The List of Theranos' Screw-Ups is a Mile Long: My Bet is it will be Taught in Business Schools as a Cautionary Tale

Now this is how to take $9 billion and flush it down the toilet.

The question is, how could this have happened? How could such a highly valued startup on its way to upending the $76 billion laboratory diagnostics industry by replacing test tubes of blood drawn from a vein with a few drops from a finger stick fall so far so fast? And how could Holmes’ star, which shone so brightly, fall practically overnight.   

If you had to find a way to destroy a brand and blow a $9 billion valuation, you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better plan than the one Holmes has pursued since October 16, 2015. If you had just six months to kill Theranos, this is how you’d do it:   

What follows is a tale of woe that reads like a Greek tragedy. Maybe this CEO Holmes has a future in the government sector where they can waste $9 billion over a long lunch.