E-Book Overview
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.
"Crime thriller authors have nothing on Carreyrou's exquisite sense of suspenseful pacing and multifaceted character development in this riveting, read-in-one-sitting tour de force....Carreyrou's commitment to unraveling Holmes' crimes was literally of life-saving value." -Booklist
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 testing 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 more than $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.
A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.
E-Book Content
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright © 2018 by John Carreyrou All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carreyrou, John, author. Title: Bad blood : secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup / John Carreyrou. Description: First Edition. | New York : Knopf, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2018000263 | ISBN 9781524731656 (hardback) | ISBN 9781524731663 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Theranos (Firm)—History. | Hematologic equipment industry—United States. | Fraud—United States. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Entrepreneurship. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Finance. | TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Biomedical. Classification: LCC HD9995.H423 U627 2018 | DDC 338.7/681761—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018000263 Ebook ISBN 9781524731663 Cover design by Tyler Comrie v5.2_r1 ep
Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Author’s Note
Prologue 1. A Purposeful Life 2. The Gluebot 3. Apple Envy 4. Goodbye East Paly 5. The Childhood Neighbor 6. Sunny 7. Dr. J 8. The miniLab 9. The Wellness Play 10. “Who Is LTC Shoemaker?” 11. Lighting a Fuisz 12. Ian Gibbons 13. Chiat\Day 14. Going Live 15. Unicorn 16. The Grandson 17. Fame 18. The Hippocratic Oath 19. The Tip
20. The Ambush 21. Trade Secrets 22. La Mattanza 23. Damage Control 24. The Empress Has No Clothes Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes About the Author
For Molly, Sebastian, Jack, and Francesca
Author’s Note
This book is based on hundreds of interviews with more than 150 people, including more than sixty former Theranos employees. Most of the men and women who appear as characters in the narrative do so under their real names, but some asked that I shield their identities, either because they feared retribution from the company, worried that they might be swept up in the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation, or wanted to guard their privacy. In the interest of getting the most complete and detailed rendering of the facts, I agreed to give these people pseudonyms. However, everything else I describe about them and their experiences is factual and true. Any quotes I have used from emails or documents are verbatim and based on the documents themselves. When I have attributed quotes to characters in dial