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Why did the CEO extract money from specifically Google and why did Google continue funding them despite all the shortcomings?
by vinniepukh 3y ago
Why did the CEO extract money from specifically Google and why did Google continue funding them despite all the shortcomings?
- dekhn 3y agoThe CEO, Anne Wojcicki, was married to Sergey Brin (founder of google): https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/technology/23google.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/technology/23google.html Her sister Susan was also an exec at Google and provided space for the company when it first got started. Sergey loaned a bunch of money to 23&me before that, and his loan was repaid when google invested (which sounds like a conflict of interest to me, but then again, Sergey is a bunch of conflict of interests). Later, GV (Google Ventures) invested more in 23&Me. At the time, the head of GV was Bill Maris, who had worked with Anne before she founded her company (and I was an advisor for GV around that time; if they'd asked me, I would have said "don't put more money in this turkey"). So basically a little family of people who wanted to see the company succeed. I think they've been given their time to succeed and at best, have reached a sort of steady state where they are not going out of business, but also aren't achieving the interesting mission they were based on.