Bad Blood - Review by Naga

Bad Blood : The secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up

by John Carreyrou

An idea can change the world - but this idea(thought) has to be changed first. An idea put into effect can change the world. Not the idea in itself. Or by itself.

The woman 'CEO out for blood' had a vision for the future of medical industry but didn't translate it to the company she set up. She had plenty of charm and vulnerability which made others not want to hurt her but that didn't stop the ruthlessness she showed towards them. Having watched a few YouTube videos on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, I almost developed a kind of obsession in wanting to know more about what went down with the company. How the brilliant entrepreneur managed to cox millions of dollars from numerous high profiled investors and set up a company that valued at 9 billion dollars with nothing more than a smoke screen of a technology. This led me into getting the tell-all book 'Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley StartUp' by a non- assuming, straight with the facts journalist John Carreyrou. He is an investigative journalist from Wall Street journal who single handedly exposed lies after lies and numerous cover ups by Theranos that ultimately led to FDA raids, CMS inspections and federal indictments that dissolved the company.

Elizabeth Holmes is a brilliant,smart woman the technical world dominated by male figures has been waiting for when she dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19 to start up a company that revolutionised the way blood testing and drug analysis was done. She recruited the best and the brightest in the fields and put them to work. She quickly applied for numerous patents on the technology and got them sealed. She used her contacts and connections adroitly to make their presence felt in other countries where they could win over customers. She started making promises to major drug store chains and supermarkets like Walgreens, Safeway and signed contracts to install her devices for patient testing in those stores. She secured a brilliantly credible band of ex-military and tech generals in her board of directors that added lot of credibility to the company. So much that no one who signed up contracts with her pushed her to demonstrate the technology she was promising online/live. They just bought the charm and the credibility with millions of dollars in investments and contracts. The fast pace at which this is going down is startling in itself. But what's more startling is that the technology they supposedly promised didn't exist. It never worked. A little bit on the inner workings of the company and technology in next paragraph.

The company like many in the world of start ups that want to make it big and before everyone else does it maintained a strict culture of secrecy. So much that it made employees uncomfortable and question the practices. Like a dictatorial leader who she was, she fired anyone who showed doubts or raised concerns with her lies and deception. Their emails were tracked, their login times monitored, they were forced to sign non disclosure agreements before they took the job and once they left it, they were tailed by private investigators and law suits were brought against a few. Thernos claimed that they invented a medical device that took only a few drops of blood from the tips of fingers with out using needle, ran some 200+ tests on it simultaneously and gave results within a half our. The results could be wirelessly communicated with the doctors and patients. An initial prototype was developed but the test results varied each time it was used so much that they eventually give up using it for more than a few tests. They were to be done manually one after the other not simultaneously as promised. The remainint tests they used commercially available devices in the market to run. Obviously as the investors and regulary authorities found this out through Wall Street journal, it started a massive rage and backlash..that was akin to an unstoppable storm hitting a ship till it capsized.