# The Untold Story About The Female Steve Jobs NEW ECONOMIES · 2025-10-06 Tyler Shultz, the former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, recounts how a 23-year-old took on one of Silicon Valley's most hyped startups, revealing the failed technology and manipulation behind Elizabeth Holmes' vision. From day one, Shultz saw red flags: the product launched with zero validated tests, and executives locked lab doors from regulators. He internally flagged a syphilis test with 65% sensitivity but received an email from Sunny Balwani described as 'dripping with venom' and calling him arrogant. After quitting, Theranos used lawyers and his grandfather, former Secretary of State George Shultz, to pressure him, leading to $400,000–$500,000 in legal fees. The Wall Street Journal expose led to investigations, and Holmes and Balwani were convicted on 4 and 12 counts respectively. Shultz now speaks on lessons from Theranos and trends in diagnostics, including Alzheimer's disease. ## Questions this episode answers ### What did Tyler Shultz discover about Theranos' technology that led him to blow the whistle? Tyler Shultz found that Theranos' devices were rudimentary—an 8-channel pipette on a robotic arm with no microfluidics. The breaking point was a syphilis test validated at 95% sensitivity, but his own lab calculations showed only 65–80%. Management achieved the number by manipulating an equivocal zone to exclude uncertain samples, calling it a "business decision." He feared this would harm patients with false negatives for a treatable disease. [28:46](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/119e5ed0-46e4-4f5f-a977-6a666f2c08e6?t=1726000) ### How did Tyler Shultz's family, especially his grandfather George Shultz, react when he became a whistleblower? Tyler's father warned him that Theranos would "destroy your life" and urged him to give up. His grandfather, former Secretary of State George Shultz, initially believed Elizabeth Holmes' lies and pressured Tyler to sign a false affidavit during a meeting with lawyers at his home. Eventually, George admitted Tyler was right but never apologized. Tyler's step-grandmother secretly gave him a lawyer's number during the confrontation. [49:17](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/119e5ed0-46e4-4f5f-a977-6a666f2c08e6?t=2957000) ### What false claim did Theranos make about its devices being used by the U.S. military? Theranos circulated a fabricated quote attributed to General Jim Mattis, falsely claiming the devices were used on medevac helicopters in Afghanistan, boosting survival rates by 30% to 98%. The quote included specific percentages and emotional details about soldiers' lives to lend credibility. Tyler said his grandfather George Shultz repeated the claim, showing how thoroughly the board was deceived. [53:50](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/119e5ed0-46e4-4f5f-a977-6a666f2c08e6?t=3230000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Intro** - [1:40] Tyler Shultz first met Elizabeth Holmes at age 20 in his grandfather's living room. - [2:05] Elizabeth Holmes wore a black turtleneck and spoke in a deep, hypnotic voice, intentionally modeled after Steve Jobs. - [4:58] Elizabeth Holmes used props like a sparse apartment and black turtlenecks to craft a monk-like devotion narrative. - [7:54] Elizabeth Holmes wrote to herself: 'Know the outcome of every interaction before you have it.' - **[10:30] Joining** - [10:47] Tyler Shultz joined Theranos at age 22, thinking it was the only place he'd ever work. - [11:16] On Tyler's first day, the validation manager had a screaming match with Sunny and Elizabeth and was crying in the parking lot. - [12:10] At launch, Theranos had zero validated tests; finger pricks weren't used, and tests were run on third-party machines. - [13:03] Theranos labs had locked doors and aggressive NDAs; employees were told not to talk to spouses about work. - **[17:40] Inside** - [18:01] Sunny Balwani emailed all research staff to stop experiments and move to 'Normandy,' the lab with the Edison devices. - [20:42] Seeing the open reader, Tyler Shultz realized the Edison was just an eight-channel pipette on a robotic arm with no microfluidics. - [22:00] The Theranos device could only test one analyte at a time, not hundreds from a single drop of blood. - [23:27] Tyler Shultz vs Y Combinator president: Holmes was not close; her device was rudimentary. - **[25:40] Downhill** - [25:58] During CLIA inspections, Theranos locked the doors to Normandy so regulators thought it was a utility closet. - [26:53] Theranos cheated proficiency testing by running samples on third-party analyzers and reporting those results, not its own. - [28:14] Theranos told patients they had HIV, cancer recurrence, or miscarriage incorrectly, and sent people to the ER for non-existent high potassium. - [29:42] Despite a syphilis test having 65% sensitivity and false positives, the medical director signed off on it as safe and effective. - [31:00] Tyler Shultz decided to confront Elizabeth Holmes, hoping his relationship with his grandfather would protect him from retaliation. - [31:33] Tyler confronted Holmes that the website's claim of <10% CV was false; for syphilis it was 43%, and for vitamin D it was 19–23%. - **[37:49] The Bully** - [37:56] Tyler Shultz describes Sunny Balwani as a bully who treated people like machinery and wanted to be a mob boss. - [39:27] Sunny Balwani texted Elizabeth Holmes about Tyler: 'Knocking legs off one at a time is the best way… We're going to nail this motherfucker.' - **[42:20] Resignation** - [42:53] After quitting, Theranos HR asked Tyler to sign a new NDA and told him security was too busy to escort him out, so he walked himself out. - [43:08] Elizabeth Holmes told George Shultz that Tyler had a vendetta and warned that if he executed it, he would lose. - [45:25] Elizabeth Holmes at Thanksgiving dinner: 'I just want to say that I love and appreciate every single member of the Shultz family.' - [45:59] Tyler Shultz on Holmes at family dinner: 'It felt like the killer's in the house.' - **[46:00] Whistleblower** - [46:27] Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou reached out to Tyler Shultz, who bought a burner phone to talk to him anonymously. - [47:07] Tyler provided Carreyrou with his email exchange with Balwani, hoping tough questions would be asked for the first time. - [48:13] Tyler saw working with the WSJ as a chance to let his grandfather, a Nixon and Reagan admin veteran, preserve his integrity before he died. - [49:17] Tyler's father warned him: 'You know how powerful they are… They are going to destroy your life, and they will do it with a smile on their face.' - **[50:00] Ambush** - [50:11] George Shultz told Tyler to sign a one-page NDA, saying it would 'end a world of suffering'—but it was a trap. - [51:40] Tyler decided to lie to his grandfather about talking to the WSJ, following a friend's advice to gather information first. - [55:51] When Tyler came expecting an NDA, George Shultz brought in two Theranos lawyers who served him with a temporary restraining order. - [58:17] When his step-grandmother became uncomfortable, Tyler told the lawyers: 'You are making my grandmother uncomfortable. This conversation needs to end.' - [58:41] George Shultz eventually stood up and kicked the lawyers out of his house, calling their ambush a disaster. - [1:00:06] George Shultz negotiated with the lawyers to remove the demand for names, telling them, 'My grandson's not a rat.' - **[1:06:00] Unraveling** - [1:06:18] The Wall Street Journal published its investigation, sparking FDA and CMS investigations that found immediate patient jeopardy. - [1:06:59] The SEC found Holmes told investors revenue was $100 million when it was actually $100,000. - [1:07:18] Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison; Sunny Balwani received 14 years. - **[1:09:00] Forgiveness** - [1:09:03] Tyler Shultz says his grandfather eventually admitted Holmes lied, but never apologized or acknowledged his role in enabling her. - [1:10:35] George Shultz recounted seeing Elizabeth Holmes lie to Navy sailors with tears in her eyes about saving servicemen's lives. - **[1:11:50] Moving On** - [1:13:01] Elizabeth Holmes occupied Tyler's thoughts near 100% of the time; now he only thinks of her during interviews. - **[1:15:08] Future** - [1:15:44] Tyler Shultz is excited about Alzheimer's disease progress: two FDA-approved therapies slow onset by 30%, with 34 in phase 3 trials. - [1:16:45] Tyler Shultz predicts that within 5 to 10 years, we will have good drugs for early-onset Alzheimer's disease. - [1:17:09] Alzheimer's diagnostics are still poor: PET scans for amyloid are not very specific, and spinal taps are invasive and expensive. - [1:20:17] Tyler points to Kurex as a model: it tests IgE allergies and delivers sublingual immunotherapy directly, capturing full value. - [1:22:55] Tyler argues that a point-of-care diagnostic must replace the full menu of LabCorp/Quest to be useful, an extremely challenging feat. - [1:24:49] Tyler says he would never meet Elizabeth Holmes if she were free, as no outcome would be good for him. ## Speakers - **Ollie Forsyth** (host) - **Tyler Shultz** (guest) ## Topics Startup Scandals ## Mentioned Hemantis (company), Kurex (company), LabCorp (company), Quest (company), Roche (company), Siemens (company), Theranos (company), Walgreens (company), Y Combinator (company), Edison (product) ## Transcript ### Intro **Ollie Forsyth** [0:01] Elizabeth Holmes. Who is this person? **Tyler Shultz** [0:03] Elizabeth had this aura about her that really draws people in. She was able to take these pieces of the story and just paint this beautiful picture that she was the next Steve Jobs, the female Steve Jobs. She knew exactly what she needed to tell you to get you to do the things that she needed you to do. And so I was just enamored by the vision of Theranos. Butright off the bat, day one, there were red flags. Elizabeth told us she essentially invented this revolutionary technology, a technology that had this incredible power to change the way that we practice healthcare. But it's all manipulation. We told people that they had HIV when they didn't. We told people that their cancer had recurred when it had not. We sent people to the emergency room because their potassium levels were so high that they should be dead. And so I thought, where no one else is willing to speak up here, I'm going to go do it. My dad, he said, "You know how powerful they are. You know how much money they have. They are going to destroy your life, and they will do it with a smile on their face. Just give up." You could not talk to anybody about Theranos. And the worst-case scenario was. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:08] Tyler, welcome to the podcast show. Great to have you here. **Tyler Shultz** [1:11] Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:14] I've known you for a long time. I've been reading all of your podcasts, your stories. You've had quite the ride in the last 10 years. **Tyler Shultz** [1:22] Yeah, no kidding. I've had a very strange professional career, no doubt. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:29] So take us back to the early days. How did it all come about? I think you were 23, 24, and you met this person called Elizabeth Holmes. What happened? **Tyler Shultz** [1:40] Yeah, so the first time that I met her, I was actually 20 years old. So just before we launch into all of this, I would love to just quickly put a timeframe on everything. So I met her when I was 20 years old. She didn't go to prison until I was 32, and I'm 34 now. So this really has consumed the entirety of my adult life, the entirety of my 20s. But yeah, so I met her when I was a junior at Stanford. And actually, I met her in my grandfather's living room because he happened to live and work on campus at this group called the Hoover Institute at the time. And one day he called me up and he just said, "I'm having this brilliant woman come over to my house for a discussion. I think you would learn a lot if you came on over and listened in." So I hopped on my bike, biked over to his house, and that's where I met Elizabeth for the first time. She, of course, was wearing her all-black outfit with the black turtleneck, which was very intentionally modeled after Steve Jobs. I heard her very deep, monotone, but hypnotic voice. I saw her piercing blue, unblinking eyes. And that's where I really heard her tell us her story and her vision for Theranos. **Ollie Forsyth** [2:48] The first kind of encounter, was it intimidating? Was it, "Wow, what was that like?" **Tyler Shultz** [2:56] Yeah, I was blown away. So hearing her story and the vision and what she told us was she dropped out of Stanford when she was 19 years old and essentially invented this revolutionary technology in her uncle's basement that could test for anything a central laboratory could test for, but with just a single drop of blood. And you could do this anywhere where you had access to electricity. So we're talking about helicopters and battlefields and operating rooms and patients' homes and Safeways and Walgreens. And it really just seemed like a technology that had no limitations, that had this incredible power to change the way that we practice healthcare. And she was just incredibly captivating. And so I was just enamored by the vision of Theranos. And I just knew that this was something that I needed to be involved with. This is where I wanted to work. **Ollie Forsyth** [3:45] Even when I was 16, 17, I remember Theranos was, "Wow." Elizabeth was on all these speaking stages with Bill Clinton. And I'm like, "Who is this person?" **Tyler Shultz** [3:58] She was really good at surrounding herself with powerful people. And she just had this aura about her where she felt very powerful and important herself. And that really draws people in. And it is amazing that she was able to get she did demos of this device in the White House. And she shared the stages with Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. And yeah, she really became a very powerful person. **Ollie Forsyth** [4:25] Yeah. And when you look at the interviews, I mean, she's totally with her. She's totally together, very focused, looking at you in her glaze eyes. As Ori will touch on later, I also met Elizabeth. And this is what happened. We'll talk about that more later. **Tyler Shultz** [4:44] Oh, man. Cliffhangers. **Ollie Forsyth** [4:47] Cliffhanger. But yeah, the black turtle jumper, sweaters. This is all she wore. And it's very well documented,right? **Tyler Shultz** [4:58] Yeah. Yeah, I like to say that founders need to be really good at telling stories and getting people to believe in their vision. Elizabeth took it entirely a much bigger step forward in writing her story. She chose the details of the story that really just manipulated people into believing in her vision. And part of that were props that she would use. And so in a lot of interviews, instead of talking about the substance of her company, they would end up talking about the black turtleneck and how she was the next Steve Jobs, the female Steve Jobs. She would also use things like this apartment that she had in Palo Alto, which was essentially a prop. So when they launched the company, this reporter came in and did a big story about Elizabeth and Theranos and even interviewed her family. And Elizabeth showed this reporter her two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto that just had the classic mattress on the floor and a closet full of black turtlenecks, a refrigerator with Evian water bottles. And the reporter described her as being incredibly austere, as having almost like a monk-like devotion to Theranos. And Elizabeth would talk about that as well, how she would never have a boyfriend. She would never have a husband. She would never have children. That Theranos was her family. Theranos was her religion. She was just completely dedicated to Theranos and its vision. And in reality, she did not live in that two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto that she showed to reporters. She lived in a mansion in Atherton with her boyfriend, Sunny, who also happened to be the COO and president and early investor in the company. So she was able to take these props, essentially, these pieces of the story and just paint this beautiful picture that she knew people wanted to believe. And so that's why I say she wasn't just a great storyteller. She was a story writer. She wrote every single detail. **Ollie Forsyth** [7:00] I mean, why? How is she just so good at it? I mean, I've met a lot of founders over the years, and I haven't come across that many insane, is that theright word, insane type of people who are just so good at founder writing. **Tyler Shultz** [7:16] Yeah. It's hard to describe just how captivating she really was. But when she spoke to you, she made you feel so important. She knew exactly what she needed to tell you to get you to behave the way she wanted you to behave and to get you to do the things that she needed you to do. And through all these lawsuits, there's all kinds of things that have been produced. And there's interesting notes that she would write to herself. And one of the things she wrote to herself was like, "Know the outcome of every interaction before you have it." And so she could almost manifest the outcomes of these meetings. She could walk into the office of Don Lucas, who initially thought like, "Oh, this is just an unserious 19, 20-year-old girl or whatever." And after that first meeting, he walked away thinking, "This is the most amazing person I've ever met in my life." It's just an incredible ability. But it's all manipulation. Another great example that I can give about her ability to manipulate and get her story to speak to you is I was listening to a podcast that somebody did that showed a clip of her and my grandfather actually doing an interview together on the Stanford campus. And she was talking about how they had this collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, and they were developing some blood tests that could detect pancreatic cancer like a decade before you would ever have symptoms. And that wasn't true. They were not developing that test. They did not have that collaboration. So why would you specifically pick why pancreatic cancer? Why not breast cancer? Why not prostate cancer? Why not anything else? My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer, and my grandfather had pancreatic cancer. And it was one of the rare cases where they operated on it, removed it, and he lived another 15 years afterward. So I think that she knew that developing this test for pancreatic cancer would speak so specifically to my grandfather and strike that emotional chord with him that he would just be completely on board with this and promoting it and getting all of his friends in. And so there's just little examples like that where it's all made up, but she chose the details so specifically and intentionally just to make it so believable. **Ollie Forsyth** [9:41] It's just crazy. What's crazy is I've been watching this whole story for the last 10, 15 years, and now just hearing it, it's just so different to how normal founders build companies. **Tyler Shultz** [9:58] Yeah. I've never met anyone like her. I've met other successful founders and CEOs, and nobody is like her. I will say that. She is truly one of a kind. **Ollie Forsyth** [10:10] Okay. So going back a little bit, and we mentioned your grandfather a few times. So George Shultz was obviously very—he was very influential in government, who's obviously a very important part of this story. So I think you're now 23, 24, and day one comes along. Can you join Theranos? ### Joining **Tyler Shultz** [10:32] Yeah. Day one. Day one comes along. I'm 22 years old when I first joined the company, I believe. Yeah. Sometimes I have to double-check the math, but I'm pretty sure I was 22. And that was my first full-time job out of college. I thought that I would work there for my entire career. I thought this was just the perfect place for a young scientist like me to be. It was the apple of healthcare. I thought it would be the only place I ever worked. That's how convinced I was of this. Butright off the bat, day one, there were red flags. One of the biggest red flags was that the manager of the validation team had, I was told, some form of a screaming match with Sunny and Elizabeth and was in the parking lot crying. And the story that we had learned was that she told them that the product wasn't ready, we couldn't launch, but then they launched the product anyway. And I should add that my first day happened to be the day after we launched the product. So I joined after the long Labor Day weekend, and I think they launched it on the Monday. I started on Tuesday. And so Elizabeth had did this big ribbon-cutting ceremony at Walgreens. It was a super exciting time to be there. But when this woman was crying in the parking lot, my manager pulled our team aside. And in retrospect, this should have been a bigger red flag. But in the first lab that I worked at, I'd been working with people who had been there for years and had never seen the device. We had never seen the product that we were working on. That is how siloed and how secretive the company was. But our manager pulled us aside and basically told us that even though we had just launched the product, that we had zero tests that had been validated on it. So if someone actually walked into Walgreens, first of all, they would not get their finger pricked. They would get a needle in the arm. And then none of those tests would be run on the Theranos devices. They would all be either just sent out to labs that we contracted with, or they would just dilute the blood and run it on the third-party analyzers that we had just purchased from companies like Roche and Siemens. So on day one, that was a pretty big red flag that we just launched this product after being in stealth mode for 11 years, but it was not being used at all in the product launch. **Ollie Forsyth** [12:41] And this is just day one. **Tyler Shultz** [12:42] That was day one. And it only got worse from there. **Ollie Forsyth** [12:48] When I've been watching the dropout over the last few weeks and just how secretive everything is, I mean, paint a picture. I mean, doors are locked. You haven't seen a product at all. Is that really what's kind of happening? **Tyler Shultz** [13:03] Yeah. It was a true wizard of Oz situation. A lot of everyone that I worked with had never seen the product initially, at least. And every lab had a locked door. Even within the labs, there were sometimes barricades that you were not allowed to look past. We signed these really aggressive NDAs that made you feel like you could not talk to anybody about Theranos. So much so that when I reached out to government regulators, I used a fake name with a fake email address. And I also requested that my alias be anonymous. So I did not want this to be traced back to me. I thought my NDA was so strict that I was not allowed to talk to a government regulator. They told you not to tell your spouse about what your job was. I was given a list of words to not say when describing my job to people. And they were words like research, biology, pipette. You could not say anything. You were not supposed to put on LinkedIn that you worked at the company. And you were also told not to talk to your colleagues about what you were working on, which is so strange. And it being my first job out of college, I don't know any different,right? But in the scientific community especially, it is so odd to not allow your scientists to talk to each other. Originally, I was in this antibody engineering lab. So the people who engineered the antibodies were not supposed to talk to the people that used those antibodies to develop the tests. Those people were not supposed to talk to the people that then validated that test. Those people were not supposed to talk to the people that then ramped it up, ramped up production to actually test real patients. And then those people were not supposed to talk to the technicians who actually tested those patients. And when you have intentional blockades at every single one of those steps, it's not surprising that it doesn't work. It becomes impossible to debug. It becomes impossible to figure out the root cause of problems. So it was just a horrible way to work. **Ollie Forsyth** [15:03] Also, just the communication structure, not being able to see the product, you don't know what people are working on, how far are we progressing with the product. It just is the complete opposite way to every other company who actually builds a product. **Tyler Shultz** [15:20] Yeah. Build a product and do real science. That was the other thing. Real innovation is usually built on third-party validation and published research. But Theranos was so secretive that they didn't publish anything. There was no peer review. There was no one from the outside who really could verify that any of this was real. **Ollie Forsyth** [15:42] What did your family say about all of this? From, let's say, your first week, first month, I mean, were you openly talking about kind of what's happening? **Tyler Shultz** [15:53] So initially, I was not. I was pretty closed off just because, again, I knew how secretive you were supposed to be. And I really did respect that for a long time. In fact, there would be instances where I would be with my grandfather, and my parents would ask me something about my job. And I would just tell them I'm not allowed to talk about what I'm doing. And he would say something like, "Well, I'm the chairman of the board, so I can tell you a little bit of something." So he was much looser-lipped than I was. So he would more openly talk to his friends and to our family about what Theranos did. And he didn't really know what my job was, but he roughly kind of knew what my job was. So he would talk about it. I would not. I really tried to abide by their secrecy. **Ollie Forsyth** [16:42] Wow. Can you imagine in today's world, if you join the company and you can't even talk about it? It wouldn't work. **Tyler Shultz** [16:49] I can't imagine doing that. I know there are still a lot of stealth mode startups. And hopefully, they have good reasons for being in stealth. I think there are some legitimately good reasons for being stealth. But at some point, you got to come out. And unfortunately, I think a lot of—I mean, maybe not a lot, but sometimes these stealth mode startups can use their stealth mode as an excuse to hide things more than really just keeping secrets. And there's a difference between keeping secrets, keeping real trade secrets versus just hiding things. **Ollie Forsyth** [17:19] Yeah. Exactly. I think especially what's happening in AI now, of course, there are some under-the-radar companies. Totally fine with that. But when you're building a product, which you can't even see, the product doesn't even work, it's kind of like a completely different story,right? So why don't we talk about the first few months? What are you doing inside Theranos? What's the role? ### Inside **Ollie Forsyth** [17:51] And your peers who are working inside your own team, are you actually talking about this? It just doesn't make sense. **Tyler Shultz** [18:01] So pretty soon after I joined, by the end of my first week, in fact, we got an email. Everyone in the research labs got this email from Sunny that basically said, "Stop all of your research experiments. Everybody is being moved to Normandy." And Normandy was the lab that had the Theranos devices, the Edison. And it is a very odd analogy to draw on, but they really made it feel like so many people had quit from this validation team that they just needed more bodies on the front lines of the company. And the front lines were called Normandy. A little bit strange. **Ollie Forsyth** [18:40] Super strange. **Tyler Shultz** [18:41] So we were all sent to Normandy. And that is a place where I would say careers went to die. People got burned out so fast. We were literally working through the night. Someone was doing experiments 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sunny would do walkthroughs of the lab at 3:00 in the morning to make sure that people were actually working. I actually volunteered to take the night shift. I was young. I was excited. So I took my shift was like 3:00 PM to 3:00 AM, I think. So yeah, literally running these experiments through the night. And the reason they needed so many more people in this lab was that, first of all, so many people had quit. And then again, when we first launched the product, we had no tests that were validated. So they just need more hours put in to actually validate these tests so that if a patient went into Walgreens, that we could test them for something on the Theranos devices. And I think the first thing that we validated was HbA1c, which is a little bit funny because that's already done pretty commonly in a finger prick. So it's like, where's the big revolutionary idea there? But by the time I left, we did ultimately have seven tests that were validated on the Theranos product. So if someone walked into Walgreens, there were seven things where we would actually test them on that Theranos product. **Ollie Forsyth** [20:04] Were you guys internally actually testing the product on yourselves as well? I mean, could you do that? **Tyler Shultz** [20:11] We did. We tested ourselves all the time. In fact, Theranos would offer $50 per tube of blood that you would donate. So you could walk in. They didn't offer this every single day, but a lot of days you could walk in and donate. I think that you maxed out at like five tubes of blood. And that adds up. **Ollie Forsyth** [20:28] Wow. It's just super bizarre. Okay. So everyone gets moved to Normandy. And then what happens next? **Tyler Shultz** [20:38] So then. **Ollie Forsyth** [20:38] You've done the. **Tyler Shultz** [20:38] Yeah. So then when we're all moved to Normandy, so we're using the actual Theranos devices at that point. And part of the onboarding process into using these devices is seeing what they called the open reader, which was this Theranos product that just didn't have the shell on it. So you could see exactly what was inside, exactly what it was doing. And the first time that I'm seeing this is the first time that my manager is seeing this because, again, she had been kept in the dark for she'd been there for years, a few years, and she had not seen the product. And so we're watching this demo together. And I so vividly remember this. She turns to the woman who was giving us the demo, and she just said, "Do you think this is cool?" Very simple question. And the woman shrugged her shoulders and said, "I'll let you decide for yourself," and walked away. And in that moment, I realized that there was an open secret at this company that the technology flat out did not exist because what we saw was an eight-channel pipette on a robotic arm. There was no microfluidics. There was no new signal transduction method. It wasn't even a standalone platform. So if you were to put this thing in a helicopter, you would have to put this very large, expensive pipetting robot up there with it. So you couldn't just use the Theranos device by itself. It could only test for one thing at a time. One thing. We're claiming hundreds of things from a single drop of blood, and it can barely test for one thing from that drop of blood. And there was nothing that that device could do that I couldn't do with my own hand, a pipette, and a plate reader. Literally, even the signal transduction method, it's a very, very common method that uses alkaline phosphatase to produce a chemiluminescent signal. And you can find a plate reader in almost every single lab in the country that does something like this. And so all of the reagents we bought online from Thermo Fisher or various vendors, there was nothing revolutionary. There was nothing that was really creative about it. And I think I often take that for granted that I've seen the device and I knew how rudimentary it was. But I've realized that a lot of the public, actually probably most of the public, has still really no idea what this device looked like. And it's funny. Now, Elizabeth is starting to paint this picture from prison that she was actually very close. And it surprisingly seems like some people at least are starting to believe her. Even just maybe about a week ago, I know the president of Y Combinator was in a tweet or an X thread with Elizabeth and said, "I think you were close." And someone tagged me in it. And so I responded. And genuinely, I replied to him and said, "I know you've been so good at identifying successful companies. You've had success yourself. You've identified successful founders. I'm so genuinely curious. What makes you think that she was close?" Because this thing was so, so far away from realizing the vision that Elizabeth had. Nowhere even close. But she's so good at telling these stories. Again, she's launched this new blood testing company called Hemantis, essentially from prison, through her husband. So she's technically not affiliated, but we all know she's affiliated. **Ollie Forsyth** [24:09] Wow. **Tyler Shultz** [24:10] And it seems like people are starting to buy this narrative so much so that the president of Y Combinator seems to be buying into it a little bit. And I am genuinely curious about that question. It's really not meant to be to look down on him or anything. It's really just like, what makes you think that? Because it shows how good she is. And unfortunately, he didn't answer. But maybe one day you can get him on the podcast and we could talk about it. **Ollie Forsyth** [24:35] Well, we should. Wow. That is crazy. **Tyler Shultz** [24:38] I don't think he's a bad—I want to make it clear. I don't think he's a bad person. I don't think he's trying to enable—I think that he's being misled and he's buying into these narratives that other people will buy into as well. **Ollie Forsyth** [24:53] I've seen this meme account—not meme account, but I guess it's Elizabeth's husband write on X. **Tyler Shultz** [25:02] I haven't seen his tweets at all, no. **Ollie Forsyth** [25:05] Yeah. You should see some of the tweets. Okay. So the actual product, I mean, is this a thing? Is it big? Does it weigh 5 kilos, 10 kilos? Is it like 100 kilos? What does it actually look like? **Tyler Shultz** [25:18] It's not very big, no. It's pretty small, in fact. It has a small footprint. It looked a lot like those old computers that you would then attach to the monitor. You know how you'd have like a separate computer that would have like your CD drive and all that, and then you would attach it to the monitor? So it looked like the actual computer part. About that size, about that form factor. **Ollie Forsyth** [25:40] Damn. ### Downhill **Ollie Forsyth** [25:42] It's just crazy. Okay. So I think you were at the company for about a year. And then as you start to see things not working out, this is when maybe the shit hits the fan a bit. **Tyler Shultz** [25:55] Yeah. So once we did start testing real patients, we obviously had to start abiding by some regulations. But without getting into too many details, I felt like we really cheated the regulators. When the inspectors, the CLIA inspectors, showed up to our labs to inspect us and give us a certification to actually test real patients, we locked the doors to Normandy. We locked the doors to Normandy. So not only did the executives not want to show the regulators Normandy, they didn't want the regulators just to see activity going on in that lab and say, "What's going on here?" They just wanted the regulators to think it was a utility closet or something. So the door was literally locked that day. All the employees just sat on their hands and did nothing. So that seemed like—that was a huge red flag. Management was very much intentionally trying to hide something. And then we participated in something called proficiency testing, which is essentially a safety audit. And I felt that we had cheated on that by running samples both on the Theranos equipment and on third-party equipment, and then only reporting the results from the third-party equipment. And to me, that was an indication that management knew that these tests didn't work because they knew when there was a regulator who had theright answer that they couldn't possibly report a Theranos result. But if it was an unsuspecting patient who just walked into Walgreens, he would have no way of knowing if their test was accurate or not. They were perfectly comfortable knowingly giving them incorrect medical information. And so that really bothered me. So I even reached out to the government regulators about this, and they confirmed that this was a violation of their policies. Unfortunately, then I stopped getting responses from them, and I didn't follow up. But they did confirm that we violated their policies. Then there were instances where quality controls would fail, and Sunny would essentially bully lower-level employees into running samples regardless of the failures. So here's another example where you know the test doesn't work because the quality control failed, but you are choosing to run patient samples anyway. So it is not surprising that people were getting incorrect medical information, and people were getting hurt. And I didn't necessarily know the details of that at the time because of HIPAA. I don't get to see patient results necessarily. But now through the lawsuits, we know that there were times when we told people that they had HIV when they didn't. We told people that their cancer had recurred when it had not. We told people that they had lost their fetuses. They had miscarriages when they had not. We sent people to the emergency room because their potassium levels were so high that they should be dead. And then they would get to the emergency room and retest, and they were completely fine. My own step-grandmother happened to be one of those people who had to go to the emergency room because of an incorrect Theranos result. And somehow, that did not open up my grandfather's eyes to what was going on. But a lot of these problems really came to a head for me when we validated a test for syphilis. And we essentially were telling—again, to try to make a long story a little bit shorter—we were samples that were known to be positive for syphilis. We were not identifying correctly. We were saying, "You do not have syphilis." And then when we tested ourselves and our colleagues for syphilis, we were testing positive. And in diagnostics, you can typically tune a test to be very sensitive or very specific. But in this case, it was not sensitive, and it was also not specific. And when that happens, it really just means that your test doesn't work. And somehow, when we put all this data together and we sent it to the statistics team, they crunched the numbers, sent it off to the medical director of the company, and he signed off saying this test was safe and effective, and we were going to start testing real people for syphilis. And that's when I felt like I had very, very much directly contributed to something that without a doubt was going to severely hurt people. Syphilis is not something to mess with. It's the type of disease where if you actually take the initiative and get tested, you can treat it. It's very treatable. But if you don't treat it, it can wreak havoc on pretty much every system in your body, potentially decades down the line. It's really important to address it. And so that's when I really felt like I need to start speaking up more here. And I obviously confirmed everything that I was seeing with my colleagues and my managers. But eventually, I just felt like I was in a unique position at the company because my grandfather had joined the board of directors. Elizabeth was coming to family Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthday parties. So I felt like I had a relationship with her where she wouldn't be able to just fire me on the spot like she did to that woman on my first day. And so I thought, where no one else is willing to speak up here, I'm going to go do it. I'm going to walk into Elizabeth's office. And I didn't want to go in there and point fingers and say, "This is a total fraud. This is never going to work." I just wanted to cautiously address two points that I thought would be a good place to start a discussion. And I thought that I could start changing the way that we did our science, change the company culture. Those were obviously very naive goals to have, but I went after it anyway. And so I went into Elizabeth's office, and I really just cautiously approached two points. I said, "First of all, it says on our website, and I've heard you say, that our coefficient of variation is less than 10%. But I am the employee that runs the experiments to calculate that number. And I have never seen a test come back less than 10%. And for syphilis, our coefficient of variation at our cutoff level was 43%, which meant the standard deviation was 43% of your expected value. That is a lot of variation." And she goes, "Oh, that doesn't soundright. Let's check the website together," as if she didn't know what was on the website. So I went around to her side of the desk, and she typed in theranos.com. And literally on the landing page in bold font, it says, "CV less than 10%." Then smaller writing underneath, it says, "Vitamin D." So she goes, "Oh, that's only meant to apply to vitamin D. It's not meant to be indicative of our assay performance as a whole." And then I brought up this syphilis test where in the lab, we calculated our sensitivity to be 65%, and we thought that's not good enough, and we essentially tried again. And the second time, we got 80% sensitivity, but the validation report stated 95% sensitivity. And this is not a very complicated calculation. This is a simple division problem of two numbers,right? And so I asked, "How did you get a number that is so different than the number we calculate as scientists in the lab?" And she said, "Well, I'll just set you up with the vice president that oversees that team, and he'll explain to you how they did that calculation." So to me, those were two reasonable answers. So I left her office, and I went back to my desk. And I'm sure she didn't know this, but I had access to the drive that had all the validation reports. So I opened the validation report for vitamin D, and lo and behold, the coefficient of variation at the three different levels we tested were like 19%, 23%, and 20%. Nowhere close to less than 10. Nowhere close. So I knew that she had just really directly lied to my face, or she was truly oblivious. And then I met with this vice president, and he has a PhD in statistics, and he described to me how they calculated this 95%. Word for word. So he told me that they apply what's called an equivocal zone, where the answer is, "I don't know." And for those samples, they then test them on third-party equipment, and then they no longer factor into their calculation of sensitivity. And word for word, what he told me was, "We want to report 95% sensitivity, so we expand that zone until we get 95% sensitivity," which I thought was the most absurd statistical argument I had ever heard in my entire life. Because if you wanted to say 98, you could have made it 98. If you wanted to say 80, you could have made it 80. You could pick the number, and then you could make your analysis fit whatever number you wanted to have. And in that validation report, it never said 50% of the samples were excluded because they fell into the equivocal zone. Nothing like that. It just said sensitivity 95%. And luckily, in an email, I even pointed out that once we applied this equivocal zone, that there were more samples where the answer was, "I don't know," than where we actually made a diagnosis. And their response was that this was a business decision. This was not a product decision. This was not a medical decision. This was a business decision. So that was incredibly frustrating to me because I think if you are a medical device company, you cannot separate your business aspirations from your product aspirations, from the medical aspirations that you have. You have to deliver high-quality care in order to have a high-quality business. It is the only way. You cannot separate the two. But Sunny certainly did not see it that way. He saw this as a software company, really. And so that was all very frustrating to me. So eventually, I felt like I just have to leave the company. And at that point in time, I actually wanted to have one more conversation with Elizabeth, but she started avoiding me, which was very odd for her. And she asked that I just put all of my concerns in an email. So I wrote this email where I basically wrote, "This is an observation that I've made. Here's data to support that observation, and here's what I think we should do about it." Because I didn't want to come to her with just problems. I wanted to come to her with solutions as well. And I even concluded this email by saying, "I apologize if this sounds attacking in any way. It is truly not meant to be. I'm dedicated to the long-term vision of this company, but I'm worried that some of our short-term practices will prevent us from reaching those long-term goals." And she never substantially responded to this email. She forwarded it to Sunny. And Sunny responded, and his email was literally in all red font, a lot of it capitalized, a lot of it bolded. He basically said that I was arrogant, ignorant, patronizing, reckless, that I had no understanding of basic math, science, or statistics, and that if I had any other last name, I would have already been held accountable in the strongest way. And the only conversation he wanted moving forward was an apology from me. And later, the Wall Street Journal describes this email as dripping with venom, which I think is a really great description. And so I obviously did not offer an apology. Instead, I said, "Consider this my two weeks' notice. And if you prefer I leave earlier, that's fine with me as well." But again, I was trying to maintain professionality here, and I offered two weeks' notice. **Ollie Forsyth** [37:40] Wow. And this is when it kind of all unfolds. Maybe we just take a step back. Sunny, dripping with venom, what is the dude like? ### The Bully **Tyler Shultz** [37:56] He is just such a bully through and through. He is just a bully. And in some ways, he was perfect for Elizabeth because I think Elizabeth wanted to run the company the way that Sunny was running it on the inside, but she couldn't do that while also maintaining this angelic public figure that she was. She was the quote-unquote "doing well by doing good." That was one of her quotes. And Sunny really just treated people internally like pieces of machinery. Anybody could be replaced. The goal was to work you as hard as you would possibly work until you burned out, and then you would quit, and then you would be replaced by somebody else who they would then grind back down to the bone. The mentality was, "There are not enough hours in the day." It was, "We need to work harder, not smarter." If there was a problem with one of our processes or the way one of the devices worked, the goal was not to problem-solve, was not to debug the problem and figure out a more efficient way forward. It was just, "How can you produce the most data as you possibly can in the next 24 hours?" And that doesn't involve debugging a problem. That means fighting through the problem. That means deleting data and replacing it with new data. And all of that type of culture just started with Sunny. It absolutely started with Sunny. And I could skip forward a little bit in the story here, but Sunny really behaved I think he wanted to be a mob boss. And he spoke like a mob boss. He acted like a mob boss, and he texted like a mob boss. And now with all these lawsuits, you can see these text message exchanges between Elizabeth and Sunny. And there's a night where they ambush me in my grandfather's house. And leading up to that night, he texts Elizabeth and says, "I've narrowed the sources down to five people." And Elizabeth says, "Well, if it's Tyler, let me know so I can get ahead of it and talk to George." And Sunny's response is, "Knocking legs off one at a time is the best way." And he says, "We're going to nail this motherfucker." So I think he really did have an abusive personality. And in some ways, I think Elizabeth saw that and used it to her advantage in a number of ways. And one of those ways, I think, is just setting him up to be the fall guy. And he played the part really well as the fall guy. And in her criminal trial, she basically pointed the finger at Sunny and said, "He's an abusive man. I was in an abusive relationship. Basically, everything that I did, I did because Sunny forced me to." And it was, in a lot of ways, a brilliant argument because there's probably a lot of truth to that. I don't doubt that he was abusive towards her. I have no special inside knowledge, but he had that type of a personality. And I think it worked, but only 66% of the way because Sunny was convicted on 12 out of 12 counts against him, and Elizabeth was only convicted of 4. So it worked, but maybe just not to the extent that Elizabeth had hoped. **Ollie Forsyth** [41:21] That's a pretty good description, a mob boss. That's exactly what he sounds like. I mean, I've never met the bloke, never had any interaction, but he's not the type of guy it sounds like who you're going to have beers with on a Friday night. **Tyler Shultz** [41:35] No. Definitely not. **Ollie Forsyth** [41:39] Wow. **Tyler Shultz** [41:41] And I mean, I want to just quickly add that no one really liked him. Even the board did not like him. My grandfather and my step-grandmother would constantly make comments about Sunny, and they were pretty upfront about the fact that they did not like him. So if Elizabeth was truly being abused, or at least if she truly wanted him out of the company, she had four-star generals and secretaries of defenses and secretaries of state who were just waiting on her word to get rid of this guy. She could have snapped her fingers, and he would have been gone in a heartbeat. They wanted him out, but they kept him around just because Elizabeth wanted him there. ### Resignation **Ollie Forsyth** [42:24] Okay. So you leave Theranos, and this is when the story gets a bit spicy. So take us through the journey. I'll let you take the lead. **Tyler Shultz** [42:36] Sure. Yeah. So I guess it starts when I walk out of the door of Theranos. So after I sent that email that gave my two weeks' notice, they said, "We actually want you to leave today." And I met with the head of HR, and she said, "I'm sorry things ended this way. Here's a new NDA for you to sign." And she said, "Security is actually too busy to escort you out of the building. Can you just walk yourself out?" So I walked myself out of the building. I was walking to my car, and my mom called me, and she said, "Stop whatever it is you're about to do." And I said, "It's too late. I already quit, and they're definitely not letting me go back in." And she said, "That's not what I'm talking about." Elizabeth called your grandfather and said that you vocalized a vendetta against her, and that if you tried to execute that vendetta, that you will lose. And I just said, "I have no idea what she's talking about. I've been transferring my lab notebooks to my manager all day." So I went over to my grandfather's house, and he told me that Elizabeth told him that I quit in a very dramatic and inappropriate way, and that she was trying to meet with me to calm me down, but that I was refusing to meet with her. And I just said, "That could not be further from the truth. I have been trying to meet with her. She has been avoiding me. I did not quit in this very loud and obnoxious way, so much so that she needed to calm me down. The head of HR said that security was too busy and asked me to walk myself out of the building, which I happily did." And so I showed him the copy of this email exchange that I had with Sunny, and he really just didn't seem to understand the content of it at all. He really just said Elizabeth had assured him that they were going above and beyond what was required of them by the regulatory agencies, that every single test was done on a finger prick, every single test was done on a Theranos device. The only reason they had third-party equipment was for validation, not for testing patients. And at the time, I didn't know this, but Elizabeth had actually set up shell corporations to buy the third-party equipment to hide it from the board. So again, every piece of this is incredibly intentional. But my grandfather just essentially didn't believe me. He said, "I think you're wrong. Move on with your life." So I did my best to move on with my life, but that was extremely hard to do when Elizabeth was invited to Thanksgiving dinner just a matter of months later. And the entire guest list was me and my parents, Elizabeth and her parents, and my grandparents. So it was intimate. It was very intimate. And overall, it was actually pretty boring because if Elizabeth couldn't talk about Theranos, she had nothing to talk about. But she did give this one really creepy toast where she raised her glass, looked directly at me, and said, "I just want to say that I love and appreciate every single member of the Shultz family." And I remember my hand was just shaking. I thought I was going to spill my wine. And I still can't describe the exact emotion that I was feeling in that moment, but it was a combination of fear and anger and frustration. And the best analogy that I can think of is that it felt like the killer's in the house. She's part of my family, and I did not know how to get her out. So when a Wall Street Journal reporter reached out to me and said he was doing an investigative piece on Theranos, I could not help myself but to contact him because I had spoken to my colleagues, my managers, a vice president, the president and COO, the CEO, a board member, a government regulator, and at each of those turns, nothing happened. ### Whistleblower **Tyler Shultz** [46:27] Nothing. I was ignored. I was bullied. I was gaslit. Nobody took action. So when this reporter called, I couldn't help myself but to reach out to him. But I was terrified that at some dinner party sometime, I would have to open up my call logs and prove to Elizabeth that I had not called this reporter. So I went and I bought a burner phone with cash and thought that I was so sneaky that no one would ever figure out that I had spoken to this reporter. So I called him up, and I was surprised, first of all, at how forthcoming he was with what he knew about Theranos, and it turned out he knew a lot. And I thought he was really well-equipped to ask Elizabeth tough questions. And I felt like I was not doing any harm by enabling him, providing him with information to ask those tough questions. And I thought that if Elizabeth has all theright answers to these tough questions, that is a perfectly acceptable outcome. That is more than acceptable. I would have been so happy to be proven wrong. But it was frustrating to see her on the cover of Forbes, Fortune & Inc. magazine. She was hailed as the next Steve Jobs, and she was the youngest self-made female billionaire when I would read every interview, and not a single person had ever asked her a tough question. The interviews kind of went like, "Elizabeth, how great are you?" And she would say, "I'm really, really great and amazing and humble." And that would be the whole story. It was like, "Come on." **Ollie Forsyth** [47:58] Yeah, the soft approach. Yeah. **Tyler Shultz** [47:59] It was so soft. Dig in a little bit. And so I just thought, "I'm going to help this guy ask a tough question." And so I provided him with this email exchange that I had. I told him details about things that I had seen. But I also told him that in addition to being concerned about patient safety, that my grandfather was part of the Nixon administration during Watergate, and he was part of the Reagan administration during the Iran contraband scandal. And he made it out of both of those with his integrity completely intact. So I said, "There's no doubt in my mind that if he's given the opportunity, he will make thingsright with the people that Elizabeth has hurt." And so he was 95 years old, and I wanted to make sure that he had that opportunity before he passed away. So that was part of my motivation for working with this journalist. And even though I thought I was so sneaky, no one would ever figure me out, it only took probably between one and two months for Theranos to figure me out as a source. At the time, I was renting a house with six buddies, and my parents lived about 20 minutes away. And so I drove home to have dinner with my parents one evening, and my dad had just gotten off the phone with my grandfather, and he asked me, "Have you been speaking to the Wall Street Journal?" And I told my dad, "Yes." And he was more angry with me than I had ever seen him in my entire life by probably an order of magnitude. He said, "You know how powerful they are. You know how much money they have. You know who's on their board. You know how much they love to sue people. They are going to destroy your life, and they will do it with a smile on their face. It will make them so happy." And I said, "You know, I think they're overplaying their hand here a little bit." I did my research on this reporter, and he had previously won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a Medicare fraud. So there was no way that he was just going to give my name up to Theranos. So I told my dad, "They might suspect me, but they don't actually know for sure. They're saying they know for sure, but they don't actually know for sure." So I called my grandfather, and he said, "Tyler, tell me what's going on." And I said, "I have no idea. You need to tell me what's going on." ### Ambush **Tyler Shultz** [50:11] And he said that Elizabeth told him that I had been giving trade secrets away to the Wall Street Journal and that if they published those trade secrets, they would no longer be defendable. So in order to prove that they defended their trade secrets, they needed me to sign a one-page non-disclosure agreement that said I wouldn't disclose anything moving forward. So the argument didn't make a whole lot of sense. At face value, I can see your face. You're kind of like, "What?" **Ollie Forsyth** [50:40] Makes sense. **Tyler Shultz** [50:40] That doesn't make any sense. But he said, "If you sign this one-page document, it will end a world of suffering for you." That made sense. I said, "I would love to end a world of suffering for me." So I said, "Sure. I'm happy to sign this one-page NDA." But before then, he said, "Come on over tomorrow morning and meet with the lawyers, and they'll bring this one-page NDA." I said, "Of course. But before then, can I come over to your house tonight and just talk to you without any lawyers around?" And he said, "Of course. Come on over at 9 o'clock." So I left my parents' house, and I was absolutely panicking. And I was literally screaming profanities in my car, driving back to this house that I was renting with a bunch of buddies. And I came into the house, and one of my friends was there, so I told him about what was happening. And first of all, he said, "Well, when you go over to your grandfather's house, are you going to lie to him and say that you have not spoken to the Wall Street Journal, or are you going to tell him the truth?" And I said, "The truth is on my side. I have always told the truth. So if I continue to tell the truth, things will work out for me." **Ollie Forsyth** [51:50] That's good. **Tyler Shultz** [51:51] And he said, "Dude, you should definitely lie." And his point, he was like, "You don't know what's actually at stake. You don't know what's on the table. You should go to your grandfather's house and lie to him, collect as much information as you can possibly collect, and then if you decide it's in your best interest, then you should tell him the truth. At any point in time, you could tell him the truth, but once you do, there's no going back." And so I thought that was really smart. And actually, my buddy also offered to call a lawyer. And so we started calling up a lawyer, but I was so afraid of my NDA that I thought I couldn't even speak to this person we were calling on the phone, this lawyer who I had no official relationship with. We had no letters of agreement or anything like that. So I hung up on this lawyer when he first answered the phone. So I didn't speak to him at all. But I went to my grandfather's house. I was adamant with him that I had not spoken to the Wall Street Journal. I had no idea why they thought I had. We reiterated all of our old points, and he actually told me that the Theranos devices were currently being used in medevac helicopters in Afghanistan on the front lines. And I just said, "There is no way on earth that could possibly be true because these devices are barely even working within the walls of Theranos, are not even working, I would say." And so our realities just completely did not overlap at all. But to illustrate this point about how did that piece of knowledge get circulated to the board members and just to illustrate how good of a liar Elizabeth and Theranos really were, I want to read you a quote that was attributed to Jim Mattis, who was a four-star general who then became the secretary of defense. And this was in the Hulu or not Hulu, the HBO documentary found this in drafts of marketing materials. And here's the quote attributed to Jim Mattis. It says, "We've been using Theranos for two years with incredible success. One of the most challenging parts of my job is contacting families of fallen soldiers. I write multiple next-of-kin letters every day. And so it is very evident to me the impact that Theranos has had on survival rates. We're able to take these small machines to the front line on helicopters and planes, test, get extremely accurate results, and begin stabilization immediately. As a result, we have a 98% survival rate, up 30% from 68%. That's a dramatic improvement in the quality of care that we can provide the courageous men and women of our armed forces, which means a lot more soldiers are going home to their families." If you want a masterclass in lying and manipulation, it is this statement because the lie is so big you can't possibly imagine that that statement is not true, not even in the slightest. It's also incredibly specific, these really precise percentages that make you feel like this is based on real data. And then it's attributed to someone who has an enormous amount of credibility, a four-star general who became the secretary of defense. So if you're an investor and this comes to you, how do you possibly diligence this when that board member whose quote this is attributed to should know better than anyone else in the world if that statement is true? And even though I don't know exactly how far that statement reached, I know that my grandfather basically parroted it. He said that these devices were being used in medevac helicopters in Afghanistan. So people were believing this type of statement to be true, which is just absolutely insane. So that was a bit of a tangent. But I'm sitting there with my grandfather in his living room, and he's telling me these things that can't possibly be true, and there's no overlap in our reality. And eventually, he just says, "Whatever the case may be, would you sign a one-page NDA?" And I said, "Sure. I'll sign that." And he said, "Well, there's actually two Theranos lawyers hereright now. Can I go get them?" **Ollie Forsyth** [56:12] What? **Tyler Shultz** [56:13] I was completely caught off guard. By this point in time, I had probably been there for an hour, hour and a half, and nobody had told me that there were lawyers essentially the room over. But I said, "Sure. Go ahead. Go get them." So he left the room to go get the lawyers, and my step-grandmother had been quietly listening to this conversation the whole time. And she turned to me and said, "Henry Kissinger thinks this is all fake. He thinks the box doesn't actually exist." And I said, "Yes, Henry Kissinger isright. How do we have another former secretary of state who was on the board of directors who essentially had the exact same concern that I had, but all this pressure was being put on me, a low-level 24-year-old employee, when a board member had the exact same concerns?" And I still don't know the answer to that question. But I didn't have much time to talk to my step-grandmother because my grandfather came back in with the two lawyers, and they did not bring me a one-page NDA. They brought me a notice to they brought me a temporary restraining order with a notice to appear in court on Friday morning, and this was on Wednesday night. And they gave me a strongly worded letter signed by someone named David Boyce, who I had never heard of. And so I can tell this is not what I had agreed to. And we started arguing, and I again was adamant that I had not spoken to the Wall Street Journal. That was the only thing that I felt like I could stand on was just sticking to that lie. And they said it was their jobs to figure out who the sources were, that it took them five minutes to figure me out. It was that obvious that I needed to admit that to themright then and there. And so things got pretty heated, and I could see my step-grandmother was looking physically uncomfortable, like she was fidgeting. And so I turned to her and I asked, "Are they making you uncomfortable?" And she said, "Yes." So I turned to the lawyers and I said, "You are making my grandmother uncomfortable. This conversation needs to end." But they continued to press me. They were saying how they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't get this admission out of me, how they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't get me to tell them who the other sources were. But I just shut down. I just stopped responding. And eventually, my grandfather got upset, and he stood up and kicked him out of the house. Basically, "You have to get out of my house." **Ollie Forsyth** [58:41] This is the lawyers. **Tyler Shultz** [58:42] The lawyers, yeah. So he kicked the lawyers out of his house, and he came back into the living room and basically said, "Well, that was a disaster. How about we just invite Elizabeth over and we talk directly with her?" And I was just exhausted. So I said, "Please, no. I can't talk to herright now." So he was like, "Allright. How about we just call her?" So we called Elizabeth, and my grandfather said that he said, "We were trying to have a discussion, but you sent over a litigator. Tomorrow, I want you to send over different lawyers, and they need to bring the one-page NDA that we had discussed." So I came back the next day, and of course, the same two lawyers come, and of course, they did not bring a one-page NDA. They brought a one-page affidavit that said, "My name is Tyler Shultz. My name is Tyler Shultz. I'm 24 years old. I have not spoken to the Wall Street Journal, but here is a list of names of people who have." And then it said, "Under penalty of perjury, there's a line for my name." So I knew that I did not want to commit perjury. So this was a document that I couldn't sign. So I told them, "I'm not going to sign this because I don't want to give you names of my friends and colleagues who I think may have spoken to the Wall Street Journal." And again, they asked if I would see things from their perspective, how they wouldn't be doing their jobs. And that was just so frustrating to me because I did not care about their jobs, not even in the slightest. And so things started to get pretty heated again. So my grandfather physically separated us and put the lawyers in his living room, and I was in the dining room, and he was going between these two rooms negotiating this affidavit. And I could hear him kind of berate the lawyers in his living room a little bit. He was like, "My grandson's not a rat. He's not going to give you names." So he came back into the dining room and said, "Hey, you got what you wanted. You don't have to list names, so go ahead and sign this document." So I had to come up with a new excuse. So I said, "I have this notice to appear in court tomorrow morning, but as far as I can tell, I can sign this affidavit, but that notice to appear in court doesn't just disappear. So I need there to be a clause in here that says Theranos won't sue me." So in pencil at the bottom, he writes, "Theranos will not sue Tyler for two years." And I said, "Two years? That is not long enough." So he crossed out two years and wrote "forever." So now in pencil at the bottom, it says, "Theranos will not sue Tyler forever." And he brings it to the lawyers. I think I've totally outsmarted them. I think there's no way they're going to agree to that. I thought this is where the negotiations stall, and they go home. But they called my bluff. We all came back from the same room. They said, "We've given you everything you've asked for, so go ahead and sign this document." But I could tell based on their demeanor that this negotiation was not going well for me because they looked very happy with themselves. It felt like every single person in the room knew that I was about to commit perjury and that it would be making them very, very happy. So I couldn't think of any new excuses to not sign. So instead, I just said, "Elizabeth has had lawyers look at this with her best interest in mind. So before I sign this, I need to have a lawyer look at this with my best interest in mind." And my grandfather had a visible eye roll and said, "Allright. If my estate attorney says this is okay to sign, will you sign it?" So I said, "Sure." So he took the document, and he went to go fax it to his estate attorney. And I went into his kitchen, and I was flipping through his physical contact book, trying to find his attorney's phone number. And luckily, my step-grandmother came into the kitchen and slapped a piece of paper in my hand with a number written on it, and she just said, "Go outside and call him." So I took all these documents. I stepped outside. I called the lawyer. And when he answered the phone, I was panicking, and I said, "My grandfather is about to send you something. He's going to tell you to tell me that I have to sign it, but you have to tell him that I cannot sign it." And he was just like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. Who's representing them?" And I had this letter in my hand. So I said, "They are being represented by someone named David Boyce." And he went, "Holy shit. Do you know who that is?" And I learned that he is known as the number one corporate gun in America, that he famously shredded Bill Gates in the Microsoft US government monopoly lawsuit, that he is the Clinton's lawyer, that he was a lawyer in the hanging chat election. He then became Harvey Weinstein's lawyer. So this estate attorney said, "This is very serious. You need to come up to my office now. I'm dropping everything that I have today." So I went up to his office, and we spent the day arguing with the Theranos lawyers on the phone. And I went to bed that night with a notice to appear in court the next morning. But I woke up to an email from the Theranos attorney saying that they were going to give me more time to negotiate. And at that point in time, this estate attorney then set me up with other lawyers. So I ended up having a very specialized IP attorney. I had a defamation lawyer. I had a criminal defense lawyer. I worked with a litigator, and I also worked with whistleblowing attorneys. And once I got all these lawyers, much to my chagrin, they told me that I couldn't just keep lying to Theranos, that I had to tell them that I was a source. So we admitted that I was a source. And then the affidavits they wanted me to sign really changed. And they became more about getting me to retract statements that I had made to the Wall Street Journal because they were trying to kill the story. And I ended up spending between 4 and 500,000 dollars in legal fees just to stand my ground. We never went to court. We never litigated this. It was just to stand my ground and to not sign these affidavits. And at one point, I had a really difficult conversation with my parents where they sat me down and basically said that they had learned that the best-case scenario if we went to court was we would spend $2 million and win. And the worst-case scenario was we would spend more money than that, and then I could go to prison. And they said, "Why would you pick either of these options? Just give up. Sign whatever it is Theranos wants you to sign. This is the responsibility of the FDA, of CMS, of the FBI, of the Department of Justice, of the SEC. This is not a Tyler problem anymore. You've done enough. Give up." But what I told them was the types of things that Theranos wants me to say under penalty of perjury in these affidavits is not true. And I will not say that I was wrong when I know with 100% certainty that I'mright. And I am not going to retract these statements from the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to stand my ground. And my parents really just couldn't fathom why I was doing this. But to their credit, they supported me no matter what. We disagreed. We fought. But at the end of every disagreement, they would say, "We're on your side. We have your back, and we will sell our house to pay for your legal fees. ### Unraveling **Tyler Shultz** [1:06:08] But please, please, please just don't make us do that." And luckily, it never came to that. After months of these negotiations, finally, the Wall Street Journal started publishing their reporting on Theranos, which led to all kinds of investigations by the alphabet soup of regulators that I just mentioned. CMS said that they found instances where the Theranos laboratory practices put patients' health in immediate jeopardy. The FDA said that they were selling an unregulated medical device. The SEC said that Elizabeth was guilty of a massive years-long fraud and even found instances where Elizabeth told prospective investors that their revenue the previous year was $100 million when in reality it was $100,000. And then finally, the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Elizabeth and Sunny. And about two years ago, they both went to prison, and they're serving 14 years and 11 years. Sunny got 14. Elizabeth got 11. And after they went to prison, I decided that I really wanted to devote a portion of my life here to just speaking about my experiences at Theranos. And so I go, and I'm a professional speaker now, which is kind of an odd thing to say. I left my most recent startup when my son was born, and I've been going around the country and in some cases around the world talking to all the various stakeholders that kind of failed here to enable Theranos. And it's been a great way for me to take what was the most negative experience of my life and turn it into a positive one. I feel like I am making a really positive impact where I go speak. And so I just want to thank you for having me on your podcast here today so that I can continue doing that. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:08:04] Wow. What a story. I mean, thank you for sharing that. It's not easy, but also just for the audience to know, you were 24. **Tyler Shultz** [1:08:16] Yeah. I mean, like I said at the beginning, this story started when I was 20, and they didn't go to prison until I was 32. Most of the meat of the story happened between the ages of, I'd say, 22 and 26 or 27. So it was a long, long time. And there were times when it felt like I would absolutely lose, that this was not going to work out for me. It felt like the truth didn't matter, that the only thing that mattered was how much power you had, how much money you were willing to spend. And I thought that was a fight I was going to lose, but I thought it was one that was worth having anyway. But luckily, it turns out the truth does count for a lot. It just takes a painfully long time. ### Forgiveness **Ollie Forsyth** [1:09:03] And a lot of money. **Tyler Shultz** [1:09:04] And a lot of money. Yeah. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:09:07] Wow. So what, you spent 500,000 to a million or something in the end, or just on legal fees? **Tyler Shultz** [1:09:14] In total, it was somewhere between 4 and 500,000. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:09:18] Wow. **Tyler Shultz** [1:09:19] Yeah. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:09:19] Wow. What I just find maybe is a family challenge, but your dad basically so your grandfather chose basically it was Elizabeth,right, over his own grandson. And I think that's really hard to maybe just accept. And that would be hard to accept for any family,right? Your grandfather sadly passed away a couple of years ago. And when he did, did you finally have that kind of final closure, final moments together where you both kind of accepted the truth? **Tyler Shultz** [1:09:57] To an extent, yeah. So by the end of his life, he did recognize that Elizabeth had been lying to him. He recognized that I wasright. He said that he was proud of me for standing up for the truth here. But he did not apologize for anything. He did not do anything to make itright. He did not acknowledge the role that he had in enabling Elizabeth. But at least he admitted that I wasright. And the last conversation that I had with him, actually before he passed away, he invited me over to his house, and he told me about a time that he saw Elizabeth lie. And this was the only time that he ever told me about a time that he independently saw Elizabeth lie where I didn't have to open his eyes to it. And he told me this story about how during Fleet Week in San Francisco, when the Navy comes in with the battleships and they have the Blue Angels fly over the city, he said that he got Elizabeth invited to speak on a battleship to a group of Navy sailors. And he said, with tears in her eyes, she told these sailors how honored and humbled she was that her life's work was saving the lives of United States servicemen and women. And he just couldn't believe that any human being could lie to them as confidently and as convincingly as she lied to them. And I think that was another one of the ways Elizabeth was so manipulative is that my grandfather was a Marine in World War II, and he was very, very proud of that. He would talk about, "Once a Marine, always a Marine." And he held these United States servicemen and women in very, very high regard. And that is something that I think he assumed everybody did, and that no one would be capable of misleading these young, courageous men and women the way that Elizabeth did. ### Moving On **Tyler Shultz** [1:11:53] He literally thought that wouldn't be possible. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:11:56] Even I wasn't part of the story. I can feel the pressure you must have been under. Did it take a long time to come over that? Is it paranoia? Is it over fear? I mean, this is not a time that just closes the chapter overnight,right? Was it a while? **Tyler Shultz** [1:12:18] Certainly, yeah. And in some ways, it persists. Elizabeth and Sunny going to prison was definitely a very comforting moment for me to feel like, "Oh, this is finally over. I can finally move forward with my life without having to basically be looking over my shoulder." And that has mostly come to an end now. And luckily, I'm happy to say that I'd never even think about Elizabeth anymore until I'm speaking about her or on a podcast. But in my day-to-day life, no worries. But she used to occupy my brain close to 100% of the time. It was my life. It's not exactly like this, but the best analogy that I can have is that it's kind of like living with a chronic disease where even if you're not actively thinking about it, you are constantly changing the way you think and act based on that, even subconsciously. And it became like that. Whereas this thing that I was just living with all the time, and I have finally been able to let that go. And I don't think about Elizabeth all the time. She's not in my subconscience all the time. I really only think about her in situations like this. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:13:38] So I mentioned at the start of the podcast how I met her. So it was by email. When I was 16, 17, I had another podcast show that every kid obviously does have. And before all of this kind of broke through,right, I mean, she was a big tech founder. People looked up to her. So I was like, "Right, got to get her on the podcast show." So I reached out to her, "Dear Elizabeth, I'm 16 years old. I'd love to have you on the podcast show," and so on. And I vividly remember her response was something along the lines of, "Thank you so much for reaching out. I am totally focused on the mission of this company. I wish you well, respectfully, Elizabeth." And annoyingly, I printed this email, but I don't know where it is. But that is the only interaction I've had with Elizabeth Holmes. Two lines. That was it. **Tyler Shultz** [1:14:33] I mean, it's very on-brand for her to just continue promoting this narrative of her being so devoted that she doesn't have time for anything else except Theranos and also talking about how she doesn't have time for anything except Theranos. It's interesting that she even responded to that email to deliver that message to you,right? **Ollie Forsyth** [1:14:53] Yeah. I was quite happy to see that. **Tyler Shultz** [1:14:55] She could have just ignored it. She could have just ignored it. If she truly didn't have an extra few seconds in her day, she could have just ignored it. But she wanted to deliver that message. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:15:04] Yeah. And here we are, 10, 12 years on talking about that. Every time I see a health tech company now who does blood sampling, I'm like, "We've seen this happen before for Theranos. How are they going to make it?" ### Future **Ollie Forsyth** [1:15:20] And it seems though the world of health is changing so quickly. And I know you're already excited about a couple of trends, especially around brain health, physical health. What are you really excited aboutright now? And although the whole Theranos thing is kind of behind you now, okay, it'll be part of your life in some respects, are you still excited about what health can do to the impact of this world? **Tyler Shultz** [1:15:44] Yeah. So I think an interesting area to talk about is brain health and Alzheimer's disease and even specifically how it ties into diagnostics. So I think it's absolutely amazing the progress that we're making in Alzheimer's diseaseright now. For the first time, as of maybe between a year and two years ago, we actually have two FDA-proof therapies for early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which we have never had before. So it's amazing. They are far from perfect. I will say that. They are very expensive. They cost about $26,000 a year to take. They have side effects. The worst side effect is, I think, brain hemorrhaging in severe cases, which is obviously a very severe side effect. And it doesn't by any means prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease. It slows the onset by about 30%. So you can argue, is that worth the potential side effects? But there's something, and I think that that is very exciting. And not only that, but last time I checked, there were like 34 drugs that were in phase three clinical trials for early-onset Alzheimer's disease. So because of the progress that we've been making, I really do believe that within the next 5 to 10 years, that we will have good drugs for early-onset Alzheimer's disease and other areas of neuropathies as well. What's interesting to me about this from the diagnostics perspective is that there are still not good diagnostics for early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which almost feels impossible. It feels like you would need to be able to diagnose it before you can treat it. But somehow we have the treatments now without the diagnostics. And they do exist, but they're very expensive. They're inaccessible. They are kind of a pain. So you can do spinal taps, and you can do PET scans to look for the amyloid plaque in your brain. The gold standard is the PET scan for the amyloid plaque. But it is really not a good diagnostic because I wish I'd looked up the exact percentage before this. But if you just randomly scan the brains of people over the age of 65, a huge percentage of them will show amyloid plaques in the brain, but not have symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. So it is really not a very specific test. So you have to take the symptoms, and then you go do the PET scan to basically rule out other things. So if you see the symptoms, then you also see the amyloid plaques in the PET scan, you then make the diagnosis as having Alzheimer's disease. But especially in the early stages, that could be really hard to decipher. It's really hard to diagnose those early stages of Alzheimer's disease. And the reason I think this has happened is because the market for diagnostics, in a lot of ways, is a lot more challenging than the market for therapeutics. If you think about it, it has the same technical risks that therapeutics have. It still has enormous regulatory risk as well. And then the market risk is way bigger than the risk is for a therapy. If you have early-onset Alzheimer's disease and you have the means to pay for it, you will pay $26,000 a year for the therapy. It's a no-brainer. You need it. You want it. But to someone who may or may not have Alzheimer's disease, how much are you willing to pay for the test? I guarantee you not $26,000 a year, probably at least an order of magnitude less, like maybe hundreds of dollars. And then you're not going to be taking it every year. You will take it once and then maybe never again or maybe in 10 years. Who knows? So the market is just so much smaller. But the value that it provides really is so much bigger than the actual revenue that you're able to get by developing that test. So over the last many decades, investors have really been burned by diagnostics. And investing in therapeutics has turned out to be a much better investment than investing in diagnostics. So much so that now I really feel like we have a cart is coming before the horse here with Alzheimer's disease. And the best way I think that diagnostics companies can capture the full value of their test is by pairing it directly with the therapy. And there are some cool companies that are starting to do this. I know before this, I sent you over some info on Kurex. I want to talk about Kurex just because it's something that I've personally done. So you can order a test that you can take at home, or you could go in and get your blood drawn, and they will test your IgEs for allergies. And then they will ship that therapy directly to your door. So what's really amazing about this is they are getting the full value out of that diagnostic test. It's not they're doing the diagnostic and then sending you somewhere else, and then the therapeutic company is getting all the revenue because you have to take these allergy shots or the sublingual allergy medication every month for the next five years. It's combined into one. And I think that is really the best way to look at diagnostics is to solve a very, very specific problem that leads to a very specific solution for that patient. Because with diagnostics, the root of the problem comes down to this. People want to buy solutions. And with diagnostics, you are selling somebody a problem. And people really don't like buying problems. So you need to tie these things together really, really tightly. And so I like that I'm starting to see more of these types of diagnostics out there. But what I don't like to see, which I still see a lot of, is people saying that they are the Theranos that works. And unsurprisingly, you can imagine that a lot of people reach out to me saying that they've invented the Theranos that works. Some of them have actually been pretty good. I don't want to say they're all horrible. They're fraudulent, nothing like that. But no one has truly come close to being able to diagnose hundreds or a thousand things from a single drop of blood. No one has come close. But I also don't know if that is theright business model for diagnostics because it is incredibly challenging where, let's say, the Theranos business model, like the Theranos technology worked at least to some extent, and you had a device sitting in Walgreens that could test for a couple hundred things. When a physician orders a blood test for you, if you don't entirely replace Quest and LabCorp with that Theranos product, there's no point in going to use the Theranos product when you could just, like, why would I do half my test using the Theranos product and then go to LabCorp to do the other half? I'm just going to go to LabCorp to do the other half. So to me, it really feels like you truly have to replace nearly the entire offering, which is incredibly challenging to do. I think it's technically challenging. I think, again, the market will be very challenging. And so I like that I'm starting to see more of these specific point solutions in diagnostics that lead to very specific action. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:23:12] So would you ever go and start your own new health company? What does the future hold for Tyler? **Tyler Shultz** [1:23:19] Yeah. So I have started my own two diagnostics companies myself. The second one was actually kind of along these lines of using dried blood spot kits to enable access to simple medications like statins and metformin, which are very cheap. They're very effective. They're very safe. And so the idea was just to improve access. But for reasons we don't really need to get into here, I was having some conflicts with. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:23:45] Yeah. **Tyler Shultz** [1:23:46] Having some conflicts there with the vision had been changing. I'm not even sure if that's what they really do anymore. My son was being born, and I just felt like it was a good time for me to step away from the crazy startup world and just focus on being a dad for a bit. But potentially, I will revisit this idea at some point in the future of creating these diagnostic solutions that enable really specific therapies. But who knows? Right now, I've really enjoyed being able to spend as much time as I can possibly spend with my two-year-old, and now I also have a three-month-old. So I have two sons now. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:24:21] Congrats. **Tyler Shultz** [1:24:21] And I've just been loving the amount of time that I've gotten to spend with them and taking some time to, again, speak about these stories from Theranos and the lessons we can all learn. But I'm sure at some point, I will go back and start a new company. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:24:37] So if Elizabeth was to sit in front of you tomorrow, she's out of prison, and she just wants to have a five-minute chat, what would that conversation look like? **Tyler Shultz** [1:24:49] It wouldn't happen. And I've actually had, in real life, people kind of offer that. I've had people come up to me and say that they've become friends with Elizabeth, and she's a completely changed woman, and that I would get along really well with her now, and that I should meet her again and see if maybe we can mend bridges and, I don't know, become friends or something. And I'm just sitting here like, why? I'm not in the market for friendsright now, especially friends like that. And I wouldn't want to meet with her. I flat out wouldn't want to meet with her because I don't care what the outcome. I don't want any outcome. There's no outcome that is good for me. Either she does convince me that she's a changed woman, and she does pull me back into her orbit, and I don't want that to happen, or we conflict again and start new fights. And I don't really want that to happen either,right? So I don't see any outcome that I would want to have by meeting Elizabeth. So I think I'll just stay away. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:25:55] Focus on being an amazing dad with your family, with your kids, and let's see what the future holds. **Tyler Shultz** [1:26:02] Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I think the future is bright. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:26:06] Thank you so much for your time. This has been super amazing, and we can't wait to see where you go next. **Tyler Shultz** [1:26:12] Thank you. Talk to you later. --- This library is powered by PodHood (https://podhood.com), the podcast website platform.