Some things about Bad Blood

 I just finished Bad Blood by John Carreyrou and liked it more than I expected to. It read like a fast paced fiction and kept my interest sustained, even when I knew the Theranos story broadly. Here are my thoughts on it 

1. "When you strike at the king, you must kill him" is a quote he uses early in the book.  He follows his own advice thoroughly and ensures that he nails Theranos completely, consistently doing follow up stories to ensure Theranos is completely cornered. He gained enough fame and attention with the first couple of articles but his real work is in his final few articles on FDA, CMS etc. He knew Elizabeth enough to know that she will come back, even if there is an iota of opportunity and will ensure he is killed ( metaphorically)
2. I think its unfair to call Elizabeth a fraud. For one I think she is a fantastic sales and marketing person and thats a skill ( one that a lot of con-men have, admittedly) but its no joke to convince enough people with experience and intelligence. All of them believed in her vision and her ability to achieve it and I think she would have made a fantastic PR person/Sales head for a company that was actually doing what Theranos pretended to do. 
3. Fake it till you make it, is touted in irrelevant contexts.  It works only in mental challenges- like when you are shy, you act like a confident person. If you have forgotten to bring homework to school, no amount of faking will bring the homework to you. Theranos was sort of midway- they were working on some tech and she was hoping it will be working, and she ended up promising the moon. 
4. Out of a lakh test results Theranos had conducted with Walgreens, 10 patients sued which doesnt seem like a terrible number. I feel like hospitals would have a similar ( or slightly lesser number of ) suings, for negligence etc. Not sure if Theranos jugaad worked or if the doctors disregarded the test results and ordered new ones. 
5. In any other industry, she wouldnt have been called out as a fraud. Healthcare is heavily regulated and her not following the processes ( which was hailed as revolutionary when Uber went against regulators) led her into deep trouble. Obviously she also gained the fame she did because she promised things in healthcare, but I think had she chosen a less- regulated industry and made huuuge promises about the moon, only to give you the terrace, she would have not been crucified. 
6. Case in point for Point 4- Elon Musk. He promises Mars rockets and gives us Tesla , something that Mahindra and Bajaj do in India. But he chose his industry well, and is not facing the consequences of slow technological advance because there is no ethics issue as was in the case of Theranos. 
7. I now have a grudging respect for Silicon valley venture capital firms for not investing in Theranos. Could have been that its not their area of expertise for a lot of them but those that she did speak to didnt invest in her because she refused to share the tech with them, had no peer-reviewed papers for the tech ( because it was a trade secret) and this clearly wouldnt have passed muster with their due diligence team. 
8. She managed a good con by playing everyone around like a fiddle, and in a twisted way I find that a victory for feminism. ** A bunch of white, experienced old men were so convinced by her "vision" and one of them chose her side against his own grandson. He was unconvinced even when Elizabeth displayed clear signs of ethics breach by sending  documents they hadnt agreed on when she had expressly said she wouldnt etc. 
9. Apparently the board had agreed on a motion where Elizabeth would have 99.7% of the voting rights. Its laughable and to illustrate it, I burst out laughing when I heard it. ( I read the audiobook).  She had the biggest law firm representing Theranos, and how were they paid? In Theranos shares! While the ex-employees who were sued by Theranos had to find the huge legal fees from their own savings, Theranos  literally had to spend nothing and could hound the terrified employyees into doing their bidding. And the head of the law firm was on the board. And unsurprisingly he was 74. She really had something with the 65+ crowd. 
10. Rupert Murdoch ( 84, in case you are wondering) was the largest investor with about 100+ million invested in Theranos, a few months before the WSJ broke out the story. Murdoch owns the parent company of the WSJ and Elizabeth tried her best to get him to interfere and stop the story from going out. But Murdoch refused to interfere and said he trusts the editors to handle the matter fairly. (The story broke and as a consequence his share values came down to zero. And what did he do? He sold the shares back to Theranos for 1$ , and now could use the money lost in order to save on his taxes ! Guess its reallly tough to lose when you are that rich! ) But my point with Point 9 is that its quite impressive that he chose not to interfere when he had a large stake. 
11. Sunny Balwani was such a **** and apparently he " recruited a bunch of ingratiating Indians who wouldnt refute anything he said out of fear and a desire to advance".  Sounds all too familiar. 
12. I wonder what Elizabeth will do going forward. I half- expect her to come back after 15 or 20 years so with some other innovation, maybe not in healthcare. But she is too ambitious and intelligent to just end her legacy with this.

** I dont mean to say that she fooled all men- there were enough men suspicious of her( Hunter from Walgreens, the copywriters from Chiat Day etc) but its interesting for me to note that there were almost no women under her spell. I think our bullshit filter is stronger for our own gender.  I have seen this in college as well - guys are able to spot fake guys quicker than girls can.