We delve into the whirlwind story of Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech company Theranos. At its height it was valued at 9 billion dollars. At its heart was a product that didn’t work.
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 high-profile investors, 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.
In Bad Blood, Wall Street Journal writer John Carreyrou sets out his dogged efforts to penetrate the wall of fear and intimidation that hid the truth. Gripping stuff, but did it make for a good book club read? What did Kate’s book club think? Listen in to find out.
Book recommendations
Our recommendations following on from Bad Blood:
- The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
- The Big Short, The Undoing Project and Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Notes
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