After being accepted into Standford, where she worked in the research lab and spent a summer internship testing patients, she decided that there was a better way of getting samples.

However, Elizabeth’s grandfather and father managed to waste the family fortune, and her father was insistent on nurturing her ambition and desire for success. Elizabeth comes from a respectable family – her ancestors on her father’s side were successful doctors and entrepreneurs, while on her mother’s side, she’s a descendant of one of Napoleon’s generals. This short prologue was the author’s way of introducing the main topic of the book, which will be covered in great detail.Ĭarreyrou describes the background of Elizabeth Holmes, the person behind the Theranos.

They started to feel untrustworthy of the blood testing technology, and the company’s CFO discovered that Holmes used fake blood results.Īfter raising his concerns and facing Holmes with the evidence of faked results, he gets fired. The tone of the story suddenly shifts as the author describes a meeting after which some major concerns were raised by employees. The company’s management is full of competent, well-established experts and people with decades of experience at large tech companies. The company is run by Elizabeth Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford during her sophomore year, at 19 years of age, in order to start her own business. Their innovative system offers the users blood testing without needles and the requirements of the lab. The story begins in 2006 with the introduction of Theranos, a company established 3 years prior that offers a revolutionary way of blood testing. The book follows the company from its founding, a billion-dollar evaluation that made Holmes a billionaire, ended with the revelation of the fraud that Holmes managed to hide from the investors and the public for years.

John Carreyorou delivers a story on the rise and fall of “Theranos,” a company founded by Elizabeth Holmes when she was 19 years old.

Bad blood secrets and lies