Just finished reading “Bad Blood” which is the story of the high flying startup company Theranos and its founder (at age 19) Elizabeth Holmes.
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/ It is a page turner – recommended if not the best book of the year so far … plus … Followers of LENR will be struck by the parallels of this sad tale to the Andrea Rossi story… “Fonly” (if only) Rossi had the smile and charm of Holmes (not to mention the cahones) … he might have pulled it off. (assuming the nickel-hydrogen reaction is indeed anomalous) Had Liz been a bit more honest – she too could possibly would have found a (reduced) niche for her product. It did work, on occasion. For a brief moment she was worth about $ 5 billion… now she is homeless and facing “orange is the new black”. Does the Jobs’ turtleneck come in orange? Hang in there Liz … maybe you can still “talk you way out” of this one… like Rossi, you still have a legion of supporters and a base technology which arguably does work from time to time. In fact, another silicon valley startup is actually moving into this blood-testing space and picking up the pieces – with a similar but product (and with greatly reduced specs) which they will probably take it to market soon. Curiously, that would be the best thing that could happen for Holmes in terms of a “Fake it till you make it” defense. Which they don’t teach in B-school… yet… but faking (overstating) data to a lesser degree is still, as it always was, a cornerstone strategy of many a high tech startups.
