Clare L. Deming

This book was not on my radar at all until I watched the Netflix documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. This was the first I had heard of Elizabeth Holmes and her start-up blood testing company, Theranos.

If you don’t know the story already, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of college at Stanford and started her own company, Theranos. The premise behind the start-up was that they claimed to have a new technology that would allow patients to have multiple blood tests performed using only a finger-stick to procure a tiny amount of blood. No more scary needles!

It turns out that Holmes sold the idea to investors and to customers well before actually having that technology. John Carreyrou is the investigative journalist with the Wall Street Journal who uncovered and disclosed Theranos’ massive fraud.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the story of how Holmes built Theranos and how the company managed to lead on venture capitalists, board members, and customers such as Walgreens and Safeway for several years. I enjoyed this book and found the practices that Theranos engaged in to be shocking and despicable. Much of the information appears to have come from former employees who realized that the company wasn’t going about things the right way.

I did feel like the middle of the book became a bit too bogged down in names and tales from one employee after another, to the point that the details began to blur and felt unnecessary to repeat.

The final downfall of Theranos was fascinating and, given Holmes’ charisma and connections, it is somewhat surprising that she couldn’t continue the charade for even longer.

I listened to this book in audio format and found the narrator (Will Damron) to be easy to listen to and understand. If you’ve seen the Netflix documentary, this book is still worth a read, giving far more detail that it was possible to have in the movie. Even knowing how it ended, I found myself entranced by the company’s downfall. To pick up a copy, follow my Amazon affiliate link here.

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