14 ms·

23andMe's Fall

302 points by AdamN 3y ago

Geekette 3y ago
Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/yqxZa https://archive.is/yqxZa
htrp 3y ago
> Roelof Botha, a 23andMe board member and partner at Sequoia Capital, said the company’s big-spending strategy made sense when money was cheap. Now that it isn’t, “we’ve had to trim and focus on a smaller number of projects.” > Sequoia, which invested $145 million in 23andMe, still holds all its shares, he said. Today they are worth $18 million. Interesting that they weren't forced to liquidate/distribute the shares to their LPs
- crotchfire 3y ago
  That would impede their plan to sell 23andMe, including its DNA database, to China (or Russia, or Antarctica, or the next Martians that happen along).
  - tokai 3y ago
    Why would russia or aliens ever pay for it, when they can just steal it?
    - jeffreygoesto 3y ago
      Right. And they have enough of DNA themselves!
      - crotchfire 3y ago
        Dude the Martians need human DNA.
      - nso 3y ago
        The aliens collection method is not as appealing to the end user, tho.
    - atonse 3y ago
      Maybe they are compelled to pay for it by an intergalactic ethics code created by the Apache foundation. I smell a conspiracy theory.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    When there are perfectly good intelligence agencies to sell to at home? /s
    - crotchfire 3y ago
      Oh they've already sold it to those folks.
  - astrange 3y ago
    The problem with all these conspiracy theories about selling your DNA results is 1. your DNA results are not interesting to anyone even if they're evil. 2. if someone wanted your DNA in particular, they just need a bit of your hair, so there is already absolutely nothing you could do to stop them.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  I don't know what specific deals they have with LPs, but why would it make a priori sense to force the fund to liquidate some specific shares and distribute the proceeds? I would imagine that any fund is allowed to make losses on specific investments, least of all a hyper-aggressive VC fund which will create losses on many (most) positions, by design. And then once losses happen they should be treated for what they are - just another position where decisions should be made based on the outlook, and not based on the history.
- prakhar897 3y ago
  It could've been liquidated and reinvested into a continuation fund.
- romanzubenko 3y ago
  in 2021 Sequoia switched their strategy to hold on to stock of their portfolio companies for few more years after IPO. "Sequoia is abandoning the 10-year venture fund, in which limited partners, the outside investors that contribute to the fund, expect to get paid back over a decade. The firm said it’s establishing a single fund, the Sequoia Fund, that will raise money from LPs and then funnel that capital down to a series of smaller funds that invest by stage. Proceeds from those funds will feed back into the Sequoia Fund. With no time horizon, Sequoia can hold public stock for longer stretches, rather than distributing those shares to LPs. Investors who want liquidity can pull money out instead of waiting for distributions." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structure-to-hold-public-companies-and-back-crypto.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structu...
  - htrp 3y ago
    Ah permanent capital vehicles... forgot Sequoia did this too
egberts1 3y ago
First of many mistakes that 23andMe took: fired the co-founder.
- htrp 3y ago
  1 of the co-founders had access to an unlimited pool of personal capital (at least until personal issues curtailed that). The other had an idea. Make sure you are the co-founder with the sustainable advantage
  - atemerev 3y ago
    Yeah, yeah, make sure you are born into a rich family and a right zip code.
    - htrp 3y ago
      That too.... but more of an object lesson that as the needs of the company change, the board/your co-founders will constantly re-evaluate whether you are still adding value.
incomingpain 3y ago
I had not heard they went IPO. They are a penny stock now? Looking at those financials... yikes. I am kind of shocked how poorly they are doing.
- pkphilip 3y ago
  What happens when the company goes down? they will still have the DNA databases
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Correction: the highest bidder will have the DNA databases.
    - atemerev 3y ago
      Qatari government is always happy to help.
      - rchaud 3y ago
        How about the "Russian-born billionnaire" neighbour? Seems like he put in a pretty penny as well.
  - incomingpain 3y ago
    there's no guarantee they will go under. They have low debt and while unprofitable and a relatively reducing number of potential customers. Their huge problem is hackers. All the latest news is how hackers have grabbed up those databases. What's likely to happen, they'll self restructure, get to profitability, start a stock buyback program. But IF and WHEN?
    - rchaud 3y ago
      No company that had to go public via SPAC is going to bother with all that. The whole point is to pump and dump. This company will be folded into some drug company for its "IP".
nirvael 3y ago
Seems like 23andMe is two businesses: consumer and a B2B data business. The consumer side is clearly struggling because of the problems mentioned in the article (they only need one test in their life, public perception is bad because their security has had breaches). So this needs a pivot where you can change the public's perception from a one-time test to continuous health monitoring through blood markers or something similar, expand to tests other than genetic and make it a repeatable, accurate test that gives you more information (and obviously stop leaking people's data). But why not focus on the B2B side? Sell access to their databases. I'm sure computational biology and/or pharma companies need this information. It makes sense to do vertical integration by manufacturing your own drugs, but not for a cash-strapped business that has little incoming revenue to sustain further development. Presumably they are selling their genetic data, but I don't get why it's not giving them a revenue stream. Let GSK manufacture the drugs using your genetic info, with a profit share for any drugs made this way. They mention a collaboration with GSK in the article, but why was this stopped?
- logifail 3y ago
  > needs a pivot where you can change the public's perception from a one-time test to continuous health monitoring through blood markers or something similar, expand to tests other than genetic and make it a repeatable, accurate test that gives you more information (and obviously stop leaking people's data). "Stop leaking data"? Sounds like a step forward. > But why not focus on the B2B side? Sell access to their databases. So, it's actually: try to sell your customers' data instead of leaking it? :O Sorry if that sounds snarky, but are we sure there are enough customers who want to pay to give their data to a company so that company can immediately sell their data on to other companies?
  - nirvael 3y ago
    That's the conflict at the heart of the business. But do the public care enough about that? Obviously a HN audience does, but people use Google and Facebook products every day with the awareness that all that data is sold directly to advertisers. With the right messaging ("yes, we sell your data, but it's to drug companies to help make drugs that can cure your illnesses") it's possible that the conflict isnt too much of an issue.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> She’s sticking to her goal to transform 23andMe from a supplier of basic ancestry and health data into a comprehensive healthcare company that develops drugs, offers medical care and sells subscription health reports. The company hasn't the funds (or time) to develop drugs and I'm not sure why any investors would invest in them rather than a company with a track record of doing so or a potential drug. Selling their customers data to other companies (or partnering with) that can create drugs from it would seem the logical choice, along with "subscription health reports" and anything tacked onto the DNA/blood profiling/testing product to keep the data coming in.
- ackbar03 3y ago
  I would have thought they were pretty well positioned to find new targets for currently untreatable diseases. But maybe they don't quite have the capacity needed to target specific diseases and/or data not granular and clean enough, or not enough capital/runway suitable for that kind of stuff. If they had the sequences for people with diseases such as alzeimers/Parkinson, they could just look for common mutations and see what specifically it affects
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    It is not like they are doing real genomics. It’s devilishly hard to find genes responsible for conditions like schizophrenia, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, etc. The last thing you need is mountains of low quality data. Attempting to discover drugs is a proven way to make a small fortune by starting with a large fortune. Everything north of the Charles River in Boston would vanish if people stopped believing though.
    - singularity2001 3y ago
      mountains of low quality data is often enough for deep learning
    - icegreentea2 3y ago
      I don't think 23andme's strongest asset point would be in direct drug discovery, but rather in helping target sub-populations for clinical trials. The SNP data that 23andme has is relatively low quality compared to proper sequencing, but (combined with their survey data) is probably at least as good, or better information available for typical clinical trial planning or screening.
mnky9800n 3y ago
A company that has never made any money is now worth nothing. Maybe the world is starting to make sense again?
- bArray 3y ago
  Trust me, it's not. I've seen start-ups worth 100x than a smaller successful business due to speculation, despite the smaller business employing more people and actually turning profit for many years.
  - mplscarnut 3y ago
    There’s plenty of successful businesses chugging along growing at about the rate of inflation. It’s really hard to grow a business at 10 or 500 times that rate. Why would it be surprising to value the latter kind of business higher than the former?
    - brianwawok 3y ago
      Growing at the rate of inflation only matters if your market is capped out. Like, say Soda makers. If you either create a brand new market, or are taking on a drastically undeserved market... you absolutely need to be growing faster than inflation. Or your brand new company would be worth $1 the first year, $1.03 the second year..
      - mplscarnut 3y ago
        Yeah I was trying to convey there are successful businesses that are broadly maintaining and there are rocketships (and everything in between) and we should expect them to be valued differently and have different risk profiles. So the observation (100x! That’s dumb!) is not rational.
    - layer8 3y ago
      What use is that growth in terms of valuation if the company never manages to break even?
samsk 3y ago
Omg, how can a company doing genetic test burn $1.4b ? Altought better question might be, how could it be worth $6b ? :-)
- rubyfan 3y ago
  “celebrity spit parties”
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 3y ago
  Richard Branson, Oprah, SNL, billionnaire neighbour investor, Google founder, celebrity parties, branded Barbie dolls and SPAC IPOs can take you a long way .
resters 3y ago
Oddly, 23andme adopted an extremely cautious, risk-averse strategy with respect to providing "health information". The result of this is that many other services became a more interesting/entertaining source of personalized health information based on genetic data (often 23andme raw data extracted and fed into the other system). I get new updated health information from 23andme perhaps 2 times per year. It's mind boggling to imagine that with all the research being done that is all that makes the cut as interesting and trsutworthy enough for 23andme to tell me about it. In other words, a majorly failed content strategy based on fear of being shut down for providing insufficiently vetted health info. Meanwhile, someone created multiple accounts and the ancestry results didn't match even when collected from the same person.
- numbsafari 3y ago
  I’m confused… you want more health recommendations from a service whose most basic scientific offering you also consider junk? I have some pills for you. Just for you, mind you. Special made. Sign up for this subscription and we’ll send you a new supply each day…
  - resters 3y ago
    No, but I would prefer greater transparency about the accuracy of the analysis and also greater transparency about the reliability (or unreliability) of any health recommendations based on research. I'm not looking for a single source of authority and I will not be disappointed if an updated "chip" or study reverses a previous recommendation/insight. 23andme had a blog post about the MTHFR gene and why they don't include it. I'm not there to read the blog I want to know interesting things about my own genetics, even if what is interesting is that they don't think it matters! This is just bad content strategy even if it's justifiable from a "healthcare" perspective. Why so much worry about a customer getting the wrong impression from one of the health reports? Seems a bit absurd. How much money did it cost to put in place all the warnings about the potentially upsetting impact of various mutations. I wish that 23andme had focused on being an entertaining way for people to discover more interesting stuff about themselves, rather than a rarefied place where only the most well-vetted research is acknowledged to exist.
rchaud 3y ago
This story makes 23andme sound like a non-fraud version of Theranos, with some of the same issues around business viability, dodging the FDA, relentless PR and funding from rich friends. If a healthcare startup get shout-outs from Oprah, SNL and branded Barbie dolls, is that a bad sign?
- padjo 3y ago
  If Theranos devices had been able to do what they claimed the business model was clear and likely very profitable. I don’t understand how anyone ever thought 23andMe had a viable business model selling a test that only needed to be done once(and apparently selling it at a loss to boot)
  - rchaud 3y ago
    The "if" was the entire scam though. They hired many smart people, and every one of them said that the proposed design was physically impossible to build. There's a reason that these complex undertakings are made by boring conglomerate companies that have decades of experience in the industry, produce many different products in that sector, and whose CEOS don't try to get on the covers of magazines.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      Precisely. Yes, breakthroughs get made by smaller companies and "outsiders" every so often, but the thing is, to these testing companies - there's billions in profit and improved logistics by figuring out "nano" collection. It wasn't that they weren't interested. They've tried, for decades. But in the end, biology and physics are winning out.
- gsky 3y ago
  Forbes listing is a big red signal
- westhanover 3y ago
  [flagged]
chapter11soon 3y ago
[flagged]
- rchaud 3y ago
  It's not clear to me that this was in any way a money-making business. The test only needs to be taken once. Selling this data to 3rd parties by way of a sneaky EULA may be part of SV culture, but it's probably not something that would get you repeat business in healthcare.
  - moralestapia 3y ago
    It's weird to me because the test cost was always more than enough to make it profitable. This is the kind of product where you can actually make a profit on every sale (funny I have to make that remark but it's the 2020s) ... and then ... they didn't somehow? :/
    - rchaud 3y ago
      They cut the cost of the test from $399 to $99, so maybe their margins were not as good. Also, it would be a red flag to investors if there weren't any tacked-on "services" on top of the main offeirng to keep squeezing customers after the initial sale.
pyrrhotech 3y ago
Apparently $356M is nearly $0 to the WSJ
- dabber 3y ago
  > Apparently $356M is nearly $0 to the WSJ That is a pretty awful click-bait title. Presumably the "$0" is in reference to their sub $1 share price? The fact that they put everything behind a paywall _and_ slap on click-bait titles is confusing to me. I can't imagine paying for access to that type of writing.
gumby 3y ago
This is a classic combination of cargo-cult matching with ZIRP regime. 23andMe never had a business plan, but it didn't matter because their investors figured they had the connections to make it work (look at the explanation of how they booted out the other founder). Their Libertarian/lazy attitude towards regulation is just an example of how couldn't be bothered to even do the necessary homework. Their attitude towards their data breach is another. Makes me wonder how good their science is. I don't know anyone on that side of their business, but comments from friends who used to work their about how their parts worked are not encouraging.
Shank 3y ago
> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. As media companies launched streaming “+” channels, Wojcicki rolled out 23andMe+, offering personalized health reports, lifestyle advice and unspecified “new reports and features as discoveries are made” for an initial $229, with annual renewals of $69. I was a heavy believer of 23andMe until this point. I answered all of the available research questions, which was a thing that took absolutely hours and was filled with semi-invasive medical questions. I did this under the premise that I would hopefully be helping research and I felt really rewarded having completed all of them. Then, they dropped the + bombshell and I felt really rugpulled. I paid them for genotyping on their v4 and v5 platforms -- so I paid twice, I referred friends, I bought people kits, I helped research...and now I was being asked to pay a subscription for what I was promised to begin with? Eesh. I think the fundamental issue is that when the FDA stepped in and told 23andMe to cut back on their reporting that they really hit a roadblock. Promethease always gave better results than 23andMe, but when that happened it commoditized genotyping fully. Just download your data from any provider and use a third-party tool and you're set. Fast forward to 2024 and they're stuck with a platform that's semi-limited and they haven't delivered on any of the research deliverables that many people wanted in the first place. The idea of getting new genetic reports monthly was appealing and simply never materialized. It's no surprise people aren't hot on this as a business -- but what is surprising is that they were completely passed by startups like Nebula Genomics in offering whole-genome sequencing and competitive data access. I think the stored data they have is their only advantage, but they don't seem to know how to leverage it.
- hasoleju 3y ago
  > think the stored data they have is their only advantage, but they don't seem to know how to leverage it. I really wonder what happens to that data if they get acquired or shut down. The possible new owner of the data might have a completely different business case in mind. This scenario is something you usually don't consider when you give your data to a company that you trust at the moment.
  - babypuncher 3y ago
    Like selling it to insurance companies who can use the data to deny coverage.
PaulHoule 3y ago
It is an embarrassment that they bought Lemonaid health, I don’t know any other way to put it. (1) Is that being associated with a penis pill pusher is brand destruction. Any normal person would get this right away without trying but executives just can’t see what their actions look like to their customers. (2) It’s a form of achievement laundering. Lemonaid health failed, pure and simple. A circle jerk acquisition is alchemy that turns a failed business into an apparent success, now the founders, management and people who invested in it will get accolades for being successful when really the Silicon Valley Mafia stole from public investors to maintain its image. It ought to be a lot harder for businesses to get acquired. Maybe we need a vote by the customers, maybe when Google buys a company they should be required to spend a 1/4 of the money on ads warning people that the business could get shut down, etc.
- ianai 3y ago
  [flagged]
hyperorca 3y ago
Their kit is 99 dollars, but how expensive is the actual DNA testing nowadays ? It's my understanding from this [0] video that it is approximately 1000 dollars for the whole genome, but 23&Me sequence only a tiny portion of the genome (above video mentions 500 000 bases out of 6 billion total bases of human genome), and that sequencer processes thousands of samples in parallel, so there is some economy of scale factors. It is sometimes very confusing how all these tech/techish companies have such bad financials. [0] https://youtu.be/C3T_IaIGQxo?t=141 https://youtu.be/C3T_IaIGQxo?t=141
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  Their financial reports consistently paint approximately 50% gross profit (revenue - cost of revenue). However, their R&D burn is enormous. Sales, marketing, general and admin costs are approximately equal to their gross profits. In an alternate reality, you probably could have structured 23andme into a company making modest net profit. But that would not have matched the 6 billion price valuation either. And it's quite likely that a substantial part of the R&D burn was because they recognized the limitations of their core product. https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-reports-fy2023-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-financial https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
- htrp 3y ago
  The problem might be that those other 6 billion bases have all of the signal that you need for drug discovery and rare disease research.
tomaytotomato 3y ago
Silicon Valley's time is coming soon, it is going to go the same way as Hard Rock/Heavy Metal music scene on the Sunset Strip, LA in the 90s. I give it 10 years time before it turns into a town just living on its old glory, with tourist attractions like: - "This used to be a bar where Google's exec team drank" or - "This was the hotel Mark Zuckerberg threw an Oculus Rift into the pool" or - "Oracle datacentre re-enactment theme park, with real old beard Oracle DBA you can interact with" Reference: https://youtu.be/AUrHVWa3s2Y https://youtu.be/AUrHVWa3s2Y
- gsky 3y ago
  Unless dollar looses it's reserved currency status Silicon valley is going to be fine
  - Timber-6539 3y ago
    Silicon valley's tokenomics are going bust because of the Fed's tightening. Loosing the reserve currency status is another matter altogether which should scare the future of the American economy.
    - astrange 3y ago
      That wouldn't matter. "Exorbitant privilege" is a thing but it's not that much of a thing. Notice Argentina, which has the opposite of our privilege, still gets loans - there's no other set of countries for lenders to go to. The reason it looks like we have magic fiscal policy and Europe doesn't is that Europe just loves austerity and refuses to print money basically because they're stubborn. They could and should do it too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MrDresden 3y ago
It is interesting to me how their stated goals and planned future trajectory sounds like what happend to 'deCODE genetics' an Icelandic genetics company founded back in 1996 with a focus of "developing novel methods to identity, treat and prevent diseases"[0]. They really were on the forefront at that time, and have been an research powerhouse ever since[1] , but struggled for some time to find a sustainable revenue stream for their discoveries. Shortly after the turn of the millenium they came out with DNA diagnostic kits, that were able to diagnose various things known or thought to increase likelihood of various illnesses and conditions. And this product even came onto the market before 23andme. But since 2012 (I think) they have been an independent research subsidiary of the US pharmaceutical company Amgen, where Amgen then can capitalize on the research output to make the drugs in question (and probably much more that we are not privy to). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics [1]: https://www.decode.com/publications/ https://www.decode.com/publications/ edit: wording and spelling
SebFender 3y ago
Helps when your ex is Sergey Brin. When "founding" the company they were married, I wonder how they got financed
amadeuspagel 3y ago
23andMe seems like an archaic thing to me, the sort of thing that a science fiction author come up with, a world of high tech obsessed with ancestry.
someonehere 3y ago
I was an early adopter of 23andMe way back when they started. Before the privacy concerns. Before we had to worry about password uniqueness. I didn’t renew my services with them. 1) I didn’t gain any value out of it, 2) their consistent blame of users that used recycled password for their breach. I use ancestry.com as I’m working on dual citizenship with my family’s home country and find it worth the value. I was able to trace my family back through the Colonial Revolution all the way to the 1500s in Germany. That’s worth my money. Not 23andMe.
- infinitezest 3y ago
  Before the privacy concerns? Privacy concerns are baked into the product, no?
ilamont 3y ago
This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. Failed execution on the drug development strategy over 10+ years, lying about growth, pushing out the cofounder, never making a profit, hack that went undiscovered for months ... about the only area she's had success is raising money and that's in large part thanks to being a member of the Silicon Valley elite. If she can't convince her family, friends, and connections to pony up more cash, the company will likely be sold as the DNA and profile information has real value. I worry that it will go to PE (like Ancestry.com) or a global data broker that will strip-mine the assets in every evil way you can imagine (and maybe even some we can't).
- dr-detroit 3y ago
  [dead]
- progbits 3y ago
  If they go bankrupt they should destroy all the data but of course they will rather sell it to recover at least a bit of money.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Remember that it's good opsec to rotate your genome every six months.
    - welfare 3y ago
      That's hilarious. I'm imagining CRISPR as a tool to scramble your DNA every so often.
      - SOVIETIC-BOSS88 3y ago
        That sounds like a terrifying cyberpunk novel that I would definitely read. Although I hope the future is not that bleak.
        3y ago
toader 3y ago
Not encrypting user data and then being hacked resulting in compromised user DNA details certainly isn't a positive for PR. Can someone tell me why more companies don't encrypt data at rest and if that would have prevented the leak?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Because actually encrypting at rest usually offers a ton of hassle for little actual additional security. For example, if done right, you need to decrypt with some form of passcode/system on boot, etc, etc. But once "unlocked" the system has access to the data, and usually the hackers come in via the "live" system. Things like backups are usually encrypted but not always, but the number of incidents of people stealing physical media is pretty low compared to ransomware/remote hacks.
- GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
  Encrypting data at rest in a data center doesn't provide as much protection as you might think. The level of system access in order to access the raw data files is usually about the same as accessing the higher level database system itself. So at best you're adding a couple of extra steps to the attack. Since there are usually significant costs to encrypting production databases, such as CPU utilization, many organizations choose to focus on other security controls. Data encryption is just one of many security controls at play in a scenario such as this and the security team has to carefully pick their battles to avoid just being completely ignored as the "say no to everything" guys.
- jibe 3y ago
  The hack was logging in with reused user credentials, then scraping the ancestry data. Encryption would not have helped in this case.
al_borland 3y ago
Now we get to see the compromises they choose when desperation sinks in. I think getting the results of one of these tests would be interested, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it, due to trust issues related to handing over something like that to a company with an unproven track record when it comes to privacy and integrity. I figured it was only a matter of time before they were hacked or they decided to sell out their users for profit. They’ve already been hacked, so now it’s time to see what they willingly do with that data when their back is against the wall. I wish I could get a test done by a lab, be given the results, and have that be the end of it. No accounts, no forever records kept by the lab/company. Just a simple testing service that isn’t trying to be a tech company.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  > I wish I could get a test done by a lab, be given the results, and have that be the end of it. No accounts, no forever records kept by the lab/company. Just a simple testing service that isn’t trying to be a tech company. EMR has put paid to this pretty handily. Every positive STD test anyone ever gets from now on is yours for the taking if you can crack LabCorp's database.
- brycewray 3y ago
  Repeating a comment from 2021[0]: “Entrepreneurs are not at all like ordinary businessmen. An entrepreneur who is not in trouble closes no avenues, keeps a lot of balls in the air, and will never tell you the whole truth when a half-truth will do. An entrepreneur who is in trouble will lie, cheat, and steal. He will smuggle cocaine or ship bricks. We should never measure an entrepreneur by the standards of a rock-solid businessman.” — attributed to Kenneth Rind[1] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060166 [1]: https://books.google.com/books?id=MQvGc8Ee1SsC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=MQvGc8Ee1SsC&pg=PA137&lpg=...
  - supahfly_remix 3y ago
    All of the rest of the quotation makes sense to me, but I'm wondering about this part: > "We should never measure an entrepreneur by the standards of a rock-solid businessman". Is the author saying that a rock-solid businessman follows a higher code of ethics?
bedhead 3y ago
The last 5-8 years in tech were like the steroid era in baseball. We thought all these people were geniuses but virtually none of them can make their business models work without free money and investors looking the other way on profitability. 23 and Me being worth billions is like Brady Anderson hitting 50 home runs.
- coolThingsFirst 3y ago
  Honestly it’s good from that aspect. CRUD apps bring worth billions just does the make sense.
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
So what happens to my DNA data if they go bankrupt and start auctioning "assets"?
Jun8 3y ago
Wikipedia entry has: “In 2007, Cusenza left to join Nodal Exchange as CEO the following year. Avey left in 2009 and co-founded Curious, Inc. in 2011.” Cusenza is not mentioned in the article (he was president, too) and evidently Avey didn’t just “leave”.
BasilPH 3y ago
> As an added security measure, we have temporarily disabled the ability to download your raw genetic data. We hope to re-enable this ability soon, and we appreciate your patience. After reading this article I decided to download my data in case they go under. Was greeted with this message on the relevant page. Does anybody have some insight if this is related to the data breach or something else?
- epmatsw 3y ago
  They've been doing that for months. Scummy behavior tbh. It happened right after the hack, but there's also a new crop of competitors that let you upload your raw 23andMe data, so there's speculation that it's trying to stop the outflow. If you email them about it, you just basically get a copy-pasta reply restating the message on the site, and if you keep emailing them 3+ times asking for a refund (ask me how I know), they'll tell you you can manually upload identity verification and they'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks with the data.
  - BasilPH 3y ago
    Thanks for letting me know, I'll try that. My guess is also that they use the hack as an excuse to keep people in.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  I believe under HIPAA, you have the right to access any of your medical data. If you really want your data, I would get a lawyer to write a nasty letter to them demanding it.
  - angry_moose 3y ago
    So far, genetic testing firms haven't been considered to be covered by HIPAA: https://lawforbusiness.usc.edu/direct-to-consumer-generic-testing-companies-is-genetic-data-adequately-protected-in-the-absence-of-hippa/ https://lawforbusiness.usc.edu/direct-to-consumer-generic-te...
  - astura 3y ago
wslh 3y ago
Please ELI5: I understand that one of the key features of 23andMe is their health report because the genealogy and the DNA dump are included in other companies. For a developer plus a scientist it is teally difficult to get the health data from the raw ADN and using current (Python?) modules?
- 331c8c71 3y ago
  Health report? They only have limited info about your DNA (common small variants). The further you move from obvious disease-causing or high-risk mutations the more expertise you need. But even there you need where to look and how to present the results. The real (honest) question is what such reports cover and what qre the precision/recall? Answering that requires far more than duct-taping a few python modules.
  - wslh 3y ago
    That is why I asked about having a scientist (or many of them). From your answer I understand that for every health condition, and probably jointly, you need to do an analyzer? I am trying to understand the complexity from a CS perspective. You have the string that is your DNA and then you need to pass different functions with their own complexity for detecting each health issue?
progbits 3y ago
What would be the rough cost of equipment and consumables required to do DNA sequencing for say 10 people? Assuming similar genome coverage as 23andme gets. Last time I researched it the estimate was 5-6 digits, but I'm sure technology advancements have made it cheaper. What happened to that $1000 nanopore? I have some acquaintances with lab experience who could run this, and could split the costs between friends and family. Everyone gets their own data, no copies are made, all samples are destroyed. We can resell the equipment after to recover some of the costs. This is the best way to be sure about the data not leaking or getting sold to boost CEO bonus.
- kleton 3y ago
  BGI (formerly Beijing Genomics) would be the one for you. https://www.bgi.com/us/sequencing-services/dna-sequencing/whole-genome-sequencing/ https://www.bgi.com/us/sequencing-services/dna-sequencing/wh...
  - progbits 3y ago
    That seems like a service you send samples to. I want to buy a machine, observe the whole process myself and then destroy/scrub the machine.
    - stanford_labrat 3y ago
      If you really want to do this I would just do it like we do it in academic labs. Prep the DNA yourself and send to Illumina who will do the sequencing and send you the raw data.
    - kleton 3y ago
      BGI does not sell the machines they reverse-engineered from Illumina. You can sometimes find old Illumina machines on ebay, or buy a new NovaSeq for a about a million.
- genomer 3y ago
  The Nanopore Minion is still a thing, but it's sequencing and has higher error rates than competing short-read methods like Illumina's sequence by synthesis. https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion Sequencing DNA with nanopores: Troubles and biases https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8486125/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8486125/ Based on what I'm seeing from 23andMe's website they only do genotyping, not sequencing. https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/227968028-How-23andMe-Personal-Genetic-Service-Works https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/227968028... "23andMe uses genotyping, not sequencing, to analyze your DNA. Sequencing technology has not yet progressed to the point where it is feasible to sequence an entire person’s genome quickly and cheaply enough to keep costs down for consumers. It took the Human Genome Project, a consortium of multiple research labs, over 10 years to sequence the whole genomes of just a few individuals." Edit: https://www.23andme.com/total-health https://www.23andme.com/total-health I guess they started providing whole exome sequencing, but I can't find information about what depth they're doing it at.
psanford 3y ago
Sounds like its time to export your data and delete your account before they get sold to someone who will do who knows what with it.
kjellsbells 3y ago
Ah, 23andMe, the Experian of DNA. Look, I give her great credit for the women in STEM thing, her perseverance in the light of obstacles, and making a 10$ lab kit worth $399 to buyers. But to not understand how far actors would go to get hold of that data, to not understand that the drug industry is brutal because humans are poorly-understood meatsacks (see: anything by Derek Lowe), well, seems like that Yale education didnt impart a whole heap of reflective thinking skills.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bumby 3y ago
  >10$ lab kit worth $399 Can you elaborate? Does this mean they've added $389 in value, or they swindled people of $389? If it's the former, what did they do to create that value? (Not being snarky, I don't know enough about their business and am legitimately curious. There seems to be a lot of comments here about unfulfilled promises.)
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    You have to define "value". Personally, I roll my eyes any time someone questions "value". If a customer is willing to pay $399, then obviously they put the value of whatever the results may be from it at at least $399.
    - bumby 3y ago
      “Utility” is the value I was looking at. I.e., they’ve added something (tests, insight, even just ease of use) that wasn’t available with the $10 version.
  - kjellsbells 3y ago
    The former. That is, they convinced people to pay a premium over the material cost of the test. Nothing skeevy about that, just good marketing. Assuming that customers were not misled. "It's not a pencil, it's the thing that writes the next Moby Dick" - that sort of thing.
oldgradstudent 3y ago
How could a company, that provided me the amazing insight that I have 71% likelihood of having little or no back hair, fail? BTW, I have quite a lot of back hair. Most of the other physical features are wrong.
- redconfetti 3y ago
  I got the same result, which came across as stupid given that I have lots of back hair.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Request deletion of your data here: https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170688-Requesting-23andMe-Account-Closure https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170688...
ibern 3y ago
Their therapeutic area focus was far too broad. Going after "dozens of diseases" in parallel was a recipe for disaster. It takes a very specific understanding of your disease to translate genetic insight into a mechanistic, testable hypothesis.
lestertomlin 3y ago
I mean this is the Silicon Valley playbook. Get raised by some ultra connected family. Start a company, get money from your family then get pictures on Inc mag as some self made genius founder.
egberts1 3y ago
It is good OpSec to scramble your DNA every six months, says no one ever.
jWhick 3y ago
I never got that company, to me it seemed foolish from start.
AlbertCory 3y ago
> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s I attended Ann's talk at Google when she was still with Sergey. They had spit kits in case anyone wanted to do it on the spot (I didn't). When President Clinton announced the completion of the human genome project, he looked forward to all the wonderful drugs that would follow therefrom. Then I took a number of extension classes in molecular biology and drug discovery, and learned from the people who actually do it that DNA information is often helpful, but it's not a silver bullet. > Sequoia, which invested $145 million in 23andMe, still holds all its shares, he said. Today they are worth $18 million. .. and this is why those VCs get the big bucks /s
- 331c8c71 3y ago
  > Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s It absolutely does. That's how cancer occurs btw. The term is "somatic mutations".
  - 331c8c71 3y ago
    Actually not only cancer. That's also required for adaptive immunity. A human immune system needs roughly 100 million different antibodies to potentially bind every pathogen. And there are only ~30K genes. What happens is that in B cells the DNA that encodes antibodies' binding regions actually mutate upon B cell maturation. Similar for T cells. The term is "V(D)J recombination".
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    I'll confess my ignorance here, but would your saliva cells also show it (assuming it's not a mouth or throat cancer)? And it is is, wouldn't you have noticed something before your regular "checkup" from 23andme?
    - 331c8c71 3y ago
      Good question. I think this should answer your questions https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12920-020-0664-7 https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ Speaking of detecting cancer indirectly, it is actually the fact that sometimes you can detect tumors (early) because their DNA or RNA products reach the blood or other bodily fluids (cfDNA/cfRNA for "circulating free"). It is a big and a recent thing - for many cancer types e.g. lung there was basically no easy way to test. Biopsies are very invasive obviously....
Lamad1234 3y ago
[dead]
coolThingsFirst 3y ago
Tribe follows tribe and nation follows nation
dundarious 3y ago
Why do people believe genetic testing offers a pathway to a wide array of beneficial (non-snake oil) tailored drugs and treatments? What is the scientific basis for this belief, other than "seems plausible" reasoning?
- sjducb 3y ago
  20 years ago it was pretty plausible. Most of the genetic effects that we knew about were large. Maybe all of them were large? Now we know that most effects are small, and there aren’t useful interventions that can treat the effects.
  - dundarious 3y ago
    That is my feeling also. And well, no useful drug interventions at least. For most genetic risk factors, lifestyle factors dominate the total risk.
notso411 3y ago
[dead]
jakupovic 3y ago
Did they kept the kits sent in? Thus still sitting on many DNA samples. The storage costs money but the data is probably worth it. Not sure who to ask?
redder23 3y ago
Only total morons pay to let a company sell their genes. Happy downvoting, I know this will offend a bunch of people in this crowd. In a sane world this thing should have never work in the first place but given the world is full of morons who are dumb enough to actually pay for shit like that its quite an accomplishment to run a company like that into the ground. I read articles of people sending in banana DNA 23AndMe or a similar service and they got a supposedly ancestry tracking back. These services are dubious at best and you literally sign your DNA away to be sold to the highest bidder in their terms. I would not do this FOR FREE, let alone pay a ridiculous $130 for it.
- robotburrito 3y ago
  I understand your take, and in many ways regret sending my data to them, but through this service I did find 6+ siblings I was not aware of, as well as my father. So it does provide some benefits.
LAC-Tech 3y ago
I'm no economist, but isn't that to be expected? - A burst of people take your DNA test - Much less people will subsequently, as your target becomes younger people who are now old enough to pay for DNA tests. Seems like you'd have to whether being way under-capacity for the initial burst, and then essentially a return to normal.
neveracool 3y ago
> 23andMe had a data breach this fall that exposed nongenetic information of 6.9 million customers Why does it specify "nongenetic"? Is it because the passwords were exposed? Doesn't that mean that any information accessible with those passwords can also be considered breached?
whyenot 3y ago
I found my biological father and a half-sister thanks to 23andMe. It's hard for me to fully express how much that has meant to me. While I am fully aware of the bad side of DNA testing that many have raised here, I just want to also point out that there is also good that can come from these tests.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Alternative non-paywall link: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=1180808593353&w=TdklVuJENIKoOY8imPm4utURkpCiYMGW https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=1180808593353&w=TdklVuJENI... (archive.is will not work in some parts of the world)
breck 3y ago
I was an early adopter of 23andMe. I bought many as presents and recommended it to many, many people. I even bought some stock after the SPAC (not the best investment :)). I have no regrets, and still rooting for them. There is something magical that I could spit in a tube, and my cousin could spit in a tube, and then weeks later we got emails saying "Out of millions of users we found your cousin just from spit!" As kids we are lied to about a lot (the big guy in a red suit, for example), so part of growing up is verifying that what you are taught is actually true. If you did not major in biology, you don't have an easy way to verify that what you are told about genetics, DNA, and evolution is true. 23andMe provided that easy test for the layperson. I think that alone is worth the hundred bucks. The joy I got from verifying DNA is at the core of life is like the joy I got from Intro to Electrical Engineering, building my first circuit with logic gates, and realizing that indeed everything is built up of 1s and 0s. It seems they haven't developed more of a business beyond that novelty. I think I was expecting they would come out with future innovative offerings, given that their first was cool and done pretty well. I was never crazy about the drug development plan. Seems like a more logical first step would be to combine with a fitness wearable company (Goog/Fitbit, Apple, Oura Ring, Whoop, Garmin, Samsung, etc), that there might be valuable insights from those datasets merged.
mancerayder 3y ago
The amount of success she had because of being connected to Brin is absolutely wild. It's literally make-or-break for her success. And her sister, CEO of YouTube? It's a cliché what we say about connections and success, etc. and so forth. But that WSJ article really hammered how in this case how absolutely tied to connections this company, and her wealth, were, and how luck plays a role. In a business idea people are saying should have been doomed. People are discussing all sorts of details about the company's business strategy, what they should have done with all the data, whether that data is useless, what they might do with it now, whether they should be allowed to, etc. Someone pointed out the GSK investment which was interesting. But to me all this is trumped by the human element - how having the right neighbor, or boyfriend, or sister's boyfriend, can propel you to the top with unimaginable wealth. Something worth thinking about as we are on a forum run by a startup network: Given what we have learned here how meritorious is success in Silicon Valley really?
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  But she's failed. Zero success. And that failure is all over the wall street journal. The lesson is, no matter who your connections are your business will fail if it doesn't provide lots of value at a cost structure where it all adds up. Compare it to old Sergey - he was a know nobody 20 something nerd studying computer science. He co-created one of the most valuable businesses in the world.
  - mancerayder 3y ago
    Fair enough! The business failed. It's embarrassing, and so forth. Sure. And the employees of that business (and stock owners, which may include many of those employees) are not in a good place. But something tells me the sisters aren't going to be starving any time soon. I don't know her assets but I suspect even with a failed business there's a few million in real estate and savings set aside, even if her big ownership in the business is in the penny stock category. A position that many of us wouldn't mind.
    - danielmarkbruce 3y ago
belter 3y ago
https://archive.is/1yzWi https://archive.is/1yzWi

302 points by AdamN 3y ago

Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/yqxZa https://archive.is/yqxZa

htrp 3y ago

> Roelof Botha, a 23andMe board member and partner at Sequoia Capital, said the company’s big-spending strategy made sense when money was cheap. Now that it isn’t, “we’ve had to trim and focus on a smaller number of projects.” > Sequoia, which invested $145 million in 23andMe, still holds all its shares, he said. Today they are worth $18 million. Interesting that they weren't forced to liquidate/distribute the shares to their LPs

crotchfire 3y ago
That would impede their plan to sell 23andMe, including its DNA database, to China (or Russia, or Antarctica, or the next Martians that happen along).
- tokai 3y ago
  Why would russia or aliens ever pay for it, when they can just steal it?
  - jeffreygoesto 3y ago
    Right. And they have enough of DNA themselves!
    - crotchfire 3y ago
      Dude the Martians need human DNA.
    - nso 3y ago
      The aliens collection method is not as appealing to the end user, tho.
  - atonse 3y ago
    Maybe they are compelled to pay for it by an intergalactic ethics code created by the Apache foundation. I smell a conspiracy theory.
- rchaud 3y ago
  When there are perfectly good intelligence agencies to sell to at home? /s
  - crotchfire 3y ago
    Oh they've already sold it to those folks.
- astrange 3y ago
  The problem with all these conspiracy theories about selling your DNA results is 1. your DNA results are not interesting to anyone even if they're evil. 2. if someone wanted your DNA in particular, they just need a bit of your hair, so there is already absolutely nothing you could do to stop them.
H8crilA 3y ago
I don't know what specific deals they have with LPs, but why would it make a priori sense to force the fund to liquidate some specific shares and distribute the proceeds? I would imagine that any fund is allowed to make losses on specific investments, least of all a hyper-aggressive VC fund which will create losses on many (most) positions, by design. And then once losses happen they should be treated for what they are - just another position where decisions should be made based on the outlook, and not based on the history.
prakhar897 3y ago
It could've been liquidated and reinvested into a continuation fund.
romanzubenko 3y ago
in 2021 Sequoia switched their strategy to hold on to stock of their portfolio companies for few more years after IPO. "Sequoia is abandoning the 10-year venture fund, in which limited partners, the outside investors that contribute to the fund, expect to get paid back over a decade. The firm said it’s establishing a single fund, the Sequoia Fund, that will raise money from LPs and then funnel that capital down to a series of smaller funds that invest by stage. Proceeds from those funds will feed back into the Sequoia Fund. With no time horizon, Sequoia can hold public stock for longer stretches, rather than distributing those shares to LPs. Investors who want liquidity can pull money out instead of waiting for distributions." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structure-to-hold-public-companies-and-back-crypto.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-changes-fund-structu...
- htrp 3y ago
  Ah permanent capital vehicles... forgot Sequoia did this too

egberts1 3y ago

First of many mistakes that 23andMe took: fired the co-founder.

htrp 3y ago
1 of the co-founders had access to an unlimited pool of personal capital (at least until personal issues curtailed that). The other had an idea. Make sure you are the co-founder with the sustainable advantage
- atemerev 3y ago
  Yeah, yeah, make sure you are born into a rich family and a right zip code.
  - htrp 3y ago
    That too.... but more of an object lesson that as the needs of the company change, the board/your co-founders will constantly re-evaluate whether you are still adding value.

incomingpain 3y ago

I had not heard they went IPO. They are a penny stock now? Looking at those financials... yikes. I am kind of shocked how poorly they are doing.

pkphilip 3y ago
What happens when the company goes down? they will still have the DNA databases
- kibwen 3y ago
  Correction: the highest bidder will have the DNA databases.
  - atemerev 3y ago
    Qatari government is always happy to help.
    - rchaud 3y ago
      How about the "Russian-born billionnaire" neighbour? Seems like he put in a pretty penny as well.
- incomingpain 3y ago
  there's no guarantee they will go under. They have low debt and while unprofitable and a relatively reducing number of potential customers. Their huge problem is hackers. All the latest news is how hackers have grabbed up those databases. What's likely to happen, they'll self restructure, get to profitability, start a stock buyback program. But IF and WHEN?
  - rchaud 3y ago
    No company that had to go public via SPAC is going to bother with all that. The whole point is to pump and dump. This company will be folded into some drug company for its "IP".

nirvael 3y ago

Seems like 23andMe is two businesses: consumer and a B2B data business. The consumer side is clearly struggling because of the problems mentioned in the article (they only need one test in their life, public perception is bad because their security has had breaches). So this needs a pivot where you can change the public's perception from a one-time test to continuous health monitoring through blood markers or something similar, expand to tests other than genetic and make it a repeatable, accurate test that gives you more information (and obviously stop leaking people's data). But why not focus on the B2B side? Sell access to their databases. I'm sure computational biology and/or pharma companies need this information. It makes sense to do vertical integration by manufacturing your own drugs, but not for a cash-strapped business that has little incoming revenue to sustain further development. Presumably they are selling their genetic data, but I don't get why it's not giving them a revenue stream. Let GSK manufacture the drugs using your genetic info, with a profit share for any drugs made this way. They mention a collaboration with GSK in the article, but why was this stopped?

logifail 3y ago
> needs a pivot where you can change the public's perception from a one-time test to continuous health monitoring through blood markers or something similar, expand to tests other than genetic and make it a repeatable, accurate test that gives you more information (and obviously stop leaking people's data). "Stop leaking data"? Sounds like a step forward. > But why not focus on the B2B side? Sell access to their databases. So, it's actually: try to sell your customers' data instead of leaking it? :O Sorry if that sounds snarky, but are we sure there are enough customers who want to pay to give their data to a company so that company can immediately sell their data on to other companies?
- nirvael 3y ago
  That's the conflict at the heart of the business. But do the public care enough about that? Obviously a HN audience does, but people use Google and Facebook products every day with the awareness that all that data is sold directly to advertisers. With the right messaging ("yes, we sell your data, but it's to drug companies to help make drugs that can cure your illnesses") it's possible that the conflict isnt too much of an issue.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

> She’s sticking to her goal to transform 23andMe from a supplier of basic ancestry and health data into a comprehensive healthcare company that develops drugs, offers medical care and sells subscription health reports. The company hasn't the funds (or time) to develop drugs and I'm not sure why any investors would invest in them rather than a company with a track record of doing so or a potential drug. Selling their customers data to other companies (or partnering with) that can create drugs from it would seem the logical choice, along with "subscription health reports" and anything tacked onto the DNA/blood profiling/testing product to keep the data coming in.

ackbar03 3y ago
I would have thought they were pretty well positioned to find new targets for currently untreatable diseases. But maybe they don't quite have the capacity needed to target specific diseases and/or data not granular and clean enough, or not enough capital/runway suitable for that kind of stuff. If they had the sequences for people with diseases such as alzeimers/Parkinson, they could just look for common mutations and see what specifically it affects
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It is not like they are doing real genomics. It’s devilishly hard to find genes responsible for conditions like schizophrenia, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, etc. The last thing you need is mountains of low quality data. Attempting to discover drugs is a proven way to make a small fortune by starting with a large fortune. Everything north of the Charles River in Boston would vanish if people stopped believing though.
  - singularity2001 3y ago
    mountains of low quality data is often enough for deep learning
  - icegreentea2 3y ago
    I don't think 23andme's strongest asset point would be in direct drug discovery, but rather in helping target sub-populations for clinical trials. The SNP data that 23andme has is relatively low quality compared to proper sequencing, but (combined with their survey data) is probably at least as good, or better information available for typical clinical trial planning or screening.

mnky9800n 3y ago

A company that has never made any money is now worth nothing. Maybe the world is starting to make sense again?

bArray 3y ago
Trust me, it's not. I've seen start-ups worth 100x than a smaller successful business due to speculation, despite the smaller business employing more people and actually turning profit for many years.
- mplscarnut 3y ago
  There’s plenty of successful businesses chugging along growing at about the rate of inflation. It’s really hard to grow a business at 10 or 500 times that rate. Why would it be surprising to value the latter kind of business higher than the former?
  - brianwawok 3y ago
    Growing at the rate of inflation only matters if your market is capped out. Like, say Soda makers. If you either create a brand new market, or are taking on a drastically undeserved market... you absolutely need to be growing faster than inflation. Or your brand new company would be worth $1 the first year, $1.03 the second year..
    - mplscarnut 3y ago
      Yeah I was trying to convey there are successful businesses that are broadly maintaining and there are rocketships (and everything in between) and we should expect them to be valued differently and have different risk profiles. So the observation (100x! That’s dumb!) is not rational.
  - layer8 3y ago
    What use is that growth in terms of valuation if the company never manages to break even?

samsk 3y ago

Omg, how can a company doing genetic test burn $1.4b ? Altought better question might be, how could it be worth $6b ? :-)

rubyfan 3y ago
“celebrity spit parties”
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rchaud 3y ago
Richard Branson, Oprah, SNL, billionnaire neighbour investor, Google founder, celebrity parties, branded Barbie dolls and SPAC IPOs can take you a long way .

resters 3y ago

Oddly, 23andme adopted an extremely cautious, risk-averse strategy with respect to providing "health information". The result of this is that many other services became a more interesting/entertaining source of personalized health information based on genetic data (often 23andme raw data extracted and fed into the other system). I get new updated health information from 23andme perhaps 2 times per year. It's mind boggling to imagine that with all the research being done that is all that makes the cut as interesting and trsutworthy enough for 23andme to tell me about it. In other words, a majorly failed content strategy based on fear of being shut down for providing insufficiently vetted health info. Meanwhile, someone created multiple accounts and the ancestry results didn't match even when collected from the same person.

numbsafari 3y ago
I’m confused… you want more health recommendations from a service whose most basic scientific offering you also consider junk? I have some pills for you. Just for you, mind you. Special made. Sign up for this subscription and we’ll send you a new supply each day…
- resters 3y ago
  No, but I would prefer greater transparency about the accuracy of the analysis and also greater transparency about the reliability (or unreliability) of any health recommendations based on research. I'm not looking for a single source of authority and I will not be disappointed if an updated "chip" or study reverses a previous recommendation/insight. 23andme had a blog post about the MTHFR gene and why they don't include it. I'm not there to read the blog I want to know interesting things about my own genetics, even if what is interesting is that they don't think it matters! This is just bad content strategy even if it's justifiable from a "healthcare" perspective. Why so much worry about a customer getting the wrong impression from one of the health reports? Seems a bit absurd. How much money did it cost to put in place all the warnings about the potentially upsetting impact of various mutations. I wish that 23andme had focused on being an entertaining way for people to discover more interesting stuff about themselves, rather than a rarefied place where only the most well-vetted research is acknowledged to exist.

rchaud 3y ago

This story makes 23andme sound like a non-fraud version of Theranos, with some of the same issues around business viability, dodging the FDA, relentless PR and funding from rich friends. If a healthcare startup get shout-outs from Oprah, SNL and branded Barbie dolls, is that a bad sign?

padjo 3y ago
If Theranos devices had been able to do what they claimed the business model was clear and likely very profitable. I don’t understand how anyone ever thought 23andMe had a viable business model selling a test that only needed to be done once(and apparently selling it at a loss to boot)
- rchaud 3y ago
  The "if" was the entire scam though. They hired many smart people, and every one of them said that the proposed design was physically impossible to build. There's a reason that these complex undertakings are made by boring conglomerate companies that have decades of experience in the industry, produce many different products in that sector, and whose CEOS don't try to get on the covers of magazines.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Precisely. Yes, breakthroughs get made by smaller companies and "outsiders" every so often, but the thing is, to these testing companies - there's billions in profit and improved logistics by figuring out "nano" collection. It wasn't that they weren't interested. They've tried, for decades. But in the end, biology and physics are winning out.
gsky 3y ago
Forbes listing is a big red signal
westhanover 3y ago
[flagged]

chapter11soon 3y ago

[flagged]

rchaud 3y ago
It's not clear to me that this was in any way a money-making business. The test only needs to be taken once. Selling this data to 3rd parties by way of a sneaky EULA may be part of SV culture, but it's probably not something that would get you repeat business in healthcare.
- moralestapia 3y ago
  It's weird to me because the test cost was always more than enough to make it profitable. This is the kind of product where you can actually make a profit on every sale (funny I have to make that remark but it's the 2020s) ... and then ... they didn't somehow? :/
  - rchaud 3y ago
    They cut the cost of the test from $399 to $99, so maybe their margins were not as good. Also, it would be a red flag to investors if there weren't any tacked-on "services" on top of the main offeirng to keep squeezing customers after the initial sale.

pyrrhotech 3y ago

Apparently $356M is nearly $0 to the WSJ

dabber 3y ago
> Apparently $356M is nearly $0 to the WSJ That is a pretty awful click-bait title. Presumably the "$0" is in reference to their sub $1 share price? The fact that they put everything behind a paywall _and_ slap on click-bait titles is confusing to me. I can't imagine paying for access to that type of writing.

gumby 3y ago

This is a classic combination of cargo-cult matching with ZIRP regime. 23andMe never had a business plan, but it didn't matter because their investors figured they had the connections to make it work (look at the explanation of how they booted out the other founder). Their Libertarian/lazy attitude towards regulation is just an example of how couldn't be bothered to even do the necessary homework. Their attitude towards their data breach is another. Makes me wonder how good their science is. I don't know anyone on that side of their business, but comments from friends who used to work their about how their parts worked are not encouraging.

Shank 3y ago

> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. As media companies launched streaming “+” channels, Wojcicki rolled out 23andMe+, offering personalized health reports, lifestyle advice and unspecified “new reports and features as discoveries are made” for an initial $229, with annual renewals of $69. I was a heavy believer of 23andMe until this point. I answered all of the available research questions, which was a thing that took absolutely hours and was filled with semi-invasive medical questions. I did this under the premise that I would hopefully be helping research and I felt really rewarded having completed all of them. Then, they dropped the + bombshell and I felt really rugpulled. I paid them for genotyping on their v4 and v5 platforms -- so I paid twice, I referred friends, I bought people kits, I helped research...and now I was being asked to pay a subscription for what I was promised to begin with? Eesh. I think the fundamental issue is that when the FDA stepped in and told 23andMe to cut back on their reporting that they really hit a roadblock. Promethease always gave better results than 23andMe, but when that happened it commoditized genotyping fully. Just download your data from any provider and use a third-party tool and you're set. Fast forward to 2024 and they're stuck with a platform that's semi-limited and they haven't delivered on any of the research deliverables that many people wanted in the first place. The idea of getting new genetic reports monthly was appealing and simply never materialized. It's no surprise people aren't hot on this as a business -- but what is surprising is that they were completely passed by startups like Nebula Genomics in offering whole-genome sequencing and competitive data access. I think the stored data they have is their only advantage, but they don't seem to know how to leverage it.

hasoleju 3y ago
> think the stored data they have is their only advantage, but they don't seem to know how to leverage it. I really wonder what happens to that data if they get acquired or shut down. The possible new owner of the data might have a completely different business case in mind. This scenario is something you usually don't consider when you give your data to a company that you trust at the moment.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  Like selling it to insurance companies who can use the data to deny coverage.

PaulHoule 3y ago

It is an embarrassment that they bought Lemonaid health, I don’t know any other way to put it. (1) Is that being associated with a penis pill pusher is brand destruction. Any normal person would get this right away without trying but executives just can’t see what their actions look like to their customers. (2) It’s a form of achievement laundering. Lemonaid health failed, pure and simple. A circle jerk acquisition is alchemy that turns a failed business into an apparent success, now the founders, management and people who invested in it will get accolades for being successful when really the Silicon Valley Mafia stole from public investors to maintain its image. It ought to be a lot harder for businesses to get acquired. Maybe we need a vote by the customers, maybe when Google buys a company they should be required to spend a 1/4 of the money on ads warning people that the business could get shut down, etc.

ianai 3y ago
[flagged]

hyperorca 3y ago

Their kit is 99 dollars, but how expensive is the actual DNA testing nowadays ? It's my understanding from this [0] video that it is approximately 1000 dollars for the whole genome, but 23&Me sequence only a tiny portion of the genome (above video mentions 500 000 bases out of 6 billion total bases of human genome), and that sequencer processes thousands of samples in parallel, so there is some economy of scale factors. It is sometimes very confusing how all these tech/techish companies have such bad financials. [0] https://youtu.be/C3T_IaIGQxo?t=141 https://youtu.be/C3T_IaIGQxo?t=141

icegreentea2 3y ago
Their financial reports consistently paint approximately 50% gross profit (revenue - cost of revenue). However, their R&D burn is enormous. Sales, marketing, general and admin costs are approximately equal to their gross profits. In an alternate reality, you probably could have structured 23andme into a company making modest net profit. But that would not have matched the 6 billion price valuation either. And it's quite likely that a substantial part of the R&D burn was because they recognized the limitations of their core product. https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-reports-fy2023-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-financial https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
htrp 3y ago
The problem might be that those other 6 billion bases have all of the signal that you need for drug discovery and rare disease research.

tomaytotomato 3y ago

Silicon Valley's time is coming soon, it is going to go the same way as Hard Rock/Heavy Metal music scene on the Sunset Strip, LA in the 90s. I give it 10 years time before it turns into a town just living on its old glory, with tourist attractions like: - "This used to be a bar where Google's exec team drank" or - "This was the hotel Mark Zuckerberg threw an Oculus Rift into the pool" or - "Oracle datacentre re-enactment theme park, with real old beard Oracle DBA you can interact with" Reference: https://youtu.be/AUrHVWa3s2Y https://youtu.be/AUrHVWa3s2Y

gsky 3y ago
Unless dollar looses it's reserved currency status Silicon valley is going to be fine
- Timber-6539 3y ago
  Silicon valley's tokenomics are going bust because of the Fed's tightening. Loosing the reserve currency status is another matter altogether which should scare the future of the American economy.
  - astrange 3y ago
    That wouldn't matter. "Exorbitant privilege" is a thing but it's not that much of a thing. Notice Argentina, which has the opposite of our privilege, still gets loans - there's no other set of countries for lenders to go to. The reason it looks like we have magic fiscal policy and Europe doesn't is that Europe just loves austerity and refuses to print money basically because they're stubborn. They could and should do it too.

deleted 3y ago

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MrDresden 3y ago

It is interesting to me how their stated goals and planned future trajectory sounds like what happend to 'deCODE genetics' an Icelandic genetics company founded back in 1996 with a focus of "developing novel methods to identity, treat and prevent diseases"[0]. They really were on the forefront at that time, and have been an research powerhouse ever since[1] , but struggled for some time to find a sustainable revenue stream for their discoveries. Shortly after the turn of the millenium they came out with DNA diagnostic kits, that were able to diagnose various things known or thought to increase likelihood of various illnesses and conditions. And this product even came onto the market before 23andme. But since 2012 (I think) they have been an independent research subsidiary of the US pharmaceutical company Amgen, where Amgen then can capitalize on the research output to make the drugs in question (and probably much more that we are not privy to). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics [1]: https://www.decode.com/publications/ https://www.decode.com/publications/ edit: wording and spelling

SebFender 3y ago

Helps when your ex is Sergey Brin. When "founding" the company they were married, I wonder how they got financed

amadeuspagel 3y ago

23andMe seems like an archaic thing to me, the sort of thing that a science fiction author come up with, a world of high tech obsessed with ancestry.

someonehere 3y ago

I was an early adopter of 23andMe way back when they started. Before the privacy concerns. Before we had to worry about password uniqueness. I didn’t renew my services with them. 1) I didn’t gain any value out of it, 2) their consistent blame of users that used recycled password for their breach. I use ancestry.com as I’m working on dual citizenship with my family’s home country and find it worth the value. I was able to trace my family back through the Colonial Revolution all the way to the 1500s in Germany. That’s worth my money. Not 23andMe.

infinitezest 3y ago
Before the privacy concerns? Privacy concerns are baked into the product, no?

ilamont 3y ago

This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. Failed execution on the drug development strategy over 10+ years, lying about growth, pushing out the cofounder, never making a profit, hack that went undiscovered for months ... about the only area she's had success is raising money and that's in large part thanks to being a member of the Silicon Valley elite. If she can't convince her family, friends, and connections to pony up more cash, the company will likely be sold as the DNA and profile information has real value. I worry that it will go to PE (like Ancestry.com) or a global data broker that will strip-mine the assets in every evil way you can imagine (and maybe even some we can't).

dr-detroit 3y ago
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progbits 3y ago
If they go bankrupt they should destroy all the data but of course they will rather sell it to recover at least a bit of money.
- kibwen 3y ago
  Remember that it's good opsec to rotate your genome every six months.
  - welfare 3y ago
    That's hilarious. I'm imagining CRISPR as a tool to scramble your DNA every so often.
    - SOVIETIC-BOSS88 3y ago
      That sounds like a terrifying cyberpunk novel that I would definitely read. Although I hope the future is not that bleak.
      - 3y ago

toader 3y ago

Not encrypting user data and then being hacked resulting in compromised user DNA details certainly isn't a positive for PR. Can someone tell me why more companies don't encrypt data at rest and if that would have prevented the leak?

bombcar 3y ago
Because actually encrypting at rest usually offers a ton of hassle for little actual additional security. For example, if done right, you need to decrypt with some form of passcode/system on boot, etc, etc. But once "unlocked" the system has access to the data, and usually the hackers come in via the "live" system. Things like backups are usually encrypted but not always, but the number of incidents of people stealing physical media is pretty low compared to ransomware/remote hacks.
GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
Encrypting data at rest in a data center doesn't provide as much protection as you might think. The level of system access in order to access the raw data files is usually about the same as accessing the higher level database system itself. So at best you're adding a couple of extra steps to the attack. Since there are usually significant costs to encrypting production databases, such as CPU utilization, many organizations choose to focus on other security controls. Data encryption is just one of many security controls at play in a scenario such as this and the security team has to carefully pick their battles to avoid just being completely ignored as the "say no to everything" guys.
jibe 3y ago
The hack was logging in with reused user credentials, then scraping the ancestry data. Encryption would not have helped in this case.

al_borland 3y ago

Now we get to see the compromises they choose when desperation sinks in. I think getting the results of one of these tests would be interested, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it, due to trust issues related to handing over something like that to a company with an unproven track record when it comes to privacy and integrity. I figured it was only a matter of time before they were hacked or they decided to sell out their users for profit. They’ve already been hacked, so now it’s time to see what they willingly do with that data when their back is against the wall. I wish I could get a test done by a lab, be given the results, and have that be the end of it. No accounts, no forever records kept by the lab/company. Just a simple testing service that isn’t trying to be a tech company.

throwway120385 3y ago
> I wish I could get a test done by a lab, be given the results, and have that be the end of it. No accounts, no forever records kept by the lab/company. Just a simple testing service that isn’t trying to be a tech company. EMR has put paid to this pretty handily. Every positive STD test anyone ever gets from now on is yours for the taking if you can crack LabCorp's database.
brycewray 3y ago
Repeating a comment from 2021[0]: “Entrepreneurs are not at all like ordinary businessmen. An entrepreneur who is not in trouble closes no avenues, keeps a lot of balls in the air, and will never tell you the whole truth when a half-truth will do. An entrepreneur who is in trouble will lie, cheat, and steal. He will smuggle cocaine or ship bricks. We should never measure an entrepreneur by the standards of a rock-solid businessman.” — attributed to Kenneth Rind[1] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28060166 [1]: https://books.google.com/books?id=MQvGc8Ee1SsC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=MQvGc8Ee1SsC&pg=PA137&lpg=...
- supahfly_remix 3y ago
  All of the rest of the quotation makes sense to me, but I'm wondering about this part: > "We should never measure an entrepreneur by the standards of a rock-solid businessman". Is the author saying that a rock-solid businessman follows a higher code of ethics?

bedhead 3y ago

The last 5-8 years in tech were like the steroid era in baseball. We thought all these people were geniuses but virtually none of them can make their business models work without free money and investors looking the other way on profitability. 23 and Me being worth billions is like Brady Anderson hitting 50 home runs.

coolThingsFirst 3y ago
Honestly it’s good from that aspect. CRUD apps bring worth billions just does the make sense.

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

So what happens to my DNA data if they go bankrupt and start auctioning "assets"?

Jun8 3y ago

Wikipedia entry has: “In 2007, Cusenza left to join Nodal Exchange as CEO the following year. Avey left in 2009 and co-founded Curious, Inc. in 2011.” Cusenza is not mentioned in the article (he was president, too) and evidently Avey didn’t just “leave”.

BasilPH 3y ago

> As an added security measure, we have temporarily disabled the ability to download your raw genetic data. We hope to re-enable this ability soon, and we appreciate your patience. After reading this article I decided to download my data in case they go under. Was greeted with this message on the relevant page. Does anybody have some insight if this is related to the data breach or something else?

epmatsw 3y ago
They've been doing that for months. Scummy behavior tbh. It happened right after the hack, but there's also a new crop of competitors that let you upload your raw 23andMe data, so there's speculation that it's trying to stop the outflow. If you email them about it, you just basically get a copy-pasta reply restating the message on the site, and if you keep emailing them 3+ times asking for a refund (ask me how I know), they'll tell you you can manually upload identity verification and they'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks with the data.
- BasilPH 3y ago
  Thanks for letting me know, I'll try that. My guess is also that they use the hack as an excuse to keep people in.
ProjectArcturis 3y ago
I believe under HIPAA, you have the right to access any of your medical data. If you really want your data, I would get a lawyer to write a nasty letter to them demanding it.
- angry_moose 3y ago
  So far, genetic testing firms haven't been considered to be covered by HIPAA: https://lawforbusiness.usc.edu/direct-to-consumer-generic-testing-companies-is-genetic-data-adequately-protected-in-the-absence-of-hippa/ https://lawforbusiness.usc.edu/direct-to-consumer-generic-te...
- astura 3y ago

wslh 3y ago

Please ELI5: I understand that one of the key features of 23andMe is their health report because the genealogy and the DNA dump are included in other companies. For a developer plus a scientist it is teally difficult to get the health data from the raw ADN and using current (Python?) modules?

331c8c71 3y ago
Health report? They only have limited info about your DNA (common small variants). The further you move from obvious disease-causing or high-risk mutations the more expertise you need. But even there you need where to look and how to present the results. The real (honest) question is what such reports cover and what qre the precision/recall? Answering that requires far more than duct-taping a few python modules.
- wslh 3y ago
  That is why I asked about having a scientist (or many of them). From your answer I understand that for every health condition, and probably jointly, you need to do an analyzer? I am trying to understand the complexity from a CS perspective. You have the string that is your DNA and then you need to pass different functions with their own complexity for detecting each health issue?

progbits 3y ago

What would be the rough cost of equipment and consumables required to do DNA sequencing for say 10 people? Assuming similar genome coverage as 23andme gets. Last time I researched it the estimate was 5-6 digits, but I'm sure technology advancements have made it cheaper. What happened to that $1000 nanopore? I have some acquaintances with lab experience who could run this, and could split the costs between friends and family. Everyone gets their own data, no copies are made, all samples are destroyed. We can resell the equipment after to recover some of the costs. This is the best way to be sure about the data not leaking or getting sold to boost CEO bonus.

kleton 3y ago
BGI (formerly Beijing Genomics) would be the one for you. https://www.bgi.com/us/sequencing-services/dna-sequencing/whole-genome-sequencing/ https://www.bgi.com/us/sequencing-services/dna-sequencing/wh...
- progbits 3y ago
  That seems like a service you send samples to. I want to buy a machine, observe the whole process myself and then destroy/scrub the machine.
  - stanford_labrat 3y ago
    If you really want to do this I would just do it like we do it in academic labs. Prep the DNA yourself and send to Illumina who will do the sequencing and send you the raw data.
  - kleton 3y ago
    BGI does not sell the machines they reverse-engineered from Illumina. You can sometimes find old Illumina machines on ebay, or buy a new NovaSeq for a about a million.
genomer 3y ago
The Nanopore Minion is still a thing, but it's sequencing and has higher error rates than competing short-read methods like Illumina's sequence by synthesis. https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion Sequencing DNA with nanopores: Troubles and biases https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8486125/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8486125/ Based on what I'm seeing from 23andMe's website they only do genotyping, not sequencing. https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/227968028-How-23andMe-Personal-Genetic-Service-Works https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/227968028... "23andMe uses genotyping, not sequencing, to analyze your DNA. Sequencing technology has not yet progressed to the point where it is feasible to sequence an entire person’s genome quickly and cheaply enough to keep costs down for consumers. It took the Human Genome Project, a consortium of multiple research labs, over 10 years to sequence the whole genomes of just a few individuals." Edit: https://www.23andme.com/total-health https://www.23andme.com/total-health I guess they started providing whole exome sequencing, but I can't find information about what depth they're doing it at.

psanford 3y ago

Sounds like its time to export your data and delete your account before they get sold to someone who will do who knows what with it.

kjellsbells 3y ago

Ah, 23andMe, the Experian of DNA. Look, I give her great credit for the women in STEM thing, her perseverance in the light of obstacles, and making a 10$ lab kit worth $399 to buyers. But to not understand how far actors would go to get hold of that data, to not understand that the drug industry is brutal because humans are poorly-understood meatsacks (see: anything by Derek Lowe), well, seems like that Yale education didnt impart a whole heap of reflective thinking skills.

deleted 3y ago
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bumby 3y ago
>10$ lab kit worth $399 Can you elaborate? Does this mean they've added $389 in value, or they swindled people of $389? If it's the former, what did they do to create that value? (Not being snarky, I don't know enough about their business and am legitimately curious. There seems to be a lot of comments here about unfulfilled promises.)
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  You have to define "value". Personally, I roll my eyes any time someone questions "value". If a customer is willing to pay $399, then obviously they put the value of whatever the results may be from it at at least $399.
  - bumby 3y ago
    “Utility” is the value I was looking at. I.e., they’ve added something (tests, insight, even just ease of use) that wasn’t available with the $10 version.
- kjellsbells 3y ago
  The former. That is, they convinced people to pay a premium over the material cost of the test. Nothing skeevy about that, just good marketing. Assuming that customers were not misled. "It's not a pencil, it's the thing that writes the next Moby Dick" - that sort of thing.

oldgradstudent 3y ago

How could a company, that provided me the amazing insight that I have 71% likelihood of having little or no back hair, fail? BTW, I have quite a lot of back hair. Most of the other physical features are wrong.

redconfetti 3y ago
I got the same result, which came across as stupid given that I have lots of back hair.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Request deletion of your data here: https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170688-Requesting-23andMe-Account-Closure https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212170688...

ibern 3y ago

Their therapeutic area focus was far too broad. Going after "dozens of diseases" in parallel was a recipe for disaster. It takes a very specific understanding of your disease to translate genetic insight into a mechanistic, testable hypothesis.

lestertomlin 3y ago

I mean this is the Silicon Valley playbook. Get raised by some ultra connected family. Start a company, get money from your family then get pictures on Inc mag as some self made genius founder.

egberts1 3y ago

It is good OpSec to scramble your DNA every six months, says no one ever.

jWhick 3y ago

I never got that company, to me it seemed foolish from start.

AlbertCory 3y ago

> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s I attended Ann's talk at Google when she was still with Sergey. They had spit kits in case anyone wanted to do it on the spot (I didn't). When President Clinton announced the completion of the human genome project, he looked forward to all the wonderful drugs that would follow therefrom. Then I took a number of extension classes in molecular biology and drug discovery, and learned from the people who actually do it that DNA information is often helpful, but it's not a silver bullet. > Sequoia, which invested $145 million in 23andMe, still holds all its shares, he said. Today they are worth $18 million. .. and this is why those VCs get the big bucks /s

331c8c71 3y ago
> Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s It absolutely does. That's how cancer occurs btw. The term is "somatic mutations".
- 331c8c71 3y ago
  Actually not only cancer. That's also required for adaptive immunity. A human immune system needs roughly 100 million different antibodies to potentially bind every pathogen. And there are only ~30K genes. What happens is that in B cells the DNA that encodes antibodies' binding regions actually mutate upon B cell maturation. Similar for T cells. The term is "V(D)J recombination".
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  I'll confess my ignorance here, but would your saliva cells also show it (assuming it's not a mouth or throat cancer)? And it is is, wouldn't you have noticed something before your regular "checkup" from 23andme?
  - 331c8c71 3y ago
    Good question. I think this should answer your questions https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12920-020-0664-7 https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ Speaking of detecting cancer indirectly, it is actually the fact that sometimes you can detect tumors (early) because their DNA or RNA products reach the blood or other bodily fluids (cfDNA/cfRNA for "circulating free"). It is a big and a recent thing - for many cancer types e.g. lung there was basically no easy way to test. Biopsies are very invasive obviously....

Lamad1234 3y ago

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coolThingsFirst 3y ago

Tribe follows tribe and nation follows nation

dundarious 3y ago

Why do people believe genetic testing offers a pathway to a wide array of beneficial (non-snake oil) tailored drugs and treatments? What is the scientific basis for this belief, other than "seems plausible" reasoning?

sjducb 3y ago
20 years ago it was pretty plausible. Most of the genetic effects that we knew about were large. Maybe all of them were large? Now we know that most effects are small, and there aren’t useful interventions that can treat the effects.
- dundarious 3y ago
  That is my feeling also. And well, no useful drug interventions at least. For most genetic risk factors, lifestyle factors dominate the total risk.

notso411 3y ago

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jakupovic 3y ago

Did they kept the kits sent in? Thus still sitting on many DNA samples. The storage costs money but the data is probably worth it. Not sure who to ask?

redder23 3y ago

Only total morons pay to let a company sell their genes. Happy downvoting, I know this will offend a bunch of people in this crowd. In a sane world this thing should have never work in the first place but given the world is full of morons who are dumb enough to actually pay for shit like that its quite an accomplishment to run a company like that into the ground. I read articles of people sending in banana DNA 23AndMe or a similar service and they got a supposedly ancestry tracking back. These services are dubious at best and you literally sign your DNA away to be sold to the highest bidder in their terms. I would not do this FOR FREE, let alone pay a ridiculous $130 for it.

robotburrito 3y ago
I understand your take, and in many ways regret sending my data to them, but through this service I did find 6+ siblings I was not aware of, as well as my father. So it does provide some benefits.

LAC-Tech 3y ago

I'm no economist, but isn't that to be expected? - A burst of people take your DNA test - Much less people will subsequently, as your target becomes younger people who are now old enough to pay for DNA tests. Seems like you'd have to whether being way under-capacity for the initial burst, and then essentially a return to normal.

neveracool 3y ago

> 23andMe had a data breach this fall that exposed nongenetic information of 6.9 million customers Why does it specify "nongenetic"? Is it because the passwords were exposed? Doesn't that mean that any information accessible with those passwords can also be considered breached?

whyenot 3y ago

I found my biological father and a half-sister thanks to 23andMe. It's hard for me to fully express how much that has meant to me. While I am fully aware of the bad side of DNA testing that many have raised here, I just want to also point out that there is also good that can come from these tests.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Alternative non-paywall link: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=1180808593353&w=TdklVuJENIKoOY8imPm4utURkpCiYMGW https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=1180808593353&w=TdklVuJENI... (archive.is will not work in some parts of the world)

breck 3y ago

I was an early adopter of 23andMe. I bought many as presents and recommended it to many, many people. I even bought some stock after the SPAC (not the best investment :)). I have no regrets, and still rooting for them. There is something magical that I could spit in a tube, and my cousin could spit in a tube, and then weeks later we got emails saying "Out of millions of users we found your cousin just from spit!" As kids we are lied to about a lot (the big guy in a red suit, for example), so part of growing up is verifying that what you are taught is actually true. If you did not major in biology, you don't have an easy way to verify that what you are told about genetics, DNA, and evolution is true. 23andMe provided that easy test for the layperson. I think that alone is worth the hundred bucks. The joy I got from verifying DNA is at the core of life is like the joy I got from Intro to Electrical Engineering, building my first circuit with logic gates, and realizing that indeed everything is built up of 1s and 0s. It seems they haven't developed more of a business beyond that novelty. I think I was expecting they would come out with future innovative offerings, given that their first was cool and done pretty well. I was never crazy about the drug development plan. Seems like a more logical first step would be to combine with a fitness wearable company (Goog/Fitbit, Apple, Oura Ring, Whoop, Garmin, Samsung, etc), that there might be valuable insights from those datasets merged.

mancerayder 3y ago

The amount of success she had because of being connected to Brin is absolutely wild. It's literally make-or-break for her success. And her sister, CEO of YouTube? It's a cliché what we say about connections and success, etc. and so forth. But that WSJ article really hammered how in this case how absolutely tied to connections this company, and her wealth, were, and how luck plays a role. In a business idea people are saying should have been doomed. People are discussing all sorts of details about the company's business strategy, what they should have done with all the data, whether that data is useless, what they might do with it now, whether they should be allowed to, etc. Someone pointed out the GSK investment which was interesting. But to me all this is trumped by the human element - how having the right neighbor, or boyfriend, or sister's boyfriend, can propel you to the top with unimaginable wealth. Something worth thinking about as we are on a forum run by a startup network: Given what we have learned here how meritorious is success in Silicon Valley really?

danielmarkbruce 3y ago
But she's failed. Zero success. And that failure is all over the wall street journal. The lesson is, no matter who your connections are your business will fail if it doesn't provide lots of value at a cost structure where it all adds up. Compare it to old Sergey - he was a know nobody 20 something nerd studying computer science. He co-created one of the most valuable businesses in the world.
- mancerayder 3y ago
  Fair enough! The business failed. It's embarrassing, and so forth. Sure. And the employees of that business (and stock owners, which may include many of those employees) are not in a good place. But something tells me the sisters aren't going to be starving any time soon. I don't know her assets but I suspect even with a failed business there's a few million in real estate and savings set aside, even if her big ownership in the business is in the penny stock category. A position that many of us wouldn't mind.
  - danielmarkbruce 3y ago

belter 3y ago

https://archive.is/1yzWi https://archive.is/1yzWi