To investors, Elizabeth Holmes was a brilliant businessperson who would soon amass a huge fortune by saving lives.Īll the hype was contagious and soon heavyweight corporations like Walgreens and Safeway bought into the promise. They were convinced that Theranos was the next big thing to hitch their wagon to in the tech realm. Her performance was enough for investors to begin taking note. She even affected a deeper voice when she spoke in public, thinking she’d be taken more seriously in a male-dominated business arena.

Holmes fancied herself as something of a female Steve Jobs. She was only interested in playing her role as the charismatic Silicon Valley wunderkind. And even with that number, the accuracy of the data was questionable at best.īut Elizabeth Holmes was not concerned about any of these problems. The Edison could not test for any more than a handful of common illnesses. This machine, called Edison, would not do what asserted, no matter how many endless hours the Theranos engineering team worked to meet the claim. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: It’s possible to lie your way to a $9 billion product valuation. Let’s see how Elizabeth Holmes kept this falsehood going for as long as she did!

Holmes could only pull off this scam by getting FDA approval, which she carefully tiptoed around doing correctly.

As long as you can come up with a convincing front, people won’t immediately know you can’t deliver.

A $9 billion product valuation can be the result of deceit.

Unfortunately for them, what sounded too good to be true actually was.

They all thought it was their ticket to fame and fortune. Many venture capitalists bought into the revolutionary blood analysis device that Elizabeth Holmes and her startup company, Theranos, created. This is precisely what happened to many otherwise savvy investors as you’ll see in the story of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. But how would you feel if you had invested millions of dollars into a device that promised to change the world, only to discover it was virtually useless? It’s one thing to shell out $50, then realize you made a mistake. I often make the purchase only to find out the product is full of false promises later. I’m a real sucker for those online ads offering gadgets promising to change my life. 1-Sentence-Summary: Bad Blood is the story of how Elizabeth Holmes promised the world a medical miracle that actually operated on deception and lies.

Bad blood john