Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup – John Carreyrou
A surprising benefit of reading “Bad Blood” is that even after a terrible day at work, there’s comfort in knowing it could be worse. Theranos, quite possibly one of the most unprincipled organizations in recent history, has set the bar high for toxic culture.
Once the hottest startup in Silicon Valley, its name — along with founder Elizabeth Holmes — is now synonymous with greed and deceit brought about by blind ambition and cult of personality.
Between the recent trial and Hulu series, most of us are familiar with the Theranos saga, so I won’t go into detail about what happened, rather about what shocked me the most while listening to this meticulously researched and expertly written novel, because so much of it was absolutely bonkers.
The Perception of Holmes
We know gender bias exists, and Holmes was young and surrounded by powerful, older men her entire career. This can make you wonder how much of Holmes’ media characterization was brought about by sexism, especially in a world that doesn’t favor outspoken women. So, I initially had sympathy — or at least an open mind — for how she was portrayed.
However, after finishing “Blood” it is clear Holmes was fully in the driver’s seat, and it was her obsession with winning that trumped measured decision making. In her trial, she brought up alleged abuse by Sunny Balwani, her long-term romantic partner and number two at Thernaos, as a reason she couldn’t think clearly, but as Carreyrou showed through hundreds of personal interviews, Holmes had a pattern of unscrupulous behavior that spanned decades.
The Scope of the Fraud
As someone that has worked in a highly regulated industry from nearly two decades, I was truly flabbergasted at how Theranos was able to misrepresent its technology for so long.
Yes, Silicon Valley operates in a gray area, but it was shocking that none of the esteemed board members, leadership at Walgreens or Safeway or the U.S. military didn’t push harder on the flimsy data, lack of medical regulatory approval and the years of cageyness regarding how the technology worked.
The Personal Toll
For Holmes business was extremely personal. Despite positioning herself as world-changing business wunderkind, I doubt demanding complete loyalty, suggesting a 24/7 approach to work and harassing and chastising former employees will show up in the Harvard Business Review as leadership best practices.
“Blood” often illustrated how experiences at work can destroy many other facets of life. Three things really bothered me with Theranos’ treatment of employees: 1) Its weaponization of the law to threaten and intimidate; 2) The suicide of Ian Gibbons, clearly attributable to his mistreatment at Theranos; and 3) How Holmes tried to destroy the relationship between board member George Schultz and his grandson, Tyler, a Theranos employee who served as an early whistleblower.
You could argue that those who followed Holmes’ and Balwani’s orders were simply trying to survive the madness, but any senior leader that enforced their actions and swept ongoing corporate malfeasance under the rug are as culpable as them.
How Cringey It All Was
I frequently had secondhand embarrassment for Holmes’ — and the employees that had to witness — eccentricities. Her exaggerated baritone and emulation of Steve Jobs aside, referring to Theranos as a “religion,” hiring a multi-person security detail, using motivational poster quotes as company maxims and putting style of substance (see Ch. 13, “Chiat/Day”) made it feel like Holmes thought leadership was simply amalgamating ideas and pawning them off as her own.
Finally, while this is categorized as nonfiction, I think it also has a place on the shelf with business books. There are many lessons both leaders and employees can takeaway:
Stay aligned to your personal ethics: Don’t sacrifice who you are and what you believe for a paycheck.
Prevent the echo chamber: Create a culture where people can openly question and criticize without fear of repercussion. If everyone in the room making decisions sees problems and solutions the same way there’s an issue.
Culture eats strategy: People want to feel fulfilled and valued at work. If your company culture relies on fear as a motivating factor, you simply will not be successful.
Bullies have no place in business: There’s a fine line between being confident and being a bully. As a leader, you need to be comfortable making tough, unpopular decisions but that doesn’t mean you need to use intimidation to do it.
Understand walking away is not failure: Sometimes a job doesn’t work out, and you won’t get an award for sticking with it. Self-preservation and happiness should always come first.
I haven’t talked much about the actual book, and that’s because there isn’t much to say other than it’s great.
Carreyrou clearly invested a lot of time and energy into telling as robust a history as possible without the contributions of Holmes, Balwani and other senior leaders. Is there bias based on who participated? Likely so, but most readers will find this to be a well-balanced and engrossing too strange to be true American crime story.
The audiobook was narrated by Will Damron who does a perfectly acceptable job. If you prefer narration for nonfiction you can’t go wrong here, but Carreyrou also writes in an engaging, accessible style — complete with short chapters — that would make a physical copy easy to digest as well.
Rating (story): 5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3/5 stars
Formats: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: April 9 – April 19, 2022
Multi-tasking: Good to go. Carreyrou’s writing is conversational and arresting, so it’s easy to follow along while performing other tasks.
