Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

 

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood is an excellent example of how to write a true story and make it sound as exciting as a thrilling page-turning novel.  Few true accounts have the bite that author Carreyrou has with this narrative.  If you’ve read enough true accounts of companies, organizations, or people who go bad, you know how easy it is for the author to get tied up with so many “facts” and minutia, that the finished product can significantly lose its edge.  I’m reminded of a book titled “The Smartest Guys in the Room” about the Enron scandal. Although that book was a best-seller, there were times when I felt as I was reading an expanded version of the company’s 10k report.  It simply wasn’t very interesting a lot of the time.  Fortunately, this isn’t the case with Bad Blood.

This is the story of the failed start-up company known as Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes.  Elizabeth Holmes was young, brilliant, attractive, and incredibly ambitious.  She dropped out of college at the young age of nineteen, not because she couldn’t handle it nor didn’t like it, but because she was too impatient.  She was ready to take over the world and didn’t want to waste time waiting to get a college degree.  The company she founded, Theranos, had a very attractive idea that would revolutionize healthcare.  The premise?  When patients needed extensive blood work, they would no longer need to subject themselves to long needles that would drain a substantial amount of blood to fill up multiple test tubes to perform tests.  Holmes set out to create a device that would simply prick a patient’s finger, take a miniscule amount of blood, hook it up to a relatively small box, and within a short amount of time, this little box could perform the extensive tests and give the patient their results in a fraction of the amount of time.

Well, to sum it up, the idea may have been revolutionary, but it simply couldn’t work.  Holmes was so persuasive, though, that she convinced many of the wealthy that it could, and managed to raise millions and millions of dollars to try to make her dream a reality.  When you end up spending the millions and millions of dollars on your idea that never comes to fruition, what do you do?   Author Carreyrou argues that Holmes hemmed, hawed, lied, deceived and stole to masquerade this unpleasant fact.  I got the impression that she wasn’t really that bad of a person (initially anyway), yet got so sucked in by her ambition and greed, that she simply couldn’t accept failure as being an option.  This kind of behavior, sadly, isn’t that uncommon. We read stories all the time of successful entrepreneurs who plow ahead after continuous failures.  Those who make the headlines are the rare few that actually succeeded against insurmountable obstacles.  What we don’t read about are the failures; which probably outweigh the successes by a ratio about 100 to 1.  Who wants to read about failures?   Unless, of course, you have a story as compelling as this one.

The author is a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and is actually a part of the story.  He pens a piece for his paper that exposes much of the fraud, yet we don’t read about his first-hand recollections until probably 2/3 of the way through the story.  Each chapter that he writes is captivating in that he focuses on so many of the key players.  Not only do we read about Holmes and her lover/business partner Sunny Balwani, but we read about disgruntled employees, employees who are terminated, employees who are threatened by high pressure lawyers, doctors, patients, lab technicians, investors, and acquaintances.  All of them are crucial when reading about this train wreck.

For me, the highlights are what goes on within the walls of the company. Holmes and Balwani run the startup as authoritarian dictators, and you get the impression that working for this company would be a nightmare.  I couldn’t understand why so many of the employees stayed as long as they did.  Example: Not only were the different departments not allowed to speak to one and other, but when outside people were brought in for meetings, they weren’t even allowed to use the restroom without being “escorted” to do their business. They didn’t trust outsiders roaming the hallways.  Another example: We read about an engineer who worked for the company who designs a lighting system for his bicycle on his free time.  When Holmes finds out about this, she’s exasperated.  Why? Because her employees should not have any “free time”.  She expects them to spend every waking minute of their lives at the office trying to make her impossible dream a reality.  This book, I think, could also serve as a case study for companies in teaching management how NOT to treat their employees.

When employees quit, they’re threatened by Holmes and Balwani not to say ANYTHING about the company.  They then spy on ex-employees, and if the individual makes a passing comment, say, to a friend over dinner, the ex-employee next finds a team of threatening lawyers at their front doorstep with a 25 page lawsuit.   In fact, the author himself was threatened many times by these intimidating malcontents. Fortunately, he’s been in the business long enough to know about these scare tactics, and isn’t in the least bit afraid to write about what he knows.

So another story about a high-profile company that failed, and all of the dirty deeds done to cover it up.  What makes this story a bit scary is that the author alleges that such unethical activities happen all of the time when startups are trying to blunder their way to the top.  What makes this company unique, however, is that it’s dealing with the health of people.  So it’s ok if you design a piece of software “full of bugs” and somehow deceive the public, but it’s a definite no-no when your errors can cause a faltered result on a patient’s blood test.  I say “scary” because it really does cause one to be wary of any kind of “new” technology being implemented.   Who are we to trust?

As I write this review Homes and Balwani have yet to go to trial.  Of course, Holmes maintains her innocence.  I don’t see how anyone could believe her based on what this story uncovers.  It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome.   A really sad story.  Sure, it’s great to be young, ambitious, and chase big dreams, but when those dreams don’t come true, one needs to admit failure and not try to consistently cover it up.  So many people still can’t seem to find the courage to admit that they just might be wrong about some things.

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews

 

 

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews by James Carroll

I would put this book in the category of “coming so close but missing the mark” as it pertains to writing a great book.  James Carroll, at times, writes an incredibly interesting and compelling account of his subject matter, but too often – way too often – he gets distracted from his narrative and takes his readers off on tangents that don’t help the overall flow of his narrative.   As an analogy, we’ve all been exposed to someone telling us a story of something that happened to them, yet the person drifts off from their main point while talking to us.   We end up listening to an individual taking 30 minutes to tell us a 10 minute story.  This is the case with this book. Again, it’s really a shame since when the author stays focused, it really is a great account.

James Carroll is a Catholic and a former priest.  His focus on this book is how the Jews have been mistreated throughout the history of Christianity – by those same Christians.  I appreciate the fact that the author is in insider.  One who is a Christian might tend to get a bit less defensive when the criticisms are coming from the inside rather than the outside.   Carroll begins his narrative during the time of Christ, and highlights several historical times and instances up unto the culmination of the Holocaust in the 1930s-40s.  Throughout the narrative, he shows how the church made such mistakes.  This isn’t a hatchet job, though.  He points out many instances where those in power were quite sympathetic to the Jews and didn’t look down on them as “Christ Killers”.  Still, though, history has shown us that more harm was done than good.  We must also remember that church and state weren’t separated for most of history, so in many cases, whatever the church said was implemented and followed.

Now, as I’ve stated already, the problem is the author gets too distracted.  He begins the book in what seems to be a good way. Like many historical books, he begins his story at the end; specifically Auschwitz and the controversy of the church wanting to put crosses where the tragedy occurred.  Since the church didn’t do enough to prevent this horrific event, Carroll shows us just how offensive this gesture is to the surviving Jewish community. So the first chapter makes a very good introduction.

However the author isn’t finished yet with his “introduction”.  He takes the next several chapters droning on and on to try to continue his introduction. Often he interjects himself in the narrative.  We read over and over and over and over (and over) again about his trips to Europe as a young boy with his mother, and all the things he saw, all the people he met, all the relationships he had as a child with Jewish friends and on and on and on (and on).  This was simply too distracting.  Not only do these accounts take up the first several chapters delaying the start of the actual narrative, but he comes back to these events throughout the book, which means he’s essentially interrupting his account. He probably could have cut out the bulk of these interludes and ended up with a much better (and much shorter) book.  I don’t mean anything personal by this, but I simply didn’t care about the author’s many travels with his mother.

Speaking of distractions, the author spends the last section of this book going off on yet another tangent. After we read about the Holocaust, we read about the church’s attempt to reform with the implementation of Vatican II.  History shows us that this was a needed coda, yet Carroll doesn’t stop there.  He then hypothesizes that the church really needs a “Vatican III”, and proceeds to inform his readers of everything that needs to happen in this hypothetical convening, some related to the mistakes of how the church treated the Jews, but other of his proposed reforms simply talk about how the Catholic Church needs to change overall.    Now, to be honest, I thought much of his reflections were quite insightful, but I again asked myself: Why is this even here?   It seemed as though his idea of “Vatican III” should have been a completely different book.  It just didn’t really seem to belong here.

After I read the book, I found it was one of the author’s most highly regarded works.  I’m tempted to read some of his other books (he’s also written a few novels).  He really does tell compelling accounts when he’s focused.   I just couldn’t bear, though, having to read another 700 or so page “history” that should have only been about 400 or so pages.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri

 

 

The Bridges at Toko-Ri – by James Michener

It’s a bit ironic that James Michener is known for his many 1,000+ page epics, as this particular novel is probably the shortest “novel” that I’ve ever read.  A whopping 85 pages.  Maybe when this book was released (1953) a book this size was more of the norm.  Buying it almost 70 years later, I can honestly say that I sure am glad that I bought it at a discounted price.  Paying regular price for this thing would have been quite the rip off.  Not only was the story short, but I really didn’t think it was that good either.

Although I’ve never seen the movie that was based on the book, I can see where such a movie around this story would be a hit; but only if the movie had been released sometime in the 1950s.  This was the time when war movies weren’t particularly realistic, and they seemed more intent on telling a sappy love story.  This is the case with this novel.  I can see a movie executive picking this book up and immediately setting the wheels in motion to make a cookie-cutter Hollywood love story in the middle of guns, planes, soldiers, and explosions.

The hero’s name is Brubaker.  The opening of the book really just serves to mainly “set the stage” of the character in the story. Nothing that happens is really relevant to the story other than to make us feel a certain way for Brubaker.  This isn’t that unusual with novels (and movies), but the problem is that when the entire story is only 85 pages in length, a 30-page “introduction” is really too much.    Brubaker is a pilot in the Korean War. He crashes into the icy waters. He almost dies.  He’s rescued.  It’s a good thing because he has a wife and two kids back home.  Such is war.

So then we move on to the “real” story. Brubaker is recuperating in neighboring Japan when his wife and kids show up for a visit.  How they manage to accomplish this in the middle of a war is a miracle, and it seems a bit silly.  She’s mainly there so we can have it sink deeper the reality of war and how brutal it is for soldiers to risk death every day when they have young families back home.  We also learn about the “big” mission he is to fly – to bomb the bridges at Toko-Ri.

This sets up the final act where said event occurs.  I won’t give away the ending, although with a story this short, I really don’t think I would be spoiling anything.  I’m awfully glad Michener didn’t try to stretch this thing into 200 or 300 pages.  In fact, this book really belongs in a companion of short stories as opposed to a standalone novel.  To be fair, though, had that been the case I don’t really think I would have enjoyed it any better.

I can forgive the fact that this was maybe more of the norm back in the early 1950s, but all of these years later, I would highly recommend you spend no more than a few dollars on this thing.  Otherwise you might just feel a bit letdown once you’ve finished this extremely short book.