In 2006, Elizabeth hired Edmond Ku to help her with the technical part of her prototype. He was disappointed when he first got in touch with the product because he found out that he had to start everything from scratch because nothing was actually working. Elizabeth repeated several times that the device should only use a drop of blood, making the prototyping process even harder. To make matters even worse, she also prohibited the engineering department to exchange information with the chemistry laboratory, which ultimately delayed conclusive results several times and created unnecessary information silos. Due to these contrivances, she created enough of a time window to complete negotiations with Pfizer to test the pilot device created by Theranos in Tennessee on a group of patients who were suffering from cancer. In 2007 during a trip in Nashville, Ed also had the occasion to meet Sunny, the so-called COO of the company, and who was also Elizabeth’s confidant. Meanwhile, Elizabeth created a second team of engineers to compete with the current one. The new team seemed more efficient and because of that Ed was fired. One day, the company announced an urgent meeting during which they announced that three former employers were getting sued for stealing intellectual property. No one in the company was allowed to get in touch with those people.