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Bad Blood, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
by John Carreyrou
his is one of those stories where truth is stranger than fiction. It is set in the gold rush frenzy of Silicon Valley and has been described as the biggest corporate fraud since Enron. In 2015, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs – a brilliant Stanford dropout whose start-up promised to revolutionise the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’ worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Holmes had been misleading investors and partners and the deception would lead to over one million false test results, some of which seriously compromised the health of patients. In early 2018, Holmes was charged with perpetrating an elaborate, years-long fraud by the US Security and Exchange Commission. Bad Blood is longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Matakana Village Books
www.matakanavillagebooks.co.nz
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