Sunny were furious. They viewed it as a major conflict of interest and
asked him to transfer his bike-lights patent to Theranos. The
paperwork Kent had signed when he joined the company entitled them
to any intellectual property he produced while employed there, they
contended. Kent disagreed. He’d worked on his little venture during
his free time and felt he had done nothing wrong. He also failed to see
how a new type of bicycle light posed a threat to a maker of blood-
testing equipment. But Elizabeth and Sunny wouldn’t let it go. In
meeting after meeting, they tried to get him to turn over the patent.
They ratcheted up the pressure by bringing Theranos’s new senior
counsel, David Doyle, to some of the meetings.
As he watched the standoff unfold, Greg became convinced that it
wasn’t so much about the patent as it was about punishing Kent for his
perceived disloyalty. Elizabeth expected her employees to give their all
to Theranos, especially ones like Kent whom she entrusted with big
responsibilities. Not only had Kent not given his all, he’d devoted part
of his time and energy to another engineering project. It explained
why he hadn’t been coming in on weekends like she wanted him to. As
she saw it, Kent had betrayed her. In the end, a fragile compromise
was reached: Kent would go on a leave of absence to give his bicycle-
light venture a shot. When he was done indulging his pet project,
they’d have a conversation about whether, and under what conditions,
he could return.
Kent’s departure put Elizabeth in a foul mood. She now looked to
Greg and others to pick up the slack. Greg also sensed a growing
urgency in Elizabeth and Sunny’s behavior. They seemed to be
squeezing the engineering team to meet some sort of deadline without
communicating to them what that deadline was. They must have
promised someone something, he thought.
As Elizabeth grew impatient with the pace of the miniLab’s
development, Greg bore the brunt of her frustration. When the
engineering team gathered for weekly status updates, she opened the
meetings by staring at him silently without blinking until he broke the
ice with a polite “Hello Elizabeth, how are you today?” He began
keeping detailed notes of what was discussed and agreed to at each