Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMzjWh96wro
The Joe Rogan Experience I wanted to talk to you about this is a little bit of a deviation but it's not really I wanted to talk to you about theranos because I am [ __ ] completely obsessed with that lady and her scam company dude did you know that I was almost the chief medical officer of that company no yeah dude so in 2006 my McKinsey office which was in Palo Alto was on the same was on Page Mill which was one street over from where theranos was located so theranos at the time was a super small company so a good friend of mine his father-in-law was on the board and knew Elizabeth Holmes very well he was her professor at Stanford and the company was small at that time it's like maybe 30 people there something like that and he said look I you know I want you my friend um to potentially look at this company and because they could really use a CFO and he was in private Equity at the time really smart guy and to make long story short I got introduced to Elizabeth so I went down and had lunch with her one day did you ever catch her talking in a real voice you know it's so I don't remember I met her later and she already had the fake voice but I can't remember that day what her voice was like I I wish I could remember but you know it's like 15 years ago right I would remember if it was weird like I don't think I don't think it was I think it might have been a talk like this I would say what is going on yeah yeah if you had throat cancer I don't I don't what are you doing I I think she was she must have been talking to normal voice but here's what interested me I sat down in the office and she pulled out a black box that was I don't know if it was called Edison at the time or if it was the precursor to what would become Edison um Diagnostics is not something I knew a ton about but you know I'd spent two years at the NIH and I certainly understand how chemical reagents work and I understand how chemical assays work and I know how for example and Eliza works and Eliza is a type of um assay that you do to measure something but it requires a lot of
washing and rinsing and repeating and I know that many biomarkers that are of interest for example something like insulin you know if you want to measure a person's insulin level you have to do these types of assays right so I was saying to her you know Elizabeth I don't understand how you could put a drop of blood in here and get anything out that's more interesting than glucose hemoglobin sodium and potassium the really simple things that can work you know that can be measured off a drop of blood and she kind of gave me some answer and I said well can I see the inside of the box and she said absolutely not and I said well I've signed an NDA you know I had to sign an NDA to get in the building so and she was like nope so um I just decided I wasn't interested in the company because I couldn't get sort of straight answers from her so I ended up not doing it so fast forward to 20 this was 2006. fast forward to 2015 she's now on the cover of Forbes and um and you're like well no no I I just I remember one day saying to my wife because she was on the cover of Forbes and the company was valued a little over nine billion dollars and I said to my wife do you know how much we would be worth if I had taken that job now and she's like how much and I told her and she's like good and I so I'm at the Vanity Fair Event in San Francisco this by I didn't know it at the time this was a week before the Wall Street Journal article would fall John cario's article that was the one that kind of unraveled all of theranos in October of 2015. and what how did he figure it out how'd this one guy figure out that it was all so I haven't read his book Bad Blood um but I saw the documentary so you know that's like a poor man's version of it but basically just interviewing people who were formerly employees of the company oh so they were being Spillers yeah yeah and they were basically like yeah this is a total scam oh my God and so sure enough I'm at this reception because she and she's the speaker of the event so she's like it's a four-day conference and she's the she's the one
everyone there is there a c so I'm I'm sitting at the a table and I'm having a cocktail and she walks up and she and I said hey Elizabeth you probably don't remember me she goes no I remember you exactly and she remembered my name and even remembered how I had been introduced to her I was like really Blown Away we exchanged pleasantries she gave me her card and then a week later it all unraveled and it's really funny I still have the card I should frame it yeah yeah yeah um she must have known that the [ __ ] was hitting no no she totally did yeah yeah because the [ __ ] was hitting the fan six months earlier what does one do and it's not like you can liquidate right like you if you're worth nine billion dollars but it's all stock and you know the product is nonsense you can't even get out so it's a private company so at best you know she could have along the way been doing secondaries off her take but oh so it wasn't even yeah yeah I'm fascinated that she wouldn't let you look into the box because I guess if you looked into the box you would immediately be able to be I don't know that I would have let's I don't want to overstate my credentials I'm not a clinical chemist I I'm she could have duped me I'm sure but she didn't I mean and again we're under NDA we're talking about me joining her company as a chief medical officer like right how are you not going to let me see inside this freaking box like what do you want how am I gonna do my job does she have duped you though if she's not technically astute like she doesn't really understand I don't know she could I mean look she presumably duped people smarter than me right I think she do this is what drives me crazy I think she duped people from the image I think they wanted to believe they wanted to believe that here's this female Wonder kind who left Stanford at 19 years old dropped out of school and figured out this amazing technology and along the way became at least until she got busted the richest self-made woman ever she was worth I think like her own four and a half billion yeah crazy crazy and she just faked it and one of the ways she got busted was people from college that she went to school with were like why are you talking like that
like what's happening and then people started hearing that that wasn't her real voice and then people started like they were rumors and murmurs there's so many layers to that story oh man no doubt yeah it's a fascinating one it really is it's such an interesting story so for you when all that was going down that must have been incredibly sweet because now you don't have to think man I missed out on all that money yeah for sure and I and I was also I felt a little bit validated like okay it there was a reason she didn't want to show me the inside of the box right yeah yeah it might have been empty it literally might have been empty there was candy in there it's a giant like little thing yeah dude she got so many people she got Betsy DeVos for like 100 million and poor General Mattis think I didn't have two nickels yeah corrupt together when he gets out of the military he put like a couple hundred K in or something obscene for him yeah [ __ ] crazy whenever someone comes to me like some guy came to me with some crazy I mean I don't know if it's real so I don't want to talk about it like say it specifically but if it's true it sounds like this guy's gonna revolutionize a form of travel and so he's telling me about this I was like Wow and then I said to my business manager who's with me at the time I go don't ever forget about theranos whenever someone tells you something the moment someone tells me I go yeah when it happens I believe you I'm I don't want to be involved in any groundbreaking [ __ ] before it actually especially in some area where I'm completely ignorant and what am I going to do just start going to school try to figure out engineering think of this guy as saying something that's actually possible and plausible no can't do it not interested buddy [Laughter] so for you though when it did come out though there had to be like a a cool feeling of satisfaction there had to be a little something there well you're like I mean the first person I called was my buddy the guy who had introduced me to her way back and I was like dude what are the dinner conversations like and he's like oh dude it's not good because his father-in-law was still in the believing Camp oh no oh yeah they
talk about him in the yeah oh [ __ ] so it was so he got duped long after the The Jig was up right yeah I I again I don't know the details but it was it was I was like man [ __ ] it's good that we didn't do that but watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify