

Loading... Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018)by John Carreyrou
![]() No current Talk conversations about this book. Fascinating. I can't believe I never knew about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos before reading this book. This was a good introduction to the Theranos scandal. I knew extraordinarily little about what occurred with this medical tech company, so was very curious to find out more. Floored at how easily Elizabeth Holms was able to pull the wool over big companies like Safeway and Walgreens. Also disgusted with how easily and quickly they were willing to bully and intimidate those who wanted the truth out there. Not only did the false claims and the quickness in which they tried to rush products to the market endanger many people, but they had no guilt over the dangers this could cause. The build the plane as we fly it approach is not one that works well for medical tech. I am very interested in watching the several documentaries and limited series shows that are coming out about this. I did feel that the story as told is a bit repetitive in some chapters, going over the same instances more than once. Otherwise, an incredibly informative read, filled with useful information. I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about this. What a f*ed up place. You almost need to listen to this twice because there is some of unbelievable stuff that Theranos pulled. I had no intention of reading this book. I thought I had a good idea about the situation. I had read headlines and a few articles. I had watched the implosion of Theranos at its later stages from a distance in trade magazines. But, when my fellow reading friends kept harping about this book, I decided to finally pick it up. Carreyrou took what I thought to be your garden variety white-collar crime and turned this into a jaw-dropping page turner. Although dense with detail, intrigue and bat-shit craziness, this was still readable and totally compelling.
The author’s description of Holmes as a manic leader who turned coolly hostile when challenged is ripe material for a psychologist; Carreyrou wisely lets the evidence speak for itself. As presented here, Holmes harbored delusions of grandeur but couldn’t cope with the messy realities of bioengineering. Swathed in her own reality distortion field, she dressed in black turtlenecks to emulate her idol Jobs and preached that the Theranos device was “the most important thing humanity has ever built.” Employees were discouraged from questioning this cultish orthodoxy by her “ruthlessness” and her “culture of fear.” Secrecy was obsessive. Labs and doors were equipped with fingerprint scanners.
"The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley"--
"The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos--the Enron of Silicon Valley--by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in an early fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley"-- No library descriptions found. |
Popular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)338.7 — Social sciences Economics Production Business EnterprisesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
John Carreyou is an outstanding journalist. Probably among the best in the world. He single handedly brought down the powerful and wealthy apparatus that Theranos built. He is an ok writer though. This book would become a movie soon as this is a great story.
(