Bad Blood - John Carreyrou

Reviewer’s Note:

When I was thinking about reading this one, I had some questions in mind. The title was very catchy, and all the reviews online were great as well. However, there was a particular thing that Brian DeChesare wrote in his review of this book that made me pick this one up. Brian writes,

‘While I read Bad Blood, John Carreyrou’s detailed account of the rise and fall of Theranos, two thoughts immediately came to mind.

First, if North Korea ever launched a start-up, Theranos would be it.

The company operated the same way Kim Jong Un does: non-functional products, “launches” that backfire, massive fraud, dead employees, and a creepy old guy who monitored employee email and Internet usage.

Second, this story is amazing. They need to make it into a movie.’

Brian’s comparison to North Korea really got me thinking, as to was this start-up really that big a fraud or what. This lead me to pick this book up, and boy, the book didn’t disappoint.

Book Review:

Theranos’s back story had all the perfect ingredients to become the next big unicorn in the Silicon Valley; a 19-year-old Stanford dropout Founder, a revolutionizing product, and levels of hype matching those of Facebook or Apple in its early days.

However, the core difference between Facebook or Apple and Theranos was that Facebook and Apple’s products were delivered. Theranos’s product was nothing but a big fat lie.

The book revolves around the story of the Silicon Valley start-up named Theranos, which was deemed to be revolutionizing the Blood testing industry. The company claimed that with a drop of blood from your fingertip, they could perform complex tests, thus taking out the fear of needles so many of us have(including me!).

On paper, this was a great idea, and a great slogan as well. However, Theranos could not deliver. It performed only basic Glucose and similar small tests with this drop and needed higher samples for other tests(their devices didn’t even perform the other tests!).

Irrespective of all this, Theranos raised $900 million in funding rounds, which gave it an evaluation value of $9 billion.

This book revolves around the premise of how this happened. How VCs made such a big mistake, how Theranos was playing with human lives, and how their CEO and Founder Elizabeth Holmes was so inhumane and ruthless than when her lies were exposed she was ready to accuse her Stanford Professor of molestation as well just to protect the company and its false truths.

A lot of the books are interesting because of their writing styles, their friction or imaginary plots, and methods of storytelling. This book is a pure story-driven book. The story is the hero of this one, and it being a real-life one, makes things even more interesting. John, the author, has done a great job going into fantastic detail about every aspect of Theranos and how he busted the scandal.

If you enjoy thriller or suspense books and movies, I’ll highly recommend you try this one. So do check it out.

Happy Reading.