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Current, unaffected employee here. Throwaway for obvious reasons. A big chunk of the layoff is the new lab that we built in Phoenix. That only made economic se
by ThrowawayH4MCb 7y ago
Current, unaffected employee here. Throwaway for obvious reasons.
A big chunk of the layoff is the new lab that we built in Phoenix. That only made economic sense in the scenario where we were selling far more kits than we succeeded in selling.
The rest of the layoffs have a similar root cause: a massive overestimate of how much we were going to sell.
I'd blame the shortfall on some combination of growing privacy concerns from customers, failure to understand the demand elasticity as we cut back on discounts, maybe some slowing of consumer discretionary spending, and maybe saturating the market.
- ilamont 7y agoAncestry.com has also stepped up its marketing game. Used to be a follower with DNA, now a leader, and discounting heavily. And, unlike 23andMe which got rid of family tree tools used by genealogists, Ancestry still has a very strong suite of trees and traditional genealogy tools. Some people really want to have both genetic and traditional genealogy accounts under the same provider, and are either unaware or don't really care about the privacy concerns.
- fiftyfifty 7y agoOne thing I would add is the data for places outside of Europe looks pretty weak for both Ancestry.com and 23AndMe, at least it was the last time I looked. If you are from European descent they can practically tell you what village your ancestors are from (how accurate that is I don't know) but if you are Asian about the best you get is yep, you're Asian! I married into an Asian family and the reports I've seen from Asian family members are pretty disappointing compared to what I've seen from my family members (white, European descent). I imagine it's similar for some other non-white races too, that's a big demographic that's being missed.
- rb808 7y agoLol $199 - yup you're Asian. Thanks!
- sombremesa 7y agoThis was my main reason for not doing it as well, until I got it as a gift. Still waiting on results, though I expect to be disappointed.
- RobAtticus 7y agoPerhaps its changed since you looked because my fiancee is Latin American and her results tell her the provinces/areas of her home country where her extended family is originally from.
- asveikau 7y ago> If you are from European descent they can practically tell you what village your ancestors are from (how accurate that is I don't know) Can confirm it was accurate for me based on my own impression of family history, I found it pretty impressive. My ancestry is from Lithuania and two different parts of Italy. Lithuania is a small country but they identified my grandparents' county correctly. In Italy, 2 of the regions that I know I have roots from are in spots #1 and #3. The third one is #8.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoJust tried to buy a kit, their checkout page after creating an account is blocked because it's trying to load a flash object.
- umeshunni 7y agoAnd competition - I purchased and ran a 23andme test ~10 years ago and it seemed magical that this was something that could be done. Now there are 3-5 others who do the same thing (at least in a consumer's eyes) and it's unclear what the uniqueness of 23andme is.
- dsd 7y agoWhy would you build a completely separate lab in Phoenix?
- shostack 7y agoWhat the company to be so off with demand estimates? Would the company have been in ok shape if they would have set lower estimates? Or was that target needed for other reasons?