreak such havoc on so many people's lives with her ability to market herself. Carreyrou is an excellent writer---the story is full of details and the time line is fascinating. It's frightening to see how many supposedly "intelligent" people she was able to manipulate.
Rating: 5It took me a bit to get into this, but it's exhaustively researched and SO fascinating!
Rating: 5History of Theranos from the WSJ reporter who broke much of the story of its lying and cheating. Its founder worshiped Steve Jobs and claimed to have invented a new technology that would make home blood tests simple and painless, but couldn’t deliver and kept doubling down on the fantasy. She even convinced Walgreens and Safeway that she could help them destroy their competition. Carreyrou doesn’t spend much time on what made the decisionmakers tick, whether that’s Elizabeth Holmes (who he at the end calls a sociopath, without elaboration) or the people who kept funding her, though he does better with the people in the middle—the ones who tolerated the scam for as long as they could in the hopes of improvement or because they were scared of having their lives destroyed.
Rating: 4