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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup Hardcover – May 21 2018

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword.

“Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. 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 $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.

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Publication date

May 21 2018
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16.18 x 3.33 x 24.21 cm
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152473165X
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978-1524731656
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Hyping your product to get funding while concealing your true progress and hoping that reality will eventually catch up to the hype continues to be tolerated in the tech industry.
Highlighted by 6,016 Kindle readers
Like her idol Steve Jobs, she emitted a reality distortion field that forced people to momentarily suspend disbelief.
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“When you strike at the king, you must kill him.” Todd Surdey and Michael Esquivel had struck at the king, or rather the queen. But she’d survived.
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Well, there was a reason it always seemed to work, Shaunak said. The image on the computer screen showing the blood flowing through the cartridge and settling into the little wells was real. But you never knew whether you were going to get a result or not. So they’d recorded a result from one of the times it worked. It was that recorded result that was displayed at the end of each demo.
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"Bad Blood is the real be-all end-all of Theranos information…. Bad Blood is wild, and more happens on one page than in many other entire books." —Margaret Lyons, The New York Times

"You will not want to put this riveting, masterfully reported book down. No matter how bad you think the Theranos story was, you'll learn that the reality was actually far worse."
—Bethany McLean, bestselling coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here

"Chilling... Carreyrou tells [this story] virtually to perfection… Reads like a West Coast version of All the President's Men."
—Roger Lowenstein, The New York Times Book Review

"The definitive account of Theranos’s downfall, detailing its motley crew of executives, legal knife fights, dramatic PR stunts, and skullduggery... Offers a lot for foreign-policy wonks... While Bad Blood is worth reading for its own merits—it’s a stunning feat of journalism that reads like a thriller—it also says a lot about Washington’s facile relationship with Silicon Valley. Most D.C. power brokers know next to nothing about science or technology but increasingly view Silicon Valley tech as a deus ex machina for some of the world’s most complicated challenges. Bad Blood offers a sobering warning of where that type of thinking can lead."
—Robbie Gramer, Foreign Policy

"A great and at times almost unbelievable story of scandalous fraud, surveillance, and legal intimidation at the highest levels of American corporate power. . . . The story of Theranos may be the biggest case of corporate fraud since Enron. But it’s also the story of how a lot of powerful men were fooled by a remarkably brazen liar."
—Yashar Ali, New York Magazine

"Even if you didn’t follow the story of charismatic Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (and the ensuing trainwreck) in the news, you will find yourself zipping through a book that proves once again that fact is stranger than fiction. A stunning look into a high-tech hoodwinking; like a high-speed car chase in a book."
—The New York Post's "28 Most Unforgettable Books of 2018"

"In Bad Blood, acclaimed investigative journalist John Carreyrou, who broke the story in 2015, presents comprehensive evidence of the fraud perpetrated by Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes... He unveils many dark secrets of Theranos that have not previously been laid bare… The combination of these brave whistle-blowers, and a tenacious journalist who interviewed 150 people (including 60 former employees) makes for a veritable page-turner."
—Eric Topol, Nature

"Engrossing… Bad Blood boasts movie-scene detail… Theranos, Carreyrou writes, was a revolving door, as Holmes and Balwani fired anyone who voiced even tentative doubts… What’s frightening is how easy it is to imagine a different outcome, one in which the company’s blood-testing devices continued to proliferate. That the story played out as it did is a testament to the many individuals who spoke up, at great personal risk."
—Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science

"In exposing the fudged numbers, boardroom battles and sickening sums of money tossed Theranos’ way, Bad Blood succeeds in highlighting Silicon Valley’s paradoxical blind spot. Insular corporate culture and benevolent media coverage have allowed a monster to grow in the Valley—one that gambles not just with our smart phones or our democracy, but with people’s lives. Bad Blood reveals a crucial truth: outside observers must act as the eyes, the ears and, most importantly, the voice of Silicon Valley’s blind spot."
—B. David Zarley, Paste Magazine's "16 Best Nonfiction Books of 2018"

"Carreyrou blends lucid descriptions of Theranos’s technology and its failures with a vivid portrait of its toxic culture and its supporters’ delusional boosterism. The result is a bracing cautionary tale about visionary entrepreneurship gone very wrong."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred)

"Crime thriller authors have nothing on Carreyrou's exquisite sense of suspenseful pacing and multifaceted character development in this riveting, read-in-one-sitting tour de force.... Carreyrou's commitment to unraveling Holmes' crimes was literally of life-saving value."
—Booklist (Starred Review)

"Eye-opening... A vivid, cinematic portrayal of serpentine Silicon Valley corruption... A deep investigative report on the sensationalistic downfall of multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley biotech startup Theranos. Basing his findings on hundreds of interviews with people inside and outside the company, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Carreyrou rigorously examines the seamy details behind the demise of Theranos and its creator, Elizabeth Holmes… [Carreyrou] brilliantly captures the interpersonal melodrama, hidden agendas, gross misrepresentations, nepotism, and a host of delusions and lies that further fractured the company’s reputation and halted its rise."
—Kirkus

About the Author

JOHN CARREYROU is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. For his extensive coverage of Theranos, Carreyrou was awarded the George Polk Award for Financial Reporting, the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in the category of beat reporting, and the Barlett & Steele Silver Award for Investigative Business Journalism. Carreyrou lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

November 17, 2006

Tim Kemp had good news for his team.

The former IBM executive was in charge of bioinformatics at Theranos, a startup with a cutting-edge blood-testing system. The company had just completed its first big live demonstration for a pharmaceutical company. Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos’s twenty-two-year-old founder, had flown to Switzerland and shown off the system’s capabilities to executives at Novartis, the European drug giant.

“Elizabeth called me this morning,” Kemp wrote in an email to his fifteen-person team. “She expressed her thanks and said that, ‘it was perfect!’ She specifically asked me to thank you and let you all know her appreciation. She additionally mentioned that Novartis was so impressed that they have asked for a proposal and have expressed interest in a financial arrangement for a project. We did what we came to do!”

This was a pivotal moment for Theranos. The three-year-old startup had progressed from an ambitious idea Holmes had dreamed up in her Stanford dorm room to an actual product a huge multinational corporation was interested in using.

Word of the demo’s success made its way upstairs to the second floor, where senior executives’ offices were located.

One of those executives was Henry Mosley, Theranos’s chief financial officer. Mosley had joined Theranos eight months earlier, in March 2006. A rumpled dresser with piercing green eyes and a laid-back personality, he was a veteran of Silicon Valley’s technology scene. After growing up in the Washington, D.C. area and getting his MBA at the University of Utah, he’d come out to California in the late 1970s and never left. His first job was at chipmaker Intel, one of the Valley’s pioneers. He’d later gone on to run the finance departments of four different tech companies, taking two of them public. Theranos was far from his first rodeo.

What had drawn Mosley to Theranos was the talent and experience gathered around Elizabeth. She might be young, but she was surrounded by an all-star cast. The chairman of her board was Donald L. Lucas, the venture capitalist who had groomed billionaire software entrepreneur Larry Ellison and helped him take Oracle Corporation public in the mid-1980s. Lucas and Ellison had both put some of their own money into Theranos.

Another board member with a sterling reputation was Channing Robertson, the associate dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering. Robertson was one of the stars of the Stanford faculty. His expert testimony about the addictive properties of cigarettes had forced the tobacco industry to enter into a landmark $6.5 billion settlement with the state of Minnesota in the late 1990s. Based on the few interactions Mosley had had with him, it was clear Robertson thought the world of Elizabeth.

Theranos also had a strong management team. Kemp had spent thirty years at IBM. Diane Parks, Theranos’s chief commercial officer, had twenty-five years of experience at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. John Howard, the senior vice president for products, had overseen Panasonic’s chip-making subsidiary. It wasn’t often that you found executives of that caliber at a small startup.

It wasn’t just the board and the executive team that had sold Mosley on Theranos, though. The market it was going after was huge. Pharmaceutical companies spent tens of billions of dollars on clinical trials to test new drugs each year. If Theranos could make itself indispensable to them and capture a fraction of that spending, it could make a killing.

Elizabeth had asked him to put together some financial projections she could show investors. The first set of numbers he’d come up with hadn’t been to her liking, so he’d revised them upward. He was a little uncomfortable with the revised numbers, but he figured they were in the realm of the plausible if the company executed perfectly. Besides, the venture capitalists startups courted for funding knew that startup founders overstated these forecasts. It was part of the game. VCs even had a term for it: the hockey-stick forecast. It showed revenue stagnating for a few years and then magically shooting up in a straight line.

The one thing Mosley wasn’t sure he completely understood was how the Theranos technology worked. When prospective investors came by, he took them to see Shaunak Roy, Theranos’s cofounder. Shaunak had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He and Elizabeth had worked together in Robertson’s research lab at Stanford.

Shaunak would prick his finger and milk a few drops of blood from it. Then he would transfer the blood to a white plastic cartridge the size of a credit card. The cartridge would slot into a rectangular box the size of a toaster. The box was called a reader. It extracted a data signal from the cartridge and beamed it wirelessly to a server that analyzed the data and beamed back a result. That was the gist of it.

When Shaunak demonstrated the system to investors, he pointed them to a computer screen that showed the blood flowing through the cartridge inside the reader. Mosley didn’t really grasp the physics or chemistries at play. But that wasn’t his role. He was the finance guy. As long as the system showed a result, he was happy. And it always did.

***

Elizabeth was back from Switzerland a few days later. She sauntered around with a smile on her face, more evidence that the trip had gone well, Mosley figured. Not that that was unusual. Elizabeth was often upbeat. She had an entrepreneur’s boundless optimism. She liked to use the term “extra-ordinary,” with “extra” written in italics and a hyphen for emphasis, to describe the Theranos mission in her emails to staff. It was a bit over the top, but she seemed sincere and Mosley knew that evangelizing was what successful startup founders did in Silicon Valley. You didn’t change the world by being cynical.

What was odd, though, was that the handful of colleagues who’d accompanied Elizabeth on the trip didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. Some of them looked outright downcast.

Did someone’s puppy get run over? Mosley wondered half jokingly. He wandered downstairs, where most of the company’s sixty employees sat in clusters of cubicles, and looked for Shaunak. Surely Shaunak would know if there was any problem he hadn’t been told about.

At first, Shaunak professed not to know anything. But Mosley sensed he was holding back and kept pressing him. Shaunak gradually let down his guard and allowed that the Theranos 1.0, as Elizabeth had christened the blood-testing system, didn’t always work. It was kind of a crapshoot, actually, he said. Sometimes you could coax a result from it and sometimes you couldn’t.

This was news to Mosley. He thought the system was reliable. Didn’t it always seem to work when investors came to view it?

Well, there was a reason it always seemed to work, Shaunak said. The image on the computer screen showing the blood flowing through the cartridge and settling into the little wells was real. But you never knew whether you were going to get a result or not. So they’d recorded a result from one of the times it worked. It was that recorded result that was displayed at the end of each demo.

Mosley was stunned. He thought the results were extracted in real time from the blood inside the cartridge. That was certainly what the investors he brought by were led to believe. What Shaunak had just described sounded like a sham. It was OK to be optimistic and aspirational when you pitched investors, but there was a line not to cross. And this, in Mosley’s view, crossed it.

So, what exactly had happened with Novartis? Mosley couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone, but he now suspected some similar sleight of hand. And he was right. One of the two readers Elizabeth took to Switzerland had malfunctioned when they got there. The employees she brought with her had stayed up all night trying to get it to work. To mask the problem during the demo the next morning, Tim Kemp’s team in California had beamed over a fake result.

***

Mosley had a weekly meeting with Elizabeth scheduled for that afternoon. When he entered her office, he was immediately reminded of her charisma. She had the presence of someone much older than she was. The way she trained her big blue eyes on you without blinking made you feel like the center of the world. It was almost hypnotic. Her voice added to the mesmerizing effect: she spoke in an unusually deep baritone.

Mosley decided to let the meeting run its natural course before bringing up his concerns. Theranos had just closed its third round of funding. By any measure, it was a resounding success: the company had raised another $32 million from investors, on top of the $15 million raised in its first two funding rounds. The most impressive number was its new valuation: one hundred and sixty-five million dollars. There weren’t many three-year-old startups that could say they were worth that much.

One big reason for the rich valuation was the agreements Theranos told investors it had reached with pharmaceutical partners. A slide deck listed six deals with five companies that would generate revenues of $120 million to $300 million over the next eighteen months. It listed another fifteen deals under negotiation. If those came to fruition, revenues could eventually reach $1.5 billion, according to the PowerPoint presentation.

The pharmaceutical companies were going to use Theranos’s blood-testing system to monitor patients’ response to new drugs. The cartridges and readers would be placed in patients’ homes during clinical trials. Patients would prick their fingers several times a day and the readers would beam their blood-test results to the trial’s sponsor. If the results indicated a bad reaction to the drug, the drug’s maker would be able to lower the dosage immediately rather than wait until the end of the trial. This would reduce pharmaceutical companies’ research costs by as much as 30 percent. Or so the slide deck said.

Mosley’s unease with all these claims had grown since that morning’s discovery. For one thing, in his eight months at Theranos, he’d never laid eyes on the pharmaceutical contracts. Every time he inquired about them, he was told they were “under legal review.” More important, he’d agreed to those ambitious revenue forecasts because he thought the Theranos system worked reliably.

If Elizabeth shared any of these misgivings, she showed no signs of it. She was the picture of a relaxed and happy leader. The new valuation, in particular, was a source of great pride. New directors might join the board to reflect the growing roster of investors, she told him.

Mosley saw an opening to broach the trip to Switzerland and the office rumors that something had gone wrong. When he did, Elizabeth admitted that there had been a problem, but she shrugged it off. It would easily be fixed, she said.

Mosley was dubious given what he now knew. He brought up what Shaunak had told him about the investor demos. They should stop doing them if they weren’t completely real, he said. “We’ve been fooling investors. We can’t keep doing that.”

Elizabeth’s expression suddenly changed. Her cheerful demeanor of just moments ago vanished and gave way to a mask of hostility. It was like a switch had been flipped. She leveled a cold stare at her chief financial officer.

“Henry, you’re not a team player,” she said in an icy tone. “I think you should leave right now.”

There was no mistaking what had just happened. Elizabeth wasn’t merely asking him to get out of her office. She was telling him to leave the company—immediately. Mosley had just been fired.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf (May 21 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 152473165X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1524731656
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 100 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.18 x 3.33 x 24.21 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #178,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Biomedical Engineering
- #49 in Biotechnology (Books)
- #52 in Biotechnology in Bioengineering

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John Carreyrou

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John Carreyrou is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and a nonfiction author. His first book, "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," chronicles Silicon Valley's biggest fraud. Please direct any speaking queries to speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com

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P. Gordon

Best read of the year

Reviewed in Canada on September 20, 2021

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As a medical laboratory scientist VERY familiar with this lab diagnostic industry, I was SHOCKED beyond words at how Ms Holmes was able to convince so many for so long that she had invented a unicorn in lab medicine.

I've been in the biz for 45 years and usually use venous drawn blood samples. However we have used fingerprick blood collection (or heels on premis and newborns) to get blood samples to perform basic heamtology and chemistry tests. 'No way Jose', given the different anticoagulants needed for various tests could all these tests be performed on one drop (5 ml) of blood...period...full stop.

Ms Holmes was one heck of a salesperson though and using a similar ptich as Bernie Madoff did with 'get on board now with all THESE bright rich people ' she perpetuated the FOMO mindset that so many fall victim to....and they did...to the very last one. Mad Dog Mattis, Henry Kissinger, Larry Ellison to name just a few.

Do I feel sorry for the rich and famous who lost upwards of $100 million each? No.
Do I feel sorry for the harm done to patients, doctors ? You bet...'First do no harm' is the very basis of the Hypocratic oath.

I even feel bad for the CEOs of Walgreens and Safeway who, in an effort to be at the leading edge, got duped big time.

The author, a respected Wall Street Journalist, dumbed down the lab medicine verbage part so that I believe even a reader completely unfamiliar with the actual science, could easily follow the bread crumb story line in the story.

We've all had blood tests drawn and have a basic understanding of the process. Go to doctor, get a requistion, get blood drawn which goes to the 'lab' and results are transmitted to your doctor with high and low values that are concerning being flagged as out of normal range. In Canada, we have universal health care so don't 'pay' for 99.9% of these tests. In the US however, the cost can be exorbitant whether covered with extended insurance or private pay.

THAT was the motivation behind Ms Holme's 'invention' ---to save money, make access to tests easy and without needing a doctor's requisition AND so patients could access their results.

When the story narrative changes to the first person in the last quarter of the book , it becomes even more interesting. Thank goodness for whistle blowers Erika Cheung and Tyler Schultz who came forward to support the Missouri pahtologist blogger with his concerns which caught the eye of the author John Carryerou.

I hope a movie can be made of this fascinating story to reach an even wider audience and everyone can watch and learn that 'if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is'. Mothers' wise words ring true once again.

5 people found this helpful

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Seinstein

A fascinating account of the Therenos fraud

Reviewed in Canada on August 29, 2023

Verified Purchase

A fast paced and gripping story of how Elizabeth Holmes was able to perpetuate one of the most brazen frauds in Silicon Valley history

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Teragram Scavok

The cult of Elizabeth Holmes

Reviewed in Canada on February 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

From her unblinking blue eyes to her black turtlenecks and fake basso voice, Elizabeth Holmes set out to dazzle Silicon Valley with a revolutionary product that in essence did not exist. For years she protected the secret in a cult-like environment where employees were sworn to secrecy or thrown out. One former employee committed suicide. What is creepiest about this creepy story of massive $9 billion fraud is the way the media embraced her and splashed her all over the covers of Forbes and similar publications. It was as if she was just what the public was looking for: a blonde, blue-eyed, female Steve Jobs clone who was going to "save the world" (her words) with a blood-testing system which was a complete sham and potentially endangered human lives. She had mastered the dubious art of talking on and on while saying nothing, and "answering" questions with meaningless bafflegab while everyone ate it up and applauded wildly. The recent YouTube videos of her being questioned in court are a stark contrast to the slickly-groomed blonde creature the media adored. Her hair is brown and straggly, she stares straight ahead of herself and her eyes look like holes as she murmurs "I can't recall" over and over again. Her billions gone, she may not be able to afford the kind of legal clout to get her out of the hole she dug for herself and countless others. Justice may yet be served. Meantime, this book analyzes her astonishing rise and inevitable fall with the meticulous precision that used to characterize journalism before internet slop took over. What I like the most is the absence of "invented" dialogue that characterizes most non-fiction books now: well, here is what they MIGHT have said (or should have said, or would have said - phooey!). His only quotes are taken directly from interviews. And there are none of those truly evil inventions: composites, in which two or three or four human beings are glommed together to prove the writer's predetermined thesis. One of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. Get it.

14 people found this helpful

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Dr. Terrence McGarty

A Good Idea Does Not a Business Make

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2018

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Bad Blood, by Carreyrou, is an exemplary tale of a business going bad. It is in line with two other classics, The Deal of the Century by Coll and Barbarians at the Gate by Burrough and Helyar. The former depicts the beginnings of the collapse of AT&T and the second the complex takeover of Nabisco. Both of these tales result in a massive restructuring of businesses, for better or worse. In this case, it describes probably the worst behavior seen in a startup ever and the destruction of whatever business was conceived.

This is a tale of people who seem to have been brought into a techno-cult, many smart young people who got proselytized by an even younger individual who managed to present herself as super competent but who was fundamentally was intellectually and morally flawed. This book does not depict a tragedy, except perhaps for the young employees who wasted years of their lives and frankly may be forever scarred. It is a book about the ability for a perverse individual and a co-conspirator to convince a significant number of allegedly competent people to dismiss their fundamental judgments regarding reality. There was an induced suspension of belief on the part of many otherwise highly competent people and the acceptance of this almost cult like persona.

I approached this book having done about 35 start-up and turn-arounds, as the principal or investor. Many did well, many were stalled mid-stream, and none went bankrupt. In the process I often saw that my initial premise was altered and thus the business model changed. However in almost all there was a need for a plan and a reporting on the plan to a Board who had a modicum of confidence. In some cases I had Directors call first thing Monday to see what the cash flow of the prior week was and compare it to plan. Reality was always at the fore. Plan and actuals, and interaction with hands on boards.

I have seen deals where one had to pull the plug when reality and expectations were dissonant. In one case an entrepreneur in an investment could not reproduce the core result and worse yet even if they could they had no way to manufacture it. That is not a way to run a business.

I also approach this book as one who has spent time in and around the health care field. Unlike the more common areas of start-ups, health care, including biotech, must live in a highly regulated environment. Human lives are in the balance. Thus one sees the high costs of clinical trials and the failure of many reasonable therapeutic efforts. The FDA and similar entities control with an iron hand the ways and wherefores of these entities. This control system never came to play here until way too late.

Now this can be a tale of many entities: (i) the principals themselves, (ii) the employees, (iii) the investors, (iv) the Directors, (v) the customers, or (vi) the consumers or patients. The author focuses upon the first two giving some limited understanding of the other participants. In particular this is a book presenting the work and hardships of many of the employees over time. It would be interesting at some time to examine the many other dimensions, but this presentation is a well presented self-contained effort.

Now, fundamentally, any investor, and especially a Director, must have an understanding of their Fiduciary Duty to the other shareholders and must execute themselves in any efforts of the company to adhere to that duty. That means effecting a process of due diligence. Due diligence is demanded in any investment and it fundamentally entails: (i) that the product or service can be real and deliverable, (ii) that management has the competence to do so, (iii) that the price point is highly competitive and that the margins are appropriate, and finally (iv) that the people one is dealing with are ethical, honest and competent. It appears that in the case of Theranos, as the author recounts, that many never did any Due Diligence. What is truly amazing is that the venture investors involved would never allow themselves to invest in any other deal without doing their due diligence. Furthermore, the “big name” Directors represented in the book most likely had no idea what due diligence entails. In my experience of the 100 companies I would look at, 2-3 would ultimately pass the test, 80-90 would be dismissed out of hand and the remaining would never pass Due Diligence. It appears that if one accepts the author’s tale, and why not, then there never was any due diligence. “Trust me” is not the basis for major investments, by investors, Directors or joint venture partners.

The author describes in full detail the creation and buildup of the company and how it managed to go through hundreds of millions of dollars and at the same time achieve nothing. The battles between the top managers and the staff, the high rates of turnover and the outright prevarication of the principals are presented. What is most astonishing is the tale of how the principals dealt with an attempted sale to the DOD. One military officer managed, presented as a highly qualified and competent one, dared to ask a key question of the principal and that principal in turn manages to go to a four star general, now a prominent person in Washington. The General then believing this principal proceeds to call-out his own person. Marines should not, must not, do that; it demonstrates, in my opinion, lack of judgement, and lays the ground for questioning any subsequent judgement of such a person. But the author shows that this example was not in any way unique, if anything it was a pervasive behavior on the principal’s part.

Overall this book is a tale of one individual after another interacting with the principals and how they were manipulated and then thrown aside.

What this book does not do is more important. This is not a criticism since answering these issues may fall into the criminal and civil litigation forthcoming. But specifically:

1. Why did none of the accredited investors perform due diligence? Or were there some who tried and then walked away? The book alludes to many of the investors but they seemed to like sheep, just following the herd. This were all competent people. It would be important to understand why they did investments, often of significant amounts, and not due the due diligence and furthermore not demand Board rights.

2. Why did the Directors allow themselves to sit by and have management do what they did? Directors have a fiduciary duty and it appears that none of them were either aware of what their duty was and/or did they have the competence to even ask the questions. The Directors were all prominent people in the fields, but unfortunately none appeared to be experienced in this area. The book does not in any way address the Directors in any detail. That would be an important analysis.

3. One of the most significant “red flags” in any business is the loss of a CFO. When the first CFO left abruptly, the Board should have individually met and questioned him as to why he left. One can understand that the CFO was bound not to speak to others but he can and must speak to the Board. The question is; why not? Perhaps the Board was not qualified to even ask the questions.

4. The fact the young principal owned a tremendous controlling interest and as such could block anything she desired from happening should have raised red flags as well. One must ask; why not? This seems to be a case of true distortion of reality. The question is; why?

5. The biggest unanswered question seems to be; where did all the money go? They seemed to have Safeway and Walgreens pay their own way, the attorneys clearly cost a small fortune, but if the company had a running number of employees of say 100, and the fully loaded costs per employee were say $200,000, then the annual burn rate for the company less CAPEX was $20 million, Even at large CAPEX and attorney fees, one must ask where the money went?

The author tells the tale via the many employees and their interactions with the two principals. But the other dimensions, namely the investors, Directors, business partners, must be folded into the mix. Again it is perhaps too early to get this tale told properly, but if one is to gain anything from this fiasco, then one must understand those dimensions as well. If only someone had been able to do due diligence. Its lack was the classic red flag!

67 people found this helpful

Clem

Excellent Read

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2021

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Bad Blood is an excellent example of how to write a true story and make it sound as exciting as a thrilling page-turning novel. Few true accounts have the bite that author Carreyrou has with this narrative. If you’ve read enough true accounts of companies, organizations, or people who go bad, you know how easy it is for the author to get tied up with so many “facts” and minutia, that the finished product can significantly lose its edge. I’m reminded of a book titled “The Smartest Guys in the Room” about the Enron scandal. Although that book was a best-seller, there were times when I felt as I was reading an expanded version of the company’s 10k report. It simply wasn’t very interesting a lot of the time. Fortunately, this isn’t the case with Bad Blood.

This is the story of the failed start-up company known as Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes was young, brilliant, attractive, and incredibly ambitious. She dropped out of college at the young age of nineteen, not because she couldn’t handle it nor didn’t like it, but because she was too impatient. She was ready to take over the world and didn’t want to waste time waiting to get a college degree. The company she founded, Theranos, had a very attractive idea that would revolutionize healthcare. The premise? When patients needed extensive blood work, they would no longer need to subject themselves to long needles that would drain a substantial amount of blood to fill up multiple test tubes to perform tests. Holmes set out to create a device that would simply prick a patient’s finger, take a miniscule amount of blood, hook it up to a relatively small box, and within a short amount of time, this little box could perform the extensive tests and give the patient their results in a fraction of the amount of time.

Well, to sum it up, the idea may have been revolutionary, but it simply couldn’t work. Holmes was so persuasive, though, that she convinced many of the wealthy that it could, and managed to raise millions and millions of dollars to try to make her dream a reality. When you end up spending the millions and millions of dollars on your idea that never comes to fruition, what do you do? Author Carreyrou argues that Holmes hemmed, hawed, lied, deceived and stole to masquerade this unpleasant fact. I got the impression that she wasn’t really that bad of a person (initially anyway), yet got so sucked in by her ambition and greed, that she simply couldn’t accept failure as being an option. This kind of behavior, sadly, isn’t that uncommon. We read stories all the time of successful entrepreneurs who plow ahead after continuous failures. Those who make the headlines are the rare few that actually succeeded against insurmountable obstacles. What we don’t read about are the failures; which probably outweigh the successes by a ratio about 100 to 1. Who wants to read about failures? Unless, of course, you have a story as compelling as this one.

The author is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and is actually a part of the story. He pens a piece for his paper that exposes much of the fraud, yet we don’t read about his first-hand recollections until probably 2/3 of the way through the story. Each chapter that he writes is captivating in that he focuses on so many of the key players. Not only do we read about Holmes and her lover/business partner Sunny Balwani, but we read about disgruntled employees, employees who are terminated, employees who are threatened by high pressure lawyers, doctors, patients, lab technicians, investors, and acquaintances. All of them are crucial when reading about this train wreck.

For me, the highlights are what goes on within the walls of the company. Holmes and Balwani run the startup as authoritarian dictators, and you get the impression that working for this company would be a nightmare. I couldn’t understand why so many of the employees stayed as long as they did. Example: Not only were the different departments not allowed to speak to one and other, but when outside people were brought in for meetings, they weren’t even allowed to use the restroom without being “escorted” to do their business. They didn’t trust outsiders roaming the hallways. Another example: We read about an engineer who worked for the company who designs a lighting system for his bicycle on his free time. When Holmes finds out about this, she’s exasperated. Why? Because her employees should not have any “free time”. She expects them to spend every waking minute of their lives at the office trying to make her impossible dream a reality. This book, I think, could also serve as a case study for companies in teaching management how NOT to treat their employees.

When employees quit, they’re threatened by Holmes and Balwani not to say ANYTHING about the company. They then spy on ex-employees, and if the individual makes a passing comment, say, to a friend over dinner, the ex-employee next finds a team of threatening lawyers at their front doorstep with a 25 page lawsuit. In fact, the author himself was threatened many times by these intimidating malcontents. Fortunately, he’s been in the business long enough to know about these scare tactics, and isn’t in the least bit afraid to write about what he knows.

So another story about a high-profile company that failed, and all of the dirty deeds done to cover it up. What makes this story a bit scary is that the author alleges that such unethical activities happen all of the time when startups are trying to blunder their way to the top. What makes this company unique, however, is that it’s dealing with the health of people. So it’s ok if you design a piece of software “full of bugs” and somehow deceive the public, but it’s a definite no-no when your errors can cause a faltered result on a patient’s blood test. I say “scary” because it really does cause one to be wary of any kind of “new” technology being implemented. Who are we to trust?

As I write this review Homes and Balwani have yet to go to trial. Of course, Holmes maintains her innocence. I don’t see how anyone could believe her based on what this story uncovers. It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome. A really sad story. Sure, it’s great to be young, ambitious, and chase big dreams, but when those dreams don’t come true, one needs to admit failure and not try to consistently cover it up. So many people still can’t seem to find the courage to admit that they just might be wrong about some things.

32 people found this helpful

Valerie

What A Charming Psychopath

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2023

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This book is a cautionary tale for all humanity. Elizabeth Holmes is a stereotypical psychopath. They fool so many people. People get sucked into their lies like moths to flames. Once the lies are part of your belief system, it becomes hard to change your mind, even in the face of obvious inconsistencies with the truth. All psychopaths lie. Like Hitler, psychopaths damage so many peoples lives. We all need to learn how to recognize them and avoid them. This book is a detailed view of how a psychopath moves through the world leaving destruction in their path.

Kai Lee

A leader without integrity will ultimately fail

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2021

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This book presents a fascinating account of a real-life story that is still unfolding. It involves a cast of characters so unique and events so beyond the norm that it is not an exaggeration to say that they are probably beyond the imagination of even the best fiction writers.

The story is about the rise and fall of the company Theranos, founded in 2003 by the 19 years old Stanford Dropout Elizabeth Holmes. The company’s objective, which it later falsely claimed to have achieved, was to revolutionize blood tests by only requiring very small amounts of blood taken by finger stick; and the tests could be performed and the results obtained very rapidly using small automated devices developed by the company. Holmes was CEO and she ran the company with her boyfriend Sunny Balwani, who had the title President. Although not learning much about science, engineering or medicine during her two years at Stanford, her charm, ambition, and deceit were able to raise hundreds of millions from venture capitalists and private investors. She was also able to persuade experienced executives of established businesses to partner with her company, including the CEO of Safeway and the Board of Directors of Walgreens. She convinced famous political and military names to serve on Theranos’ Board of Directors, including former Secretaries of State George Schulz and Henry Kissinger, Four Star General James Mattis, former Senator Sam Nunn, to name but a few. Although dropping out in her second year, her former Stanford Chemical Engineering Professor Channing Robertson stated in an article about Theranos and its CEO: “You start to realize you are looking in the eyes of another Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.” When Fortune Magazine’s legal correspondent Roger Parloff talked to Shultz and Mattis about Elizabeth, Shultz said: “Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation. I mean she really is trying to make the world better, and this is her way of doing it.” Mattis went out of his way to praise her integrity: “She has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics – personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated,” Kissinger told New Yorker journalist Ken Auletta that Holmes had an "ethereal quality." "She is like a member of a monastic order,"

It is perhaps fortunate for America that the Soviet Union/Russia did not have a charming person of similar caliber when the above three gentlemen were serving their country in their respective high positions in the U.S. Government.

While Elizabeth was perhaps the ultimate person of authority in the company, Sunny was mostly in charge of running its everyday operation. Their leadership style included: demanding complete loyalty, complete secrecy, intimidation, and deceit. According to the book, earning projections were not based on realistic estimates, inaccurate blood test results were not made known, machines designed in-house failed to work most of the time. Folks who raised doubts about the company’s operation were fired. Employees who could not live with the thought that patients may be harmed chose to resign.

For more than a decade, the company was riding high. By 2015, Forbes had named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9-billion valuation of her company. The downfall began in October 2015, when the author of this book published a "bombshell article", detailing how the company’s Edison device gave inaccurate results, and revealing that the company had been using commercially available machines made by other manufacturers for most of its testing. Sanctions and other adverse actions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services soon followed, as well as a lawsuit filed by Arizona for violation of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. In 2016, Walgreens and Capital BlueCross announced a suspension of Theranos blood tests from the Newark lab. On June 15, 2018, Holmes and Balwani were indicted on multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Due to Covid-19, the trial of Elizabeth was delayed for a year. It began on August 31, 2021. Looks like the trial for Sunny would not take place until 2022. The ending of this saga is nowhere in sight.

On September 4, 2018, Theranos announced in an email to investors that it would cease operations and release its assets and remaining cash to creditors after all efforts to find a buyer came to nothing. Most of the company's remaining employees had been laid off on the previous Friday, August 31.

Perhaps all of this could have been avoided if Elizabeth had taken a course on Leadership before she dropped out of Stanford. The first thing one learns in Leadership 101 is: A leader without integrity will ultimately fail.

8 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Great Read

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2023

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After watching Drop Out on Hulu, I found everything I could online and YouTube to dive even deeper into this tragedy of a CEO and company. Then I decided to read Bad Blood to fill in every gap there was from the media and mini series. The book doesn’t disappoint. Now I’m going to listen to Carreyrou’s podcast.

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An Amazon Top Ten Book of the Month Pick

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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