This book reads like a thriller---which if you think about is kind of amazing, since it’s about a startup with fake blood testing technology. There’s not sex and murder in it (and the Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani romance is…uh…not tantalizing, to say the least) but there’s so much suspense in Carreyrou being the journalist hero fighting to get the Truth about Theranos out to the public.
Especially at the epilogue, this is an indictment of Silicon Valley’s “fake it until you make it” culture. What might be okay to do at a software startup is not at a medical one, and because of the valorization of founders in the Valley as Randian heroes, Elizabeth Holmes hurt a lot of patients and could’ve hurt a lot more. It’s kind of incredible how she got away with faking so much, and how easily people around her swept Theranos’s problems under the rug because of her charisma. She must’ve been a hell of a schmoozer.