summary ofBad BloodBook by John Carreyrou

first KEY POINT

Elizabeth Holmes was a competitive child

Elizabeth Anne Holmes always had ambitions of becoming a businesswoman. When she was seven, she designed a time machine and made many engineering sketches. In 2002, Elizabeth got into Stanford as a President's Scholar at age eighteen.Holmes lobbied her way into assisting in Channing Robertson’s research lab when he was the most significant figure in the Stanford chemical engineering department. She dropped out of Stanford after her internship at the Genome Institute of Singapore, where she’d tested patients using syringes and swabs.After that, Holmes patented an arm patch for both diagnosis and treatment. She was determined to draw from her experiences in Robertson’s classes and internship. She recruited Shaunak Roy, Robertson’s Ph.D. student, as her first employee upon the company’s launch.

Holmes started operations in Burlingame, California, but later moved to an industrial zone in Menlo Park. She leveraged her family connections and convinced Tim Draper, a former neighbor, to invest $1 million in her firm.

By the end of 2004, Holmes had raised $6 million from investors. Shaunak felt they were accomplishing their first goals after eighteen months of working. The company launched its prototype Theranos 1.0, grew by 23 more staff, and technology magazine Red Herring listed them as the hottest startup in the valley.This summary explains how a rising company sank to the bottom, the pitfalls of leadership, and how truth-telling can be a lifesaver in everything we do.