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23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company
- sjg007 6y agoI work in this space and even I have a hard time seeing 23andMe being profitable.
- offtop5 6y agoMonetization of user data. Integration with the Match.com API, 'Sure you want to go out with her, you share 12.5% of your DNA'. Open access to various government agencies, ' You share 47% DNA with this GUY who owes taxes , WHERE IS HE'.
- strofcon 6y agoVery much this. Not to mention, "sorry, <XYZ> Health Insurance won't cover you because you show a slight genetic predisposition toward fingernail cancer. Good luck."
- fennecfoxen 6y agoNotwithstanding that slight predispositions for minor conditions could be priced into an underwriting model without all that much pain — I'm not even sure this sort of exclusion you propose has been legal in the past decade or so.
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoHas this happened anywhere in the US? If you work for an employer with group insurance, how can an insurer reject you or even alter your rates? If you don't work for a company with a group policy, buying off the ACA marketplace also is going to prevent the insurer from implementing these types of restrictions on coverage. Maybe this is something that would go on in the life insurance market but so much of the health insurance marketplace is heavily regulated in terms of writing policies and setting rates, that it doesn't appear that getting your DNA would do much for them.
- astura 6y agoNo, using genetic information as a consideration in health insurance is expressly illegal in the US under GINA.
- mywittyname 6y agoMy parents both submitted their DNA to 23&Me... :smh: My mother is otherwise hyper-privacy sensitive. But I guess the draw of finding out their ancestry was too great. And, surprise-surprise, you can tell exactly where we come from by just looking at us.
- elwell 6y agoWith technological progress, the path towards reaping the benefits and mitigating the risks is difficult.
- gruez 6y ago> Monetization of user data. Integration with the Match.com API, 'Sure you want to go out with her, you share 12.5% of your DNA'. this is confusingly worded. It could be interpreted as > Sure, you [do] want to go out with her or > [Are you] sure you want to go out with her[?] 12.5% DNA match would be a second-cousin, so I'm assuming you meant the latter.
- asdff 6y agoI have a hard time seeing how they won't be. They have name recognition. It's like the kleenex of DNA testing. The SNP chips they use are cheap at scale. They don't need to spend money on innovation, they could continue just running SNP chips priced above cost indefinitely. Consumers don't understand the current technology, they aren't going to start one day clamoring for long read sequencing or anything that requires 23 and me to change anything at all. IMO, it's the perfect cash cow business.
- echelon 6y agoIs there a way to predict which SPACs will merge with which startups? It seems like if you had knowledge of this and you could predict a highly profitable business merging with a SPAC, you could get in at the ground floor for incredible and almost immediate share price growth. I wouldn't invest in 23andMe, but I would invest in Stripe. Which SPAC will it merge with?
- sefrost 6y agoI've seen it correctly predicted a few times in investing subreddits.
- echelon 6y agoThis is what I want to read. I know WSB banned SPACs. Did you see it on /r/investing? SeekingAlpha has a lot of writeups on SPACs, but I don't think they're as savvy as Reddit. Totally a mixed bag.
- aphextron 6y agoIt's pretty hard to predict when a SPAC will merge, that's basically what your risk is: the time value of your money. However if you're buying at NAV, there's almost no downside risk other than that.
- jonathanjaeger 6y agoNo way Stripe will go public via SPAC.
- Voloskaya 6y ago> you could get in at the ground floor for incredible and almost immediate share price growth Hence why you can't predict it. If you could, everyone else could, and there would be no appreciation of the shares when the news is released. Only way to know in advance is good old insider information.
- echelon 6y ago
- monkeydust 6y agoYou can look at the SEC filings for the SPAC as it will provide indication but it will be thematic at best.
- cphoover 6y agoThis company is just one big ethical dilemma packaged Silicon Valley style to look hip.
- ape4 6y agoPrivacySinkholeAndMe
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoThe worst thing is that, you can’t even really opt out. My parents tried to gift me a kit for xmas one year, "hey we think this is fun, might be useful to know if you're prone to eyeball cancer or whatever." I explained all the privacy issues and politely declined. But of course they and my sister had already gone ahead and done it, so now my family’s genetic fingerprints are in their databases, nothing to be done about it. This is how the "Golden State Killer" was nabbed, which is obviously an example of this kind of thing being put to good use… I hope I don't have to argue against the dumb old "people who are innocent have nothing to hide" discussion here
- riffic 6y agosounds like you need to open a dialog with your congress-critters with your concerns then. these companies are going to do whatever they want in the meantime.
- asdff 6y agoThat is in fact not how the golden state killer was nabbed. Uploads to GEDmatch are voluntary.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoIt very much was. His relatives, not knowing who he was, voluntarily uploaded their data to GEDmatch. Those fingerprints were used to identify him. Did you think he voluntarily uploaded his DNA on a lark?
- 6y ago
- engineer_22 6y agoWhy would a company go through a SPAC instead of an IPO? Does the SPAC merger constitute a hedge against uncertainty in an IPO? What I mean is, 23andMe gets cash NOW and the SPAC gets the company at a discount but accepts the risk the IPO might not meet its goals? Could someone please explain the strategy?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- scary-size 6y agoTh last twenty Bloomberg Money Stuff [1] columns get into the details of SPAC vs IPO. Matt Levine does a pretty good job explaining finance stuff to non-finance people. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...
- mason55 6y ago> Does the SPAC merger constitute a hedge against uncertainty in an IPO? Yes, that's exactly right. You're basically paying for certainty.
- detaro 6y agoIn addition to speed and guaranteed price a SPAC merger also has less reporting requirements, because the SPAC already did go trough the IPO paperwork when it was created. And didn't have to explain weird things about the business to investors because it had no history or things to be going on. It then can relatively easily buy 23andMe, and 23andMe doesn't have to explain its business risks etc to the public as much - which could have been an issue and risk to the stock price given the history of probes about medical claims etc.
- lordnacho 6y agoAm I the only one who thinks that's a massive hole in the rules? You IPO an empty shell, which passes easily because it does nothing, and then any old shop with a messy business can then be bought by it?
- Kharvok 6y agoNow all of China knows your('re) genetics (here)
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoIn a letter to customers, CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki said, "We're about to cash out of this bitch, and go kick it on a South Pacific island. Just fair warning that the database is going to have new owners soon, who will be keen to sell access to your most-intimate biological details to anyone with an idea on how to make money on it, and a checkbook."
- _Understated_ 6y agoDid she honestly say this? Do you have a link? If this is true then, wow... just wow! Edit: given that Zuck took the piss out of his customers many years ago [0] as a teenager and is now a billionaire then I guess anything's possible. [0] - https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/ https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...
- rexbee 6y agoShe did not say that
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoI'm... how you say?... paraphrasing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- breck 6y agoFunny, I have her 2006 letter and there seems to be some inconsistencies: "As you all know, I'm rich enough from Google that I could just go kick it on a South Pacific Island. Instead though, I'm going to spend the next 15 years of my life grinding, taking flak of the press and internet trolls, so that I can set the record for helping the most people in the world learn there ancestry and pioneer mass genetic testing via the mail, mass SNPs genotyping at a level never seen before by orders of magnitude, and pave the way for a future where everyone on the planet has access to their genetic information for better health"
- executive 6y agoVGAC is currently trading down ~10% > https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VGAC/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VGAC/
- breck 6y agoThanks for the tip! Just bought some. Does this mean I own some 23andme now? I'm a bit ignorant of how SPACs work.
- runako 6y agoYou shouldn't take investment advice from strangers on the Internet, but you also should know what you're buying before you buy it.
- breck 6y agoDan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more.
- throw_away 6y agoLikewise, the film Forrest Gump should not be considered sound investment advice
- 6y ago
- iblaine 6y agoSPACs are today’s ICOs. For every good company like 23andMe we should expect dozens of bad ones.
- runako 6y agoHere's a thread of basic diligence on the company: https://twitter.com/BluthCapital/status/1357469113422069761?s=20 https://twitter.com/BluthCapital/status/1357469113422069761?... Possibly of interest if you're considering investing.
- breck 6y agoThanks! It does explain why the stock price is low. I do have some problems with 23andme (and I've sent Anne a few emails about things over the years about a few simple things that they still haven't corrected, which is a bit worrisome), but that being said, who else comes close to doing what they do? I invested a lot in FitBit (lost a lot), but also Garmin and AAPL and MSFT (I just liked the wearable sector). Similarly, I'd like to do a similar play in consumer genomics. Just bought some 23andMe (via the SPAC, not sure if I did it right), but what else is out there? I liked uBiome but not sure what is happening there. Ancestry.com I should probably look into, what else? Oxford Nanopore would be great (are they public?). 23andme is great because of the network effects. If someone comes out with better sequencing tech, they still have a huge distribution problem, which 23andme has solved (if they don't blow the trust of their users). Anyway, I'm long.
- runako 6y agoI don't know the space well, but I have been in a position to have purchased a few (IIRC at least 4) genetic tests used in clinical diagnoses. 23andMe was not a vendor that was used in any of those situations. Also, those tests cost a lot more than 23andMe's tests (this can be good if you are an investor). Even if you suspect something based on a 23&M test, your doctor will likely require confirmation from a clinical testing company. That's IMHO where the money is. 23&me is analogous to the over-the-counter tests they sell in the drugstore, which we know are a cheaper alternative than a "real" lab test. > who else comes close to doing what they do? The other vendors in the space who are used in clinical environments ("real" lab tests). Think Lab Corp (LH) as an example. You might also look at the constituents of the ARKG ETF for other options. These are companies that have demand locked in through relationships with healthcare providers and are also able to charge more for their tests. None of this is investment advice. Obviously you should not take investment advice from strangers on the Internet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- offtop5 6y agoI never saw the point of stuff like this. Aside from misplaced ancestral pride, so what your great great great grandpa owned the biggest farm in Spain, doesn't change the fact you work at Vons.
- codetrotter 6y agoIdk, I think it’d be fun to know who my ancestors were. Not for any kind of ancestral pride that you talk about but just because it’s neat. If you don’t get it you don’t get it, that’s fine. There’s lots of other things that people find interesting or meaningful that I don’t and same the other way around. It’s like that for everyone.
- jhardy54 6y agoI've flagged your post for being unnecessarily hostile while also being ignorant of the type of features that 23andMe has. Maybe you're thinking of ancestry.com?
- offtop5 6y agoYou're handing your most private personal data to a company in hopes of finding one of your ancestors did something cool ? Does that make sense to you ?
- jhardy54 6y agoHappy to answer any questions or accept feedback if someone thinks I should have done something differently. I've been trying to flag posts with misinformation rather than arguing, and it seems polite to explain my flags. The downvotes suggest I should've flagged silently?
- da_big_ghey 6y agoofftop5 offered his opinion that the service was not valuable in exchange for the data privacy concerns. Are you claiming that he misrepresented what this company offers? Because it appears to advertise exactly that: https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry
- Wronnay 6y agoI think too many people don't understand that the $VGAC shareholders only get 11 % of 23andMe. At 19 USD that's a valuation of nearly 8 billion and completely overvalued - I wrote a blog post about this: https://blog.m5e.de/post/on-the-23andme-and-vgac-merger/ https://blog.m5e.de/post/on-the-23andme-and-vgac-merger/
- trott 6y agoGenetic testing used to be very expensive: $3B to sequence the human genome. So Ancestry/23/etc. tried to guess certain properties based on very sparse features of your genome, which is hard. But today, whole genome sequencing cost is approaching $100. This cost reduction will upend this industry, in my opinion.
- zetazzed 6y agoThe cheapest WGS I can find for consumers is $299 (30x WGS from Nebula). Do you know a cheaper alternative? I'd much rather get a whole genome that I can download rather than the handful of little snips from 23 and me... At $100 I would buy in a sec. Would be a nice motivator for bioinformatics hobby/learning projects too.
- trott 6y agoI saw ads for $149/sample. Probably not available to consumers yet. But the general trend is precipitous decline (10000000x)
- Wronnay 6y agoThat's not the point. The point is: at 19 USD per share you nearly buy at a valuation (8 billion) at which the institutional investors bought Ancestry ($4.7 billion) and 23andMe ($3.5 billion) Also: 23andMe had declining revenue in the past years and does only make around 200 million revenue. You buy a business at a valuation at 8 billion which makes only around 200 million revenue.
- trott 6y ago
- KoftaBob 6y agoThe long game for 23andMe will likely be using their valuable dataset for something called Personalized Medicine. "Personalized medicine is based on using an individual's genetic profile to make the best therapeutic choice by facilitating predictions about whether that person will benefit from a particular medicine or suffer serious side effects." In other words, they will become a platform for data-driven healthcare decisions and even development of new medicine. Those who think their endgame is to indiscriminately sell users' data, as if they're a healthcare Mark Zuckerberg, are being unimaginative.
- notRobot 6y ago> Those who think their endgame is to indiscriminately sell users' data, as if they're a healthcare Mark Zuckerberg, are being unimaginative. No, they're being realistic.
- TedShiller 6y agoSay goodbye to your DNA privacy
- elwell 6y agoHas anyone downloaded their DNA and then asked 23andMe to completely delete all records?
- RocketSyntax 6y agoThe data they gathered was less than 1% of the genome. Don't buy in.
- diveanon 6y agoDNA is your identity, it's not some password you can change. And now it's contents will be traded as a commodity.
- jedberg 6y agoI'm so glad I never did 23andMe for my kids. My wife and I did it before all the privacy nightmare revelations (and admittedly I didn't think of them myself) and originally I had planned to have my kids do it too, just to see what they got from us. But luckily they won't take a sample from someone under two, and in the time between birth and two was when all the privacy issues became clear.
- goatcode 6y agoRemember when the FBI scanned the anonymous DNA database, from either this or some similar company, found a match, then used that match to get a warrant for the match's personal info? I do.
- astura 6y agoYou're so wrong about the specifics that you're being (intentionally?) misleading. The database they use is GEDmatch, which is a fully volunteer non-for-profit operation. The entire point of the database is for users to upload their dna to allow anyone from the public to conduct genealogical research. GEDMatch does not even provide sequencing services, so there's no way someone would accidentally share.
- goatcode 6y agoThere were no specifics at all in what I posted. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I welcome actual information, though.
- xiphias2 6y ago23andme was a great company, but stopped innovating a long time ago. They could gave offered a lot of different products related to sequencing, but didn’t.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]