Captivating. Combines Silicon Valley allure with criminal fraud vibes. There’s nothing like an intelligent, young, greedy con-artist to rope you in.
Pairs With: Misshapen rejected chocolate, usually sold in sad packing at your local chocolate factory. May have been distributed to the consumer if it wasn’t for an eagle-eyed whistleblower that noticed something didn’t look right and blew its fraudulent cover.
Overview:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is a story about deception, greed, and the drive to succeed at all costs. This book takes you behind the scenes of the rise and fall of Theranos.
John Carreyrou lays out what great lengths Elizabeth Holmes and her (business and romantic) partner Sunny Balwani took to deceive investors, employees, and the public.
About Holmes
Holmes grew up in Houston Texas and attended a private school where she had the opportunity to learn programming and Mandarin. As child Holmes was studious and she is quoted saying as a kid her best friends were books.
Eventually, Holmes became fixated on becoming the next Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, she dropped out of Stanford, began wearing black turtle necks, and even lowered her voice. (YouTube it! It’s something…) Unlike Jobs, her technology didn’t work as she had promised…
About Theranos
At 19 years old Holmes create a company called Theranos – which got its name from ‘Therapy’ and ‘Diagnosis’ combined. Theranos’ goal was to improve the blood testing process. They wanted to make blood testing quicker, easier, and more accessible.
Theranos claimed to have the technology that it could test someone’s blood for cancer and various diseases with only a single drop of blood. They promised to be the future of blood testing by removing the need for tubes of blood and only requiring a small finger pinprick.
Holmes bet individuals would be open to testing their blood frequently if it was cheaper, more accessible, and required less blood. She claimed that by testing your blood often, you were more likely to catch diseases early on and be able to pursue preventive care.
Luckily for Holmes, she was able to sell her vision to investors before anyone caught on that Theranos’s technology was faulty. Holmes raised enough funds to value Theranos at $9 billion. As a 50% owner of Theranos, this made her worth $4.5B and the youngest self-made billionaire.
Conclusion
‘Fake it til you make it’ was Theranos’ motto. Unfortunately, for them, they never made it, and ‘faking it’ defrauded investors from millions of dollars.
Someday I hope she shares her side of the story, kind of like an OJ If I did It type of vibe. Until then – reading this side is extremely fascinating.
Have you read this one or followed the story? What did you think??
(P.S. HBO created a documentary on this same story however, I found it slow compared to the book. The documentary overviews the same story and captures the big points but does not go into as much detail as the book. Also, it was hella long at 2 hours!)
