Tyler Shultz
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Search Engine · What it’s like when Elizabeth Holmes decides to destroy your life
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What Happened to Tyler Shultz After He Blew the Whistle on Theranos?
PJ Vogt says the papers Theranos's lawyers brought that evening were a temporary restraining order and a notice to appear in court that Friday, not a nondisclosure agreement, and that the fight cost Tyler Shultz and his parents nearly $500,000. Tyler says private investigators trailed him and his parents, and he thinks they trailed their lawyers as well. He became so anxious that he slept with a knife.
The turn came when the Wall Street Journal published its Theranos reporting. Walgreens ended the partnership and investors pulled out. Elizabeth Holmes's story collapsed, and so did the company. For a while, Elizabeth Holmes was not a main character in the public imagination. Now she is back.
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Why Does Tyler Shultz Push Back on the New Elizabeth Holmes Hype?
Tyler Shultz feels the settled account of Elizabeth Holmes has been slightly undone. He wonders what the next stepping stone is in her rehabilitation and what role the movie plays in it. He still thinks the overwhelming majority of people agree with his version of reality. A fringe is getting maybe stronger, or feels emboldened by the film to speak in her favor.
He wishes Nathan Fielder or Lance Oppenheim had reached out. He is happy not to be in the film. If he had been in the film, he would have been on guard, thinking he was about to get got. He knows how Nathan Fielder works. He wishes he could have prepared Nathan Fielder, or at least that Nathan Fielder had consulted him. The open que
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Should You Watch the Elizabeth Holmes Movie Blind?
Tyler Shultz says you should not watch the Elizabeth Holmes movie blind. Going in with no research is the worst advice. A little research lets you see an artistic exploration of Elizabeth's psyche, and it also tells you she is a liar, truly guilty of the investor fraud she is in prison for. He believes she should also be in prison for harming people.
He thought audiences might already have more context than they did. He expected a post-credits reel of her lying over and over, so that after the artistic film drew sympathy the horrible things she did would show how good storytelling can obscure the truth. The reel was not there. He hoped the world already had enough context. After looking on
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Were Theranos Investors Also to Blame?
Tyler Shultz says the old white men who backed Elizabeth Holmes were the mark, and they are also responsible. They gave her power, money, and credibility, and they did not do their diligence. On paper, the people who gave her $100 million checks are the victims. In his take, they are part of the problem.
The same pattern happens all the time in investing. The backers pointed at other people who they felt knew what was going on. Rupert Murdoch pointed at Larry Ellison and called him a genius. Larry Ellison pointed at George Shultz and called him a genius. George Shultz, his grandfather, pointed at Channing Robertson and called him a genius.
Channing Robertson was the kernel of credibility t
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What Did Henry Kissinger Think of the Theranos Box?
Tyler Shultz says Henry Kissinger thought the Theranos box was not real. A former secretary of state on the board had the same worry Tyler did: the device did not exist.
Tyler had asked to meet his grandfather with no lawyers around. After an argument that went nowhere, Theranos needed somebody to sign a one-page nondisclosure agreement so the company could say it defended its trade secrets. Tyler agreed. Two lawyers were already in the house. He felt blindsided, unprepared, and betrayed. When his grandfather left to get the two lawyers, his step-grandmother, who had been quietly listening, leaned in and said Henry Kissinger thinks it is all fake and thinks the box does not actually exist.
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Why Are Fake Theranos Results Worse Than a Broken iPhone?
Tyler Shultz says a fake Theranos result is worse than a broken iPhone because the person who gets a medical diagnostic test has no idea whether the result is accurate. When a software product fails, the user sees the failure. Apple does not keep backup fake information on the iPhone and throw it at the user so the phone looks like it worked, the way fake texts from a mom would.
He knew the test did not work, and that is when he started speaking up. Theranos was actively hurting people with the test in use. Amazing technology behind a locked door he never got to see would not change the harm.
PJ Vogt points to reporter John Carreyrou's book Bad Blood, where a teenage girl was mistakenly to
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Why Did Elizabeth Holmes Go to Prison?
Tyler Shultz says Elizabeth Holmes went to prison because she told investors Theranos had already built a device, that every test was done on a finger prick, that every test was done on a Theranos product, and that no test was run on third-party equipment. The device they had built could not perform the tests and was hurting people. They were knowingly giving people incorrect medical information with a device that could only test for one thing at a time and could not test for that one thing accurately.
The accurate description was that they were working on a device that theoretically could have done anything. If she had gone to investors and said they were working on building a device that
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What Was Missing From the Theranos Machine?
Tyler Shultz was 22 when he finally saw the Theranos device in a validation lab, and the promised technology was not there. The open reader, the machine without its shell, was an eight channel pipette on a robotic arm. It was not a standalone platform. It tested only one thing at a time, ran only one type of test, and was poorly engineered, so it did not run even that one test very well.
His manager had worked at Theranos for several years, had a PhD and a postdoc in molecular biology, and was seeing the device for the first time too. The woman running the demonstration shrugged when asked whether the machine was cool, said they could decide for themselves, and walked away. No centrifuges w
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Was Theranos Using Its Own Product at All?
Tyler Shultz learned on his first day at Theranos, before he even saw the product, that the company was not using the product at all. The product had just launched, and zero tests had been validated on the Theranos platform. The red flags were already there on day one.
Patients who went into Walgreens did not get a finger prick. They got a needle in the arm. None of the tests ran on Theranos equipment. The blood took separate paths. Theranos would contract with other labs and send the blood out to UCSF. Or Theranos would test the blood on third party equipment from within Theranos. Or Theranos would dilute the blood and run the diluted sample on third party equipment.
The Walgreens launch
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How Secretive Was Working at Theranos?
Tyler Shultz realized right away that Theranos was extremely secretive. Employees had to sign very overbearing NDAs. He was given a list of words not to use when describing his job to people, and he could not say anything about the work.
The limits reached home and the lab. They told employees not to tell a spouse what the job was and not to talk to colleagues about what the job was. It was as if he were working at the CIA. Every room had a locked door, and even within the locked rooms there were sometimes barricades no one was supposed to look behind.
When he first joined, he worked in a research lab developing antibodies that would be used in the tests. Not a single person he worked with
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How Did Tyler Shultz Meet Elizabeth Holmes?
Tyler Shultz met Elizabeth Holmes as a junior at Stanford University, after his grandfather George Shultz called him over to the house. George lived and worked on campus and said a brilliant woman was coming for a discussion, and that Tyler would learn a lot by listening in. Tyler had little context, got on his bike, and rode there.
Holmes wore an all-black outfit with a black turtleneck, spoke in a deep, monotone, hypnotic voice, and had unblinking, piercing blue eyes. She said she had dropped out of Stanford at 19 and invented a blood-testing technology in her uncle's basement that could run anything a central laboratory could test for from a single drop of blood, anywhere with electricit