Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist.
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What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Bad Blood* is a gripping, detailed exposé that vividly portrays the Theranos scandal, emphasizing systemic failure, ambition, and decepti...
1. A Purposeful Life
8,5/10
Intro to her family and herself. By the way, the book is about a giant blood testing company a blonde teen created which made her a billionaire. She now is going away for 12 years as it was a giant scam.
2. The Gluebot
8/10
The company starts up. Curiously this was way later in the TV show. The first part of the TV show was about all the other people and then the gluebot guy came in later on presented as a bad guy.
3. Apple Envy
8/10
She hires big shots from Apple and creates a board of investors that all support her. She is in love with Apple and Steve Jobs and even imitated his looks. Holmes starts firing employees who question the tech, ethics, and her leadership. The board all trust her and follow her advice.
4. Goodbye East Paly
8/10
The company moves from the slums to a top tier neighborhood. The board tries to fire her. She convinces them over 2 hours not to fire her and then fires them instead weeks later. Replacing them with yesmen.
5. The Childhood Neighbor
8/10
Elizabeth's neighbor is rich and arrogant. He takes a patent close to what Theranos do to earn some cash on it from them later on and to punish Elizabeth for not asking him for advice while starting the company as he works in the same field.
6. Sunny
8/10
Sunny is her boyfriend. An Indian millionaire. Giant jerk who she hires and acts like they are not dating. He loves firing people.
7. Dr. J
8/10
Dr. J. former basketball player who makes his company, Wallgreens, work with Theranos. Which give Theranos enough exposure to get giant deals.
8. The miniLab
8/10
They try to build a minilab instead of a proper sized lab device. The mini devise doesn't work.
9. The Wellness Play
8/10
Wellness centers being built for $100m to create testing facilities for Theranos.
10. “Who Is LTC Shoemaker?”
8/10
An employee warns them about the public sector checking on medicinal companies. But Elizabeth doesn't care and ignores the snooping public experts.
11. Lighting a Fuisz
8/10
Lawsuit against Fuisz the neighbor. He ends up giving up the patent for free when the main witness who works for Theranos, Ian Gibbons, kills himself as he doesn't want to reveal that Theranos patents are false as Elizabeth put her name on them without inventing anything.
12. Ian Gibbons
8/10
The guy who gets fired. Then other workers force Sunny to reemploy him. He now gets a worse job and all various groups in the company are not allowed to work together so he is stuck in a terrible position.
13. Chiat\Day
8/10
People in the company start asking questions about the tech and the sale of the tech. Elizabeth hires people and companies who used to work for Apple. They hired a giant lawyer also and now hire a giant marketing company.
14. Going Live
7/10
Theranos decide to go live and make huge promises without actually having a product.
15. Unicorn
7/10
Theranos becomes a billions dollar unicorn company by faking a lot of projects. If a company comes by or they loosely talk about a project together. Elizabeth and Sunny will write it down as being a project they are very close to completing.
16. The Grandson
7/10
A board member's son is working for the company. He discovers a lot of fishy stuff. Main element in the TV show, but here it's super light and fun. In the TV show it's super dark. Weird how much they faked this for entertainment in the TV show. But it worked.
17. Fame
8/10
Elizabeth becomes famous and gets on magazine covers because she is an extremely rare thing, a woman in the tech industry who started her own giant company. And she's attractive too.
18. The Hippocratic Oath
8/10
The author starts interviewing angry ex-employees.
19. The Tip
8/10
More whistleblowers.
20. The Ambush
8/10
Tyler Shultz, the whistleblower and son, is ambushed by Theranos lawyers as they know he is one of the leakers.
21. Trade Secrets
8,5/10
The journalist is put to a test by the famous lawyer hired by Theranos.
22. La Mattanza
8/10
Elizabeth shows the fake automated lab to vice president Biden and he states the lab is the future.
23. Damage Control
8/10
Even after the WJS article Elizabeth doesn't give up. She just presents her lab for the first time ever via a powerpoint. But most people start to doubt her more and more because of her weak presentations. And she keeps lying, but this time she holds back quite a bit. She claims the article was sexism.
24. The Empress Has No Clothes
8/10
More about damage control.
My final opinion on the book
It's insane how many scenes the mini series has that this book doesn't even mention. Even big events that actually happened. I assume the author really didn't want to be sued so he omitted a some info. For example, at the Elizabeth Holmes birthday party the guests were wearing masks of her face. In the book it's not mentioned. Similarly a ton of famous people are found in the book and docs. But in the mini series most famous people are removed. In that party scene in the TV show Elizabeth is the one who requires the whistleblower to play the song again. In real life it was done because Henry Kissinger arrived late to the party. Just weird to remove all these big name politicians from the TV show.
Of course the TV show is also left-wing progressive. The WSJ male boss is replaced with a Black woman. And she is made into a genius mentally mature fake character. Elizabeth is in the TV show a woman who experienced an attack at college and therefore becomes crazy. And Sunny experiences racism everywhere so he also turns to hate. It's TV magic. Both of them seem like great people who just made a smallish mistake. Of course the book is more raw. The college attack is barely mentioned and never used as an excuse for anything. The racism is only alluded to. The TV show removes most negative traits for both people. In the book Sunny is a giant jerk who adores firing people and even makes some employees cry. In the TV show he's a nice guy led astray by Elizabeth who herself is just messed up in her head and not not evil in any way. Weird how different real life was, but TV shows need to be progressive today and create a bit spice.
I like the audiobook, but I do feel it's way too short. The audiobook just feels like a really long article or something that is not a full exposure. So I do feel like a longer 300-400 page long new book about Theranos would actually be interesting. I still don't quite get why Elizabeth did it. What did she do when? Did she set out to lie or just stumble into it? Curiously the book claims she did want to create a proper company, but just failed as she was a silly teenager. In the mini series she lies from the get go. That's partly why she is shut down later on. She lied to people as a teen before the company was even an idea and they come after her. So I don't really know what really happened. But many stories are not in the book so I think we need a full story somewhere to understand it all. Maybe she could tell it.
8,5/10
Intro to her family and herself. By the way, the book is about a giant blood testing company a blonde teen created which made her a billionaire. She now is going away for 12 years as it was a giant scam.
2. The Gluebot
8/10
The company starts up. Curiously this was way later in the TV show. The first part of the TV show was about all the other people and then the gluebot guy came in later on presented as a bad guy.
3. Apple Envy
8/10
She hires big shots from Apple and creates a board of investors that all support her. She is in love with Apple and Steve Jobs and even imitated his looks. Holmes starts firing employees who question the tech, ethics, and her leadership. The board all trust her and follow her advice.
4. Goodbye East Paly
8/10
The company moves from the slums to a top tier neighborhood. The board tries to fire her. She convinces them over 2 hours not to fire her and then fires them instead weeks later. Replacing them with yesmen.
5. The Childhood Neighbor
8/10
Elizabeth's neighbor is rich and arrogant. He takes a patent close to what Theranos do to earn some cash on it from them later on and to punish Elizabeth for not asking him for advice while starting the company as he works in the same field.
6. Sunny
8/10
Sunny is her boyfriend. An Indian millionaire. Giant jerk who she hires and acts like they are not dating. He loves firing people.
7. Dr. J
8/10
Dr. J. former basketball player who makes his company, Wallgreens, work with Theranos. Which give Theranos enough exposure to get giant deals.
8. The miniLab
8/10
They try to build a minilab instead of a proper sized lab device. The mini devise doesn't work.
9. The Wellness Play
8/10
Wellness centers being built for $100m to create testing facilities for Theranos.
10. “Who Is LTC Shoemaker?”
8/10
An employee warns them about the public sector checking on medicinal companies. But Elizabeth doesn't care and ignores the snooping public experts.
11. Lighting a Fuisz
8/10
Lawsuit against Fuisz the neighbor. He ends up giving up the patent for free when the main witness who works for Theranos, Ian Gibbons, kills himself as he doesn't want to reveal that Theranos patents are false as Elizabeth put her name on them without inventing anything.
12. Ian Gibbons
8/10
The guy who gets fired. Then other workers force Sunny to reemploy him. He now gets a worse job and all various groups in the company are not allowed to work together so he is stuck in a terrible position.
13. Chiat\Day
8/10
People in the company start asking questions about the tech and the sale of the tech. Elizabeth hires people and companies who used to work for Apple. They hired a giant lawyer also and now hire a giant marketing company.
14. Going Live
7/10
Theranos decide to go live and make huge promises without actually having a product.
15. Unicorn
7/10
Theranos becomes a billions dollar unicorn company by faking a lot of projects. If a company comes by or they loosely talk about a project together. Elizabeth and Sunny will write it down as being a project they are very close to completing.
16. The Grandson
7/10
A board member's son is working for the company. He discovers a lot of fishy stuff. Main element in the TV show, but here it's super light and fun. In the TV show it's super dark. Weird how much they faked this for entertainment in the TV show. But it worked.
17. Fame
8/10
Elizabeth becomes famous and gets on magazine covers because she is an extremely rare thing, a woman in the tech industry who started her own giant company. And she's attractive too.
18. The Hippocratic Oath
8/10
The author starts interviewing angry ex-employees.
19. The Tip
8/10
More whistleblowers.
20. The Ambush
8/10
Tyler Shultz, the whistleblower and son, is ambushed by Theranos lawyers as they know he is one of the leakers.
21. Trade Secrets
8,5/10
The journalist is put to a test by the famous lawyer hired by Theranos.
22. La Mattanza
8/10
Elizabeth shows the fake automated lab to vice president Biden and he states the lab is the future.
23. Damage Control
8/10
Even after the WJS article Elizabeth doesn't give up. She just presents her lab for the first time ever via a powerpoint. But most people start to doubt her more and more because of her weak presentations. And she keeps lying, but this time she holds back quite a bit. She claims the article was sexism.
24. The Empress Has No Clothes
8/10
More about damage control.
My final opinion on the book
It's insane how many scenes the mini series has that this book doesn't even mention. Even big events that actually happened. I assume the author really didn't want to be sued so he omitted a some info. For example, at the Elizabeth Holmes birthday party the guests were wearing masks of her face. In the book it's not mentioned. Similarly a ton of famous people are found in the book and docs. But in the mini series most famous people are removed. In that party scene in the TV show Elizabeth is the one who requires the whistleblower to play the song again. In real life it was done because Henry Kissinger arrived late to the party. Just weird to remove all these big name politicians from the TV show.
Of course the TV show is also left-wing progressive. The WSJ male boss is replaced with a Black woman. And she is made into a genius mentally mature fake character. Elizabeth is in the TV show a woman who experienced an attack at college and therefore becomes crazy. And Sunny experiences racism everywhere so he also turns to hate. It's TV magic. Both of them seem like great people who just made a smallish mistake. Of course the book is more raw. The college attack is barely mentioned and never used as an excuse for anything. The racism is only alluded to. The TV show removes most negative traits for both people. In the book Sunny is a giant jerk who adores firing people and even makes some employees cry. In the TV show he's a nice guy led astray by Elizabeth who herself is just messed up in her head and not not evil in any way. Weird how different real life was, but TV shows need to be progressive today and create a bit spice.
I like the audiobook, but I do feel it's way too short. The audiobook just feels like a really long article or something that is not a full exposure. So I do feel like a longer 300-400 page long new book about Theranos would actually be interesting. I still don't quite get why Elizabeth did it. What did she do when? Did she set out to lie or just stumble into it? Curiously the book claims she did want to create a proper company, but just failed as she was a silly teenager. In the mini series she lies from the get go. That's partly why she is shut down later on. She lied to people as a teen before the company was even an idea and they come after her. So I don't really know what really happened. But many stories are not in the book so I think we need a full story somewhere to understand it all. Maybe she could tell it.
Very interesting and the type of nonfiction I really enjoy. One small quibble, the author called Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh (Sunny) Balwani by their first names for much of the book, then switched to last names at the end. I found this somehow jarring.
I would NOT want to work for either Holmes or especially Balwani
I would NOT want to work for either Holmes or especially Balwani
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