A month or two after Jobs’s death, some of Greg’s colleagues in the
engineering department began to notice that Elizabeth was borrowing
behaviors and management techniques described in Walter Isaacson’s
biography of the late Apple founder. They were all reading the book
too and could pinpoint which chapter she was on based on which
period of Jobs’s career she was impersonating. Elizabeth even gave the
miniLab a Jobs-inspired code name: the 4S. It was a reference to the
iPhone 4S, which Apple had coincidentally unveiled the day before
Jobs passed away.
—
GREG’S HONEYMOON PERIOD at Theranos ended when his sister
applied for a job at the company. After interviewing with both
Elizabeth and Sunny in April 2011, she received an offer to join the
product management team the following month but decided to turn it
down and stay with her employer, the accounting firm PwC. The next
day, a Saturday, Greg was at the office working. Elizabeth was there
too but wouldn’t acknowledge his presence, which he found odd since
she usually made a point to, especially on weekends. The following
week, Greg stopped being invited to her brainstorming sessions with
Kent. It dawned on him that she’d taken his sister’s decision
personally and that he was now paying the price for it.
Not long after, a chill descended on Kent’s own relationship with
Elizabeth. For all intents and purposes, Kent was the chief architect of
the miniLab. A talented engineer who loved to build stuff, he was also
dabbling with a side project in his spare time: bicycle lights that lit up
both wheels and the road, providing improved visibility and safety for
the rider at night. He’d pitched the concept on Kickstarter and, much
to his surprise, was able to raise $215,000 in forty-five days. It was the
seventh-largest sum raised on the crowdfunding platform that year.
What had been a hobby suddenly looked like it could become a viable
business.
Kent told Elizabeth about his successful Kickstarter campaign,
thinking she wouldn’t mind. But he badly miscalculated: she and