Perhaps many of you have heard the story of Elizabeth Holmes. The show 20/20 recently did an entire show about Elizabeth and her company Theranos.
The story is fascinating. As good as 20/20 was at covering this story the book Bad Blood by John Carreyrou was even better. He tells the story of a 19 year old Stamford Drop out who wanted to be the next Steve Jobs.
By the time she was twenty one she had raised six million dollars for her start up. The company, according to her, was about to make this monumental break through. Her machine could use a minimal amount of blood, a finger stick really and perform many tests on this small sample. I don't know about you but I have horrible veins and blood draws are something I don't look forward to. I would be thrilled to have a machine and the scientific technology to minimize my anguish.
Imagine walking into a CVS and getting a pin prick that would provide a sample that would be used to run tests with results coming back quickly, maybe on the spot. Not only could one test be performed but the machine her company designed could perform many tests.
She was a great at selling this idea. CVS and others were jumping on the Elizabeth band wagon. But somewhere along the way things started to fall apart and the house of cards she built fell.
If you are in the mood for a good non fiction book, read this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment