The blood analysis startup Theranos is circling the drain, and more and more details are leaked from inside the turbulent last days of the company. A particularly striking anecdote, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou revealed how an employee of Theranos made a clone Space Invaders with a picture of Carreyrou himself as the alien threat owner, selected from your Twitter profile.
Carreyrou has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, whose series of damning reports about Theranos' leadership and its non-operational technology led directly to the company's downfall. Carreyrou's book on the saga, entitled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup will go on sale on May 21. She is also in the process of adapting to a Hollywood movie starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Last month, as a result of the filing of reports by Carreyrou and others over the course of more than two years, the SEC accused CEO Holmes of defrauding investors. Earlier this week, the company fired most of its remaining employees.
Unfortunately, the anecdote from Space Invaders did not enter Carreyrou's book:
I just learned an invaluable anecdote (too late to include it in the book): at a company party, Theranos employees played a video game inspired by Atari's Space Invaders: the weapon was the miniLab, the bullets that the nanotainers and the invader fired: Yours Truly!
– John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou) April 12, 2018 [19659006] However, we have a screenshot of the game, which looks pretty crude and apparently is called "I hate enemies":
Carreyrou says he will finally play:
Carreyrou went on to clarify that the game was not sanctioned by Theranos management, but that the employee who did it did so to learn the Python programming language "and try to encourage my former students coworkers". It is clear that Carreyrou was not a popular figure within the company. According to the report by journalist Nick Bilton about how Carreyrou's initial series of investigative reports initiated a cascade of disturbing revelations about the company, Theranos employees once allegedly chanted: "Fuck you, Carreyrou" in a meeting with all the members in October 2015. [19659009] So I was clearly in something, and now Carreyrou's work will be immortalized not only through his own book and the possible adaptation of Hollywood, but also in a bad clone by Space Invaders .