We had an idea together, at our kitchen table, for a piece of logistics software.
A way for small warehouses to track inventory without the enterprise price tag.
We called it Lakeside, after the apartment complex where we dreamed it up.
I wrote the core engine.
The heart of it — the algorithm that made the whole thing work — I wrote over one obsessive winter, at night, after my day job, and I filed the original code and the provisional patent paperwork in my name, because at the time, Gerald’s name was on a different startup that had investors with claws.
“Put it under yours, El,” he’d said. “Keep it clean. It’s ours anyway. What’s yours is mine.”
What’s yours is mine.
I filed everything.
The code. The provisional patent. The founding documents that listed Eleanor Vance as co-creator and majority holder of the underlying intellectual property.
And then I got pregnant with our first.
