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The Grandson

tanding in the middle of a crowd of his new colleagues in the
cafeteria of the old Facebook building, Tyler Shultz listened to
an emotional speech Elizabeth was giving. She was talking
about her uncle’s premature death from cancer and how an early
warning from Theranos’s blood tests could have prevented it. That was
what she had spent the past ten years tirelessly working toward, she
said teary-eyed, her voice catching: a world in which no one would
have to say goodbye to a loved one too soon. Tyler found the message
deeply inspiring. He had started working at Theranos less than a week
earlier, after graduating from Stanford the previous spring and taking
the summer off to backpack around Europe. There had been a lot to
absorb in the space of a few days, not least of which was the news
Elizabeth had called this all-employee meeting to announce: the
company was going live with its technology in Walgreens stores.

Tyler had first met Elizabeth in late 2011 when he’d dropped by his
grandfather George’s house near the Stanford campus. He was a junior
then, majoring in mechanical engineering. Elizabeth’s vision of instant
and painless tests run on drops of blood collected from fingertips had
struck an immediate chord with him. After interning at Theranos that
summer, he’d changed his major to biology and applied for a full-time
position at the company.

His first day at work had been filled with drama. A woman named
Anjali who headed the immunoassay team had quit, and a group of
employees had gathered in the parking lot to say goodbye to her. Word
was that Anjali and Elizabeth had had a big falling-out. Then, three