Flawed Ambition

Bad Blood: 

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup 

by John Carreyrou

“A sociopath is often described as someone with little or no conscience. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew. I’m fairly certain she didn’t initially set out to defraud investors and put patients in harm’s way when she dropped out of Stanford fifteen years ago. By all accounts, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners. Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it.”   ― John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup



"I want to be a billionaire . . . the President will marry me because I have a billion dollars" (p. 9) These words were reportedly spoken with utter seriousness by the young Elizabeth Holmes before she reached her teen years. By the time she was nineteen she had a patent and had founded a start up with the aim to revolutionize the blood testing industry. By 2004 she had begun to raise funding in the millions of dollars for her enterprise which she christened Theranos. Within less than a decade the company was worth Billions in valuation and by 2017 it no longer existed.


John Carreyrou's book is the story of how the spectacular rise and rapid fall of Holmes' company occurred. The fundamental problem was they never made a product that worked the way it was described and sold to investors. In the process Holmes misled investors and retail partners such as Safeway and Walgreens, hiding the fact that her technology was flawed and had serious limitations that were masked by company representations.

In the technology arena software companies often market "buggy" products that do not work perfectly, yet these are often improved through use and further testing leading to successful results. With medical technology this approach does not work because people's health and lives are at stake. At Theranos false test results seriously jeopardized the health of patients in many cases.

The book reads like a detective story as the author seeks out whistle-blowers and patients who experienced the nightmare of false test results. One of the key informants was Kyle Shultz, the grandson of George Shultz, former Secretary of State, who was on the board of Theranos. Kyle joined Theranos right out of college, but soon found himself questioning the practices within the company. When he raised his concerns with Elizabeth Holmes her response was merely to tell him he was ignorant. After a discussion with his grandfather, who refused to believe him, he decided to resign from the company. This led to further difficulties with the lawyers for Theranos that included partners of the law firm of David Boies whose tactics were aggressive in an unseemly manner to put it politely. There were other people who gradually came forward through Carreyrou's determined investigation. All the while  Holmes was gracing the cover of Fortune Magazine and wowing interviewers with her sales pitch. Her charisma held sway even as the product she was selling continued to fall short of the image she was creating.

I found the book an electrifying read, although it did not explore the life of Elizabeth Holmes in enough depth for her to become anything more than a cipher. At best she had noble dreams of helping people with her blood testing device. But noble ideals do not warrant the lies and deception that endangered people who used the flawed equipment. The why behind her actions is not apparent from the story told by Carreyrou. That story, however, is fascinating and is well worth your time to read and think about what you might have done if you were part of the startup that was created out of Elizabeth Holmes noble lies.