Bad Blood, in my opinion, should be the book of the year for 2018. Written by John Carreyrou, the book chronicles the fall of Theranos, a once beloved Silicon Valley darling, whose at its peak, commanded a valuation of about $9B, making its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, a Standford dropout, one of the self-made billionaires in Silicon Valley. Elizabeth, who owned more than 50% of the company, according to Forbes was worth approximately $4.5B.

In the book, John laid account of how Ms Holmes lied to her board, investors and the general public about a breakthrough in laboratory testing that her company, Theranos, had pioneered.

Theranos claim to fame was a small medical device that the company claimed could conduct more than 100 laboratory test from blood gotten from the prick of a finger. This is amazing and a feat in medical sciences, considering these kinds of test were always conducted from blood gotten from the vein. Theranos claimed it developed a medical device called “Edison,” later miniLab with codename “4S,” a node to Steve Job’s iPhone 4S, a man she had come to admire and idolize. The miniLab was an improvement to the first version, Edison.

The major problem here was that these devices didn’t work. Instead, Theranos used commercial analyzers from Seimens for the analysis. Nothing at Theranos worked. Everything was a big, fat scam. Her flagship products, Edison and miniLab, probably worked 2 out of every 10 attempts. This was in no way acceptable.

With a treasure chest, the size of the annual budget of some African countries and a ballooning valuation, the company employed some of the best legal hands to chase and intimidate anyone that was going to uncover its wrongdoing. With the company breaking medical ethics, its sharp practices did put some of her staff, whose conscience wasn’t seared at a crossroad. This led to a couple of people leaving and the overall employee turnover wasn’t encouraging. To put things more succinctly, anyone that challenged the practices of the company was shown the door. Not before they were made to sign an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement.

The most fascinating part of Theranos was the calibre of investors the company had managed to assemble. The firm counted Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of NewsCorp as one of its investors. The Australian-born American media mogul, famous for dabbling into tech investments and one-time owner of the now-defunct MySpace invested about $125m into the company. Mr Murdoch once turned a $150,000 investment in Uber into $50m so Theranos wouldn’t be his first, I suspect it wouldn’t be his last either. Aside from Murdoch, Theranos counted Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms tycoon and billionaire as one of her investors.

Theranos, to its credit, was able to get Walgreens and Safeway in bed. It was unsurprising for Ms Holmes to have pulled such an epic partnership. I mean, who will doubt a company that counted Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo CEO and chairman, James Mattis, later US Secretary of Defense as some of its board members. Walgreens paid $100m in what it termed “innovation fee” and another $40m loan to Theranos. Safeway, on the other hand, spent about $350m, putting together what it called wellness centres; a mini physician centre that doubles as in-store laboratories that will run exclusively on Theranos devices. With ailing revenues, Safeway believed this was going to be a way to help the company bolster its fortunes. This assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s not surprising to see how Ms Holmes and her COO, Sunny Balwani, was able to fool everyone, including top government officials. She was touted as the next Steve Jobs. Her charismatic personality and an unusually deep voice only help in creating a larger than life aura around her. She has been called a once-in-a-generation genius and has been compared with Newton, Einstein, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci.

I had mixed emotions reading Bad Blood. These emotions ranged from pure anger, disgust and a douse of excitement. Anger because of the heavy-handed tactics they used in running the company. Disgust at the bald-faced lies Elizabeth, in the company of Sunny, the firms COO told even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Excitement, when the former staff of Theranos came forward to corroborate stories that came from a tip John got.

As you leaf through the book, John made it super difficult if not impossible to put the book down. Every chapter has its own theme, somewhat close to watching a crime series. You want to know what happens next. What new revelation was made? Who is getting the axe next? I am not one to sit still so long on a particular book, but I read the first 9 chapters of this book in one sitting.

John is a master storyteller and Bad Blood is a scintillating read. It will keep you on the edge as you go from chapter to chapter. If there is one word to describe the account in this book, it will be chilling.

Thank you, Seyi Taylor, for pushing me to read this book. I now understand what you saw in it.

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