Business books of the year: Lies, deception, murder, greed and rugby keep pages turning

Business books of the year

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies In a Silicon Valley Startup

by John Carreyrou

Theranos is probably not a name that excites immediate recognition on this side of the Atlantic, but it remains one of the biggest corporate collapses for many years in the US. Founded in 2003 as a groundbreaking healthcare technology company by the then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised over €650m from investors that led to an eventual €9bn valuation at its peak in 2013. Ms Holmes was labelled “the female Steve Jobs” — a comparison the Stanford University dropout happily acknowledged as she pushed her groundbreaking innovation that promised to shake up the medical industry with a revolutionary machine capable of making blood testing faster and easier. Investors included Oracle’s Larry Ellison and venture capitalist Tim Draper. There was just one problem — the technology did not work. The book drills deeply behind the Theranos profile to examine why so many otherwise financially savvy big hitters fell for such a sham.