FoMO—the fear of missing out.

The Steve Jobs syndrome

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou uncovers the rise and fall of Theranos. Theranos, founded by Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes, promised a complete evaluation of your health with a small prick of blood. At the peak of its popularity and hype, Theranos was evaluated at over $9 billion. As most people know now however, the promised product never existed. It was fabricated and backed by Silicon Valley’s all star investors, all being lied to by Holmes and her boyfriend (at the time) Sunny Balwani.

No one knew the truth about Theranos until Carreyrou broke out the story using anonymous previous employees at the Wall Street Journal. In short, everything was a lie. All the labs that were available for viewing - fake. The actual patient results - fake. The details of this book are insane and hard to believe. It is actually insane the things Holmes does to run her company. The lack of transparency between teams in the company, testing on cancer patients without a working product, lying to large retailers and stores such as Safeway, and even faking prototypes to potential investors all show Holmes’ lack of experience in the health industry (and her idea of idealism).

The book serves as a cautionary tale to Silicon Valley to have a relevant board of directors that are competent with the industry. It also points out how human lives should not be gambled with. When the stakes are high, and the impact is immediate, corners should not be cut, no matter what. Finally, it shows how the status of a celebrity in Silicon Valley can change the virtue of an individual.

Theranos is a story about how a charismatic CEO prioritized her own legacy over the people she started off to help. The book really challenged my beliefs and ideas of ethical situations. Overall, I found it to be an impressive work of journalism, and found my eyes were glued onto each page.

Overall Rating: 8/10