Bad Blood

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 with a bold claim: its devices could run hundreds of blood tests from a single drop. The pitch worked. The Silicon Valley startup reached a $9 billion valuation, and its board filled with former secretaries of state and defense.

Inside the company, the technology did not work. Holmes and her chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani, who was also her secret partner, kept the company running on fear and secrecy. Employees were pressured into silence, and those who spoke up were threatened.

This is narrative non-fiction, a work of investigative reporting by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter who first exposed the fraud in 2015. He draws on hundreds of interviews, among them the young whistleblowers Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung. His aim is to trace how the deception held up for years and what it cost the patients who relied on faulty test results.

The book reads as a corporate exposé, built on the accounts of people who were inside the company. It suits anyone curious about startup culture, business fraud or the pressure placed on those who try to report wrongdoing. In 2018 it received the Business Book of the Year Award from the Financial Times and McKinsey.