Bill writes a review of John Carreyou’s Bad Blood book https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Bad-Blood
“Theranos is the worst-case scenario of what happens when a CEO prioritizes personal legacy above all else—but I hope that people don’t use it as an excuse to write off the next young woman with a big idea. I also don’t want Bad Blood to scare people away from next-gen diagnostics. Theranos went to extraordinary lengths to get around quality standards. The industry is highly regulated, and new diagnostics undergo rigorous testing.”
What got me curious is thinking about what would happen if Elizabeth Holmes was in a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates review. It is hard to imagine we should survive and they both would say the idea is good, but this is the wrong person to get it done. Steve passed away in Oct 2011 so he has no overlap with Elizabeth. Bill is still going and he is passionate about human health. It is ironic that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as inventors is often referenced by
Elizabeth had nothing to fear from running into Steve Jobs. Her biggest fear could be Bill Gates getting a peak at what Theranos was inside. I think Elizabeth was careful to stay clear of Bill Gates and his inner circle of health advisors. The vent diagram had no overlap. Well there is one overlap between Theranos and Bill Gates. That was David Boies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boies”
At Cravath, he represented the Justice Department in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Boies won a "victory" at trial,[10] and the verdict was upheld on appeal. The appellate court overturned the relief ordered (breakup of the company) back to the trial court for further proceedings. Thereafter, the George W. Bush administration settled the case. Bill Gates said Boies was "out to destroy Microsoft".[11] In 2001, the Washington Monthly called Boies "a brilliant trial lawyer", "a latter-day Clarence Darrow", and "a mad genius" for his work on the Microsoft case.[10]
With David Boies on the Theranos board and representing Theranos as an attorney there is no way Bill would get close to Theranos. So did Elizabeth Holmes add David Boies to protect her from Bill Gates?She did hire David Boies to protect the company and go after the whistleblowers. That didn’t quite work as the biggest heroes from the Theranos saga are the whistleblowers - Erika Cheung and Tyler Schultz. Below are both of them speaking at a Stanford University event.
