Bad Blood, a personal review
I like Om
Legendary Om Malik, the founder of Gigaom had many ups and downs in his career.
But he is a star player in Silicon Valley, no matter what. Like Messi or Ronaldo in soccer, but he plays a superb game whether winning or losing.
"Back in the day, when Silicon Valley was about silicon and technology, our industry elders used to wisely caution that Silicon Valley doesn’t invest in tobacco, alcohol, porn, and guns. Not anymore it seems."
He concludes
"Statutory warnings on these products should be a start. But I am all in favor of authorities coming down hard on them."
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
This is a book written by John Carreyrou, a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter
It is saga of Elizabeth Anne Holmes who started at 19 a blood monitoring
company with best intentions in the world, to make the patients safer. She
cited the fact that an estimated one hundred thousand Americans died
each year from adverse drug reactions. Theranos the company Elizabeth
founded - would eliminate all those deaths, she said. It would quite literally
save lives. |
| The good intention was a lie |
"She worshipped Jobs and Apple. She liked to call Theranos’s blood-testing system “the iPod of health care” and predicted that, like Apple’s ubiquitous products, it would someday be in every household in the country."
This is the Silicon Valley I dreamt of.
Blue Blood
"On her father’s side, she was descended from Charles Louis Fleischmann, a Hungarian immigrant who founded a thriving business known as the Fleischmann Yeast Company. Its remarkable success turned the Fleischmanns into one of the wealthiest families in America at the turn of the twentieth century."
Charles Louis Fleischmann was not only Hungarian, he was of Jewish descent,
although it seems he was not a practicing Jew.
Smoking cigarettes while reading the Talmud
This story is from a book called "The complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish
Spirituality and Mysticism" by Michael Levin
A yeshiva student comes home on Sabbath afternoon and finds his father
reading the Talmud and smoking a cigarette. He is shocked: smoking is forbidden
on the Sabbath. The father noticed his son is stunned by his behavior. He said:
"When you know as much Talmud as I do, you too can smoke a cigarette on Sabbath"
Arrogance is a kingdom without a crown
These are words to describe Silicon Valley evolution
These are actual
quotes from the book
“The biggest problem of all was the dysfunctional corporate culture in which the mini Lab was being developed. Elizabeth and Sunny regarded anyone who raised a concern or an objection as a cynic and a naysayer.”
“For the dozens of Indians Theranos employed, the fear of being fired was more than just the dread of losing a paycheck. Most were on H-1B visas and dependent on their continued employment at the company to remain in the country. With a despotic boss like Sunny holding their fates in his hands, it was akin to indentured servitude. Sunny, in fact, had the master-servant mentality common among an older generation of Indian businessmen. Employees were his minions. He expected them to be at his disposal at all hours of the day or night and on weekends. He checked the security logs every morning to see when they badged in and out. Every evening, around seven thirty, he made a fly-by of the engineering department to make sure people were still at their desks working.”
Fake-it-until-you-make-it
"By positioning Theranos as a tech company in the heart of the Valley, Holmes channeled this fake-it-until-you-make-it culture, and she went to extreme lengths to hide the fakery. Many companies in Silicon Valley make their employees sign nondisclosure agreements, but at Theranos the obsession with secrecy reached a whole different level. Employees were prohibited from putting “Theranos” on their LinkedIn profiles. Instead, they were told to write that they worked for a “private biotechnology company.” Some former employees received cease-and-desist letters from Theranos lawyers for posting descriptions of their jobs at the company that were deemed too detailed."
With a board of
directors including Henry Kissinger, 94 years old, with top venture capitalists
on board, with her original Stanford chemistry professor Channing Robertson,
receiving a 500,000 dollars check for just being a cover up consultant, General Jim Mattis
who became Trump Defense Secretary, few is any contested Elisabeth legitimacy
Elizabeth was a
drop-out of Stanford with some hypnotic presence. How come she fascinated most
famous people on the Valley, but fall under the influence of her boyfriend Ramesh
“Sunny” Balwani? He was twenty years older and a married man when they first
met.
"Sunny was a force of nature, and not in a good way. Though only about five foot five and portly, he made up for his diminutive stature with an aggressive, in-your-face management style. His thick eyebrows and almond-shaped eyes, set above a mouth that drooped at the edges and a square chin, projected an air of menace. He was haughty and demeaning toward employees, barking orders and dressing people down."
Just read the
book for the details and no one ask a question. Murdoch invests by gut feeling, he never does due diligence
 |
| Sunny Balwani and Elizabeth Anne Holmes |
How could that happen?
I asked myself this question whether this was
autogenerated by Silicon Valley itself, by the culture of Unicorn or by the deterioration of Stanford University clout accepting success at any price?
Epilogue - for now
If you read the LinkedIn as I do, 99% of the
people are not entrepreneurs. They just pretend being entrepreneurial when all
they want is a job.
So let’s assume although Elizabeth is proven
guilty, she gets funded again. Would you refuse to work for her? No! You wouldn’t, despite what happened to
Theranos. You will take the job again with both hands and pray this time is
Kosher.
And Bad Blood will become a cult book, just like
Paul Coelho “The Alchemist” and Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and the
words Fake-until-you-make-it will enter the Bible.
See recent article
June 15, 2018 from Los Angeles Times
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