Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-up, John Carreyrou (4.0)
I was eager to read this book as it combines three things
of interest to me: science, business and the cult of personality. Mr. Carreyrou
is an investigative journalist who unveils the truth behind Theranos, a
start-up company building a blood-testing device unique for using just drops of
blood. It is also known for it’s charismatic leader, Elizabeth Holmes, and it’s
well-known board of directors (Henry Kissinger and George Schultz to name two).
Theranos has puzzled me for many years – and I wanted to get more details on
just how a college drop-out could manage to hoodwink so many people into
thinking she had solved a science and technology problem that no one before
could crack. That is really the key to understanding Theranos – Ms. Holmes
idolized Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to the point of even appropriating
Jobs’ black turtleneck as her standard attire. But I think she missed a key
difference in what those two entrepreneurs did and what she was attempting to
do – they did not have to invent a base technology. They cleverly took
something that existed and developed it to become a product or service
customers would really want. Similarly she saw a need – everyone would choose a
finger prick to test tube blood drawing. But the technology needed to perform
multiple tests from such a small sample does not exist and does not seem very
close to existing. The company used high levels of security, non-disclosure
agreements, legal threats and political power to hide this fact. Unfortunately for
the investors, employees and most importantly the customers who used the faulty
technology, Elizabeth Holmes’ charisma and salesmanship masked the truth and it
took a very long time for someone to reveal the absence of tech. I enjoyed
reading this book, though it is still quite shocking to see how power was used,
how long this company existed and the lack of punishment to date.
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