— WSJ ‘s John Carreyrou on how disgraced entrepreneur nearly got away with it Practice Management > Information Technology
Article by Matt Wynn for MedPage Today, June 25, 2018
In early 2015, blood-testing startup Theranos Inc. was riding high, with hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funding and its young Stanford-dropout founder, Elizabeth Holmes, the subject of fawning stories in the business media. Theranos claimed that it could test for dozens of analytes in a single drop of blood, thanks to proprietary breakthroughs in microfluidics technology. Then it all went south, in large part because of stories in the W a ll Street Journ al by reporter John Carreyrou, who found that Theranos had in fact made no breakthroughs, and results of a million tests on real patients’ samples — and probably many more — were completely unreliable. Carreyrou reported that Holmes had deceived investors, physicians, and patients almost from the company’s beginnings in 2003. Last week, Holmes was indicted on federal fraud charges and relinquished the CEO title, but remains as board chair. The firm now sells lab equipment and sample collection devices, but no longer performs tests.
Carreyrou turned his reporting into a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, which goes far beyond what was reported in his Journal pieces. In stunning detail, he describes the bad management and nonexistent ethics at Theranos — and also lays bare the arrogance in California’s venture capital culture that Holmes shrewdly exploited. The book has hit the national bestseller list, and for good reason.
MedPage Today spoke with Carreyrou at length between stops on his book tour. Some of the choicer bits appear below, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full unedited interview via the player.
