[music] I know you'll all join me in welcoming
Tyler to Santa Clara University. [claps] So I'm going to share a little bit of the
background of the story for those of you that may not know some of the details
and then Tyler and I will start talking. The story of the Theranos downfall has
been well-documented over the last several years most recently in John
Carreyrou's best-selling book, Bad Blood. But I want to give our audience a little
overview of the story before we dive into our conversation. Towards the end of
our time together there'll be an opportunity for questions. Tyler started
as an intern at Theranos between his Junior and Senior year of college at
Stanford University. Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous founder and former CEO of
Theranos was good family friends with Tyler's family and Tyler's grandfather,
George Shultz, who served on the board of directors for the company. While
interning at Theranos, Tyler actually decided to change his major from
engineering to biology because he was so taken with the mission of the
organization. After graduating with a degree in biology, he started working
full-time at Theranos. But he quickly figured out that something in the
diagnostic numbers wasn't adding up. Theranos was inaccurately telling other companies and the public about what their machines
could do. Instead of immediately blowing the whistle Tyler decided to bring up his concerns internally. He talked to Elizabeth and
others and senior leadership positions in the company. Only to be met with
hostility. He also tried to explain to his grandfather what was going on but
his grandfather didn't believe him. His parents urged him to quit but to say the
reason for quitting was that he was going to get his phd, so as not to make
waves. Ultimately after only months, after only eight months of working at Theranos, Tyler resigned. He was 23 years old at
the time. Originally, Tyler didn't think about or consider talking with a reporter. But as Carreyrou has explained in his book, he sent Tyler a LinkedIn
message and asked if he wanted to talk to him about Theranos.
Tyler decided to reach out to Carreyrou via burner phone and he eventually became a central anonymous source for Carreyrou's
articles on Theranos. In the two years that followed, Tyler had to fight back
various legal threats from Theranos. He even had private investigators following
him. Theranos' legal team tried to get him to sign several different
affidavits, saying he was, he had been talking to the Wall Street Journal and
they employed a variety of bullying tactics to convince him to do so. They also tried to convince Tyler to name other whistleblowers. Throughout this whole ordeal,
Tyler remained steadfast to his commitment to do the right thing
while also having the added complexity of his family's involvement in the
company. His grandfather didn't believe Tyler when he came to him with concerns
and he tried to broker a deal between Tyler and Theranos. All the while
Elizabeth Holmes continued to attend Schultz family functions. Eventually Carreyrou's reporting exposed Theranos for what it was -
an elaborate corporate fraud. Tyler's family by then had spent four hundred thousand dollars on legal
fees to fight back Theranos' threats. In March of 2018, Holmes and the
company's former president, Sunny Balwani, were charged with massive fraud
by the SEC. Holmes paid a fine, gave back stock and is barred from being an officer or director of any public company for ten years. Balwani did not settle with
the SEC and in June of 2018 the US District Attorney for Northern
California announced an indictment of Holmes and Balwani on wire fraud and
conspiracy charges and I believe they are actually in court, perhaps as we speak. Theranos ceased operations on August 31st 2018 and the company was dissolved. In recent days, reports suggest there may be more criminal charges coming as part
of a larger investigation into the company as a whole. After leaving Theraos, Tyler worked at Stanford Center for Magnetic
Nanotechnology. Currently he is the CEO and co-founder of Flux Biosciences
Incorporated, a startup that aims to bring medical grade diagnostics into the
home of consumers. Why don't you just start by telling us why you quit your job at Theranos. The first big red flag was the first time I saw the Theranos device, and you could quickly see that it was not what it had been claimed to be. Like everything inside the device was
something that I had already seen before and almost any other laboratory that
had been in up to that time and you could quickly tell that it couldn't run,
you know, hundreds of tests. It couldn't even run two tests at the same time and while I was there we only got up to
running seven tests total and if you wanted to run all those seven tests at
the same time those would have had to been on seven different devices so her
claims of running you know 300 or whatever tests from a single drop of
blood seemed grossly exaggerated. Working with the devices and I would see that the variations of the results that it produces was very high and then in our
daily lab meetings we would kind of go over the experiments that we had done in
the previous 24 hours and kind of pick and choose about what experiments needed
to be repeated so we would essentially just delete sections of an experiment
and repeat it with and replace it with new data. And at first that seems kind of
weird but then you eventually kind of like fall into the habit of doing that
and it's a really bad habit and then I started hearing about the quality
controls failing and this is with with my colleagues who are running real
patient samples so they would run the quality controls for the day and they
would fail and then some select cases they would be pressured to run patient
samples anyway even though we knew that the test wasn't functioning properly and then quality controls would fail multiple days in a row which is a really
bad sign because just statistically you should know how often a quality control
should fail and we were failing way more often than that and we were coming up
with ways on how to how to prevent reporting quality control failures and
then there was an incident where the CLIA inspectors came to inspect the
laboratory but they essentially locked the door to the room that had all the
Theranos devices in so they only saw like the third-party Siemens,
you know, FDA-cleared type equipment and when we got that sample we split it and
we ran it on the Theranos devices and the Siemens equipment and the results
were off by, sometimes more than 300% and we decided to report the
results from the Siemens equipment not from the Theranos devices even though we were running patient samples on the Theranos devices. As a validation, was
really affecting quality controls and ultimately patient samples and I felt
like you know our practices that of what I'm doing here
are so bad that it's affecting patients' results. So then I went and I had some
questions and I went to Elizabeth and I kind of brought a couple of these things
up and she said like oh that doesn't sound right and like I'll set you up
with a meeting with the Statistics vice-president so we can explain to you
how statistics is done and I and I said that I've heard her say and I've
seen on our website that our coefficient of variation is less than 10% but I
never. I almost never saw that to actually be the case and she said no I
don't think we say that let's check the website so he went around to her
computer and looked at the website and on the home page first page in big bold
it says CV less than 10% and then in smaller writing underneath it says
Vitamin D and she says we've only made that claim for Vitamin D, it's not meant
to be indicative of our assay performance as a whole though who knows
if this actually works in the real world. I said you know we claim that we are fast,
cheaper, more accurate and I don't think any of those things are true and he says
I don't think we've ever claimed that we're more accurate.
I said "really? that's weird" He said if you see any materials that say we're more accurate
let me know. So I went back to my desk and you google Theranos and every
article says "faster, cheaper, more accurate". "Faster, cheaper, more accurate."
"Faster, cheaper and more accurate." So I go back to him with all these articles and
I say like what's going on here if this is incorrect we should actually go
correct this information since we're we're saying that we are bringing
transparency to blood testing so if this isn't correct we should proactively
correct it and he said yeah I think Elizabeth just tends to exaggerate in
interview-type setting. Actually instead ask that I write all my concerns in an
email and I'm actually really thankful that I did that because now it's all
documented. So I put, I wrote a really long email with all these concerns in it
and sent it to Elizabeth and essentially Sunny replied who was the president
slash boyfriend saying within an even longer email and essentially just saying
that I was arrogant, ignorant, patronizing, reckless, no understanding of math
science, or basic statistics and that if I had any other last name that I would
already been held accountable to the strongest extent. That's why I decided to
quit. I was naively hoping that I would be listened to so I really wanted to
bring these concerns to Elizabeth and actually work through them. You know, she
was on the cover of Forbes and Inc and to me those interviews went like this -
Elizabeth how great are you and she would say I am really great and they
would report elizabeth is really great and that was pretty much the extent of
the interview no one had asked her a hard question or if they did she didn't
answer it and it looked like John really wanted to ask hard questions and so I
did some research on John and I saw that based on his past reporting that people
had been arrested so like action had happened after John's reporting which
made me have a lot of confidence that it would be worth it and I actually told my
parents about John and they said that's awesome but don't talk to him. Identify
yourself as a whistleblower because If I remember correctly this is another thing
that your parents said would be a bad idea. Yeah, definitely. But you did it anyway. Yeah, so that happened more than a year after the first time I contacted John, I think, and
you know at that time when I outed myself as a whistleblower, I think the
writing was already on the Wall. So like The Wall Street Journal had published a
bunch of articles about Theranos already The Huia came out with their
report that said there was documented times where, control, quality controls
failed and then patient samples were run anyway. Which is one of the things I had alleged it had come out that they had shell corporations buying third-party
laboratory equipment so they could essentially hide that they had these
other laboratories. David Boies, who was their general counsel said that when the inspectors came to look at the labs that they didn't ask to see the Theranos devices
which is why they weren't shown that lab. So basically all the
things that I had said, I had felt like I had been proven to be correct but
Elizabeth was still having you know weekly luncheons with my grandfather, he
was still on their board of directors David Boies who was really bullying me
was still their general counsel and on their board member, on their board of
directors and Elizabeth was still going to our
family functions and I was still being followed by private investigators and I
just felt like I have so much power right now because when Theranos first
thought that I'd spoken to The Wall Street Journal, they had my grandfather
called me and I ended up going to his house just to talk to my grandfather and
I explicitly said I want to talk to my grandfather without lawyers because it
was a clear at that point that Theranos wanted me to talk to their lawyers and I
said I want to come talk to you not to lawyers so I went to his house and I'd
you know rehashed all of these old conversations that I had with him where
I said this thing is you know doesn't exist.
Essentially and we're giving patients bad results we're not testing on the
Theranos devices but he didn't believe me. And then he just said that there was one page confidentiality agreement and if I
agreed to sign it that a world of trouble would go away and I said okay
I'll sign a one-page confidentiality agreement and then he said actually
there are two lawyers here right now can I go get them and I said okay and so
these lawyers come in and they don't give me a one-page confidentiality
agreement they give me a temporary restraining order, a letter signed by David
Boies, I don't remember exactly what was in the letter but was basically like
you're a terrible person signed David Boies. So this was nothing like a
one-page confidentiality agreement and or just talk to your grandfather Yea, or just to talk to my grandfather this
is nothing like what I expected and that story hadn't come out yet and I thought
that would make them look really bad and I felt like I had proven to be right and
I had this story and they were still following me
with private investigators they you know Elizabeth was still going my family
functions I just felt like they had no respect for me and I just felt like I
wanted to show that I was willing to stand up for myself and that's why I
outed myself. Ultimately you know, bullied, intimidated, end up racking up legal fees
but I think I'm different and that it seems like most whistleblowers have a
tough time getting their life back on track afterwards and they have a tough time getting a job in the same industry but
that has not been the case for me like right after I outed myself in the Wall
Street Journal I was getting job offers from different biotech companies I was
getting job offers from venture capital companies, you know people
just emailing me say we'd love to have you work with us. Which is, which seems,
which is the exact opposite of what I was expecting everyone was telling me
that once you're kind of pegged as a whistleblower that you're not going to
be able to get a job in that field and I don't know exactly why my experience is
different than than the normal experience. Could have to do with your
relative youth. I mean, the fact that somebody that early in their career is
that comfortable with their own thought process and can overrule every outside
piece of advice they're getting and still sort of stay the course. That could
be pretty compelling for a future employer. For those months were somewhere
around like $400,000. Actually, I guess that, four hundred thousand dollars was more than just those four months but the meat of it was those four or five months. And during that time
I wasn't really thinking about I was only thinking about money as, as a
resource like I didn't have an emotional attachment to money, I really saw it as
like runway like, how long can I fight Theranos with this X amount of money.
My legal fees for those months were somewhere around like four hundred
thousand dollars. Sometimes I feel like people paint a picture of me that's
actually better than it is like when I look back at that moment I don't even I
like I don't even know if that was necessarily like a good thing for me to
say like yeah I'm willing to you know put my parents out of a house to keep
fighting this fight. There are a lot of conflicting roles here. I mean the family obligations,
you had colleagues that you worked with that you considered friends,
supervisors. So lots of different roles to kind of sort through in terms of
whose interest to put first and and how to and how to go about doing that so I I
think given the situation you did, you've done a very nice job of doing that. There
was a number of people just in that list that were misled in this story you know
talk about inspectors, investors, different people in the company. Why do you think that was possible? Because trade secrets. Trade secrets.
Exactly. Say a little more about that. That's what Elizabeth answer to any tough question would be - "I can't tell you because trade secrets". SEC you know, came out with their findings, I was actually over at his house just to see my aunts and uncles who were in town
and he kind of stopped the conversation and said well the SEC came out with this
report and I had no idea the extent to which Theranos had been lying and I'm
really proud of Tyler for standing up for what he believes in. I really idolized my
grandfather, and my grandfather actually has a track record of having a really
strong moral compass and he would always say like you can't love your job too
much otherwise you'll do things you won't ordinarily do in order to keep your job.
So you should always be willing to quit a job and my parents, you know are the
best people. I think I got lucky they're like my dad like one of my earliest
memories ever actually is when I was in kindergarten there was, I got classmate
of mine who had just come from Japan didn't speak any English, it's like my
parents worked with me to learn how to say like can I be your friend in
Japanese so that I could like befriend this this kid and that's like one of my
earliest memories ever so that was those were the parents that I had growing up with. I don't really remember there being a community values or like a certainly a
mission statement that was formalized but it was obvious that their value was
"work really hard" and not necessarily work smart just work a long time. She
would say you know our goal is to never have to say goodbye too soon and she
would tell this story of her uncle who passed away, you know, too young from I don't
remember some some kind of cancer so there was that and she was really
inspiring as, she was a really inspiring leader, like she made every person feel
like they were super important to achieving the vision of the company. I
mean the workplace felt like you were on a sinking ship the whole time for sure,
at least. So for me I felt like there were two different worlds there was a
carpeted world and there there was the tile world.
So the carpeted world was where the product managers were, was where the
executives were, it was where you know software engineers were
and then there was a tiled world, where all the labs were. So all the research,
all the Theranos devices, all the CLIA labs - all that was in the tiled world and
they were just completely two separate realities and it was really hard for me
to reconcile the differences. Like I would go talk to Elizabeth and we were
talking about the vision of the company and I would feel so motivated and she
would tell me about how what I was doing was so important to achieving that
vision and I would go back feeling so motivated and then I would start doing
the lab work and I go wait wait what this is what we're talking about how did
that happen she is she's very convincing and I can
see how if you weren't working with the devices every day how it would be hard
to believe that she's lying to you. The board didn't really have any power, like
it was kind of like a fake board. So you have to make sure that the board
actually has powers and then the other thing I think would be would be
extremely important I don't know if there's practical way to do this but
just talk to the person who's pipetting whoever's doing this kind of work talk
to that person and ask them what they're doing and how things are looking.
One director came and asked me like you know what is this experiment telling you that
you're working on right now I would say this experiment is telling me that this
device does not work. Maybe it's better to think about now you sort of have your own enterprise and some responsibility. for some other colleagues, you know is
somebody in that role, what do you think the important things are that you take
away from the experience you've had? Yeah, I think the the most important thing is
to trust the people that you hire and so Elizabeth hired all these great
scientists but then didn't listen to anything they had to say so like I had
some form of immunity because I had a personal relationship with Elizabeth
felt like I was in a position that no one else was where maybe I would be
listened to you so that's kind of why I decided to speak up. Hi my name is Seth Michaelson and
I was the CSO at Theranos in 2010 I walked out because of the same things you saw.
First of all, great job bro. Wow. My name is Father Paul
Goda, I taught in the law school here for 40 years and my question hinges on
your connection with the legal system, $400,000 at a relatively short time I
don't understand that and I'm curious about your reaction
to the complexity of the legal system and the cost because my question is what
in the hell is going on? I don't know, I mean I was really disappointed in the
legal system like when when I was going through this
it really felt like we settled disputes over a game of one-on-one basketball and
you can pay whoever you want to go play for you. So like Theranos could like, you
know, pay LeBron James to go play one-on-one for them and then whoever
they're suing has to pick, you know, in most cases, like a high school basketball
player to go play against LeBron James and that's kind of how things are
settled. Luckily I was in a position where I, I could actually get someone who
was really good to go play for me and put up a fight but, yeah overall I was
pretty disappointed and I just can't imagine, like I had there's like a huge like
privilege aspect to this story and the only reason I could do what I did was
because I could, I was willing to spend a million dollars doing it. On the flip
side of that, I had a colleague, Erica who had the same concerns that I did, also
spoke to John Carreyrou, also reached out to state regulators which, I did not know
about, and she comes from you know very different background than I did she was
in student debt still when she quit Theranos, so she didn't have that and
she you know we took the same steps but then when the lawyer, the Theranos
lawyers approached her, you know she ended up you know moving to Hong Kong
and like putting her head down and ignoring them which turned out to be a
really good idea, I should have done that. [laughs] You have to make sure that you
distinguish what is vision and what is where you are now and I've, Elizabeth,
those somehow became one thing it's like right now we can run 300 things from a
drop of blood and that wasn't really true but that was the vision. But I went
through that when I was fundraising like you know you come up with some revenue
projections you put it on a slide and then the investor goes, mmm, no we're
looking for something bigger and then later they'll kind of like tell you, by the way.. like investors assume that you're
doubling your revenue, that like you take what you
actually think and you double it so, in the investors' mind, they're halving it.
So it's the stupid game that everyone's playing and I just didn't want to play
it so I just took the revenue slide out. My name is Mara I'm an alum, and my local
Safeway built one of those nice rooms for blood testing and not until I read
the book that I know why they had this great room. As somebody who needs to test
their blood on a regular basis for I'm on blood thinners. A wrong diagnosis, I
could either bleed out or I could get a blood clot and have a stroke. So I wanted
to personally thank you for what you did because you could have very well saved
my life. Thank you. [claps]
