Rating: 5/5

Extremely well written story about the crazy ride of Theranos, a unicorn Silicon Valley startup.

I’m not usually interested in news or books about startups, but this one is very different. It’s not so much about business as it is about psychology. It’s about a CEO persuading and controlling a group of people around her for several years.

And not just any group of people. There were some seriously heavyweight business profiles on the board of Theranos. In fact I was quite surprised to see so many names I recognised, people like Jim Mattis and Rubert Murcoch.

Others have described this book as a page-turner, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s been a while since a book has been so hard for me to put down.

The book is structured mostly chronologically, but not strictly so. It is obvious that the author is not only a great writer (which is to be expected from a WSJ reporter) but also a very thorough researcher.

In some similar “inside story” books I’ve read (Fire and Fury in particular) I constantly have a nagging sensation that some of the details are simply made up. Conversations recounted verbatim which the author had no way of knowing about, people’s fears and thoughts etc. Not in Bad Blood. Everything seems very well researched and credible.

Highly recommended even if you don’t care about Silicon Valley or business.