“Elizabeth was borrowing behaviours and management techniques described in Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Apple Founder Steve Jobs” - I love that book. “She slept four hours a night and popped chocolate-coated coffee beans through the day to inject herself with caffeine” - I love that idea but it’s written like it’s evil! There was definitely a bias against her at the start, which makes sense as it was written from the perspective of a reporter who broke the story and was harassed to change it. Of course, bad results could have lead to a number of huge health issues for people, but she was coming at it originally from a good place.Īs a startup founder too, I felt the pressures she was under and the desire to do a bit of ‘fake it till you make it’ - easier with software like ours, where a bug means a document doesn’t show correctly, but still it feels like it could have worked, and she was trying to do all she could to succeed. Honestly, I felt it was overly harsh on Elizabeth. The switching story to the first-person perspective was really interesting and made you even more invested in the characters who felt more real. I particularly enjoyed the family friend who literally helped the CIA take down someone who had wronged him! The small stories of the different players was a great way to understand their motivations before they came into the story. Then it becomes almost a legal thriller, as Theranos tries to shut him down. About 2/3s of the way through it becomes a first-person perspective, as you realise that the writer of the book was the writer that first uncovered the story (and published it in the Wallstreet Journal). The story follows the bio of Elizabeth, the story of the founding, and a number of other stories that interweave in and out of the whole picture. Oh, and the founder Elizabeth Holmes was heralded as the next Steve Jobs. The results were so bad, that people could have died from them.

In short, a startup called Theranos whose goal was to run cheap blood tests from a drop of blood… was basically faking it.ĭoesn’t sound that interesting? Well at one point Theranos was valued at more than Uber, had US generals and secretaries of state on its board and was in Walgreens. If you’ve not watched the documentary, read the articles or the many YouTube summary videos online.

Title - Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

John carreyrou theranos book