10 ms·

Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs: https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/

Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs: https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/ https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/ The board of directors of 23andMe just resigned in protest. The CEO, Anne Wojcicki (who's sister Susan died of lung cancer last month, and was the former CEO of YouTube) had tried to low ball take the company private at only $0.40 a share -- a more than 96% drop from its deSPAC price. For reference, right now the market cap of 23andMe is $172 million, its closest competitor Ancestry.com was bought out by the Blackstone group for $4.7 billion, and cumulative sales of KeyTruda - an anti-cancer drug in the same family as the one being developed by 23andMe had cumulative sales of $25 billion by 2023. Feels like the main thing holding this company back is the CEO and lack of corporate governance (due to majority shareholder control resting in the hands of one person)

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Does the corporate structure support a hostile takeover? This would enable purging management and re-staffing with competent leadership.
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  Virtually impossible as Anne Wojcicki holds 20% of the outstanding shares and 49% of the voting power of total outstanding shares. That's essentially dictator-level power over the company. I believe the next largest shareholder is Richard Branson. Source: https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-announces-ceos-intention-pursue-potential-take-private https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... Despite the promising drug development news, the CEO signaled last month that she was willing to let public investors get hosed, with a low ball take-private offer of $0.40/share. I believe this pissed both public investors and the board members off. I'm not sure if the positive phase 2 results were icing on the cake. Quite honestly this company is a ripe target for acquisition by a biopharma company like GSK or Roche.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Regrettable. I suppose the alternative path is to let them go bankrupt and to get bought out of bankruptcy. That should wipe out all equity holders. If you’re a potential bidder, get your financing or cash lined up.
    - javierluraschi 2y ago
      She (the CEO) has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. Intentionally driving a company into bankruptcy for personal gain is a massive breach of that duty and opens her up to all kinds of legal trouble. So I would think that's a very bad idea.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        They're going bankrupt because they're almost out of cash [1]. The CEO is holding public investors hostage with the low ball take private offer LarsDu88 mentioned. The stock, NASDAQ: ME, currently trades at 29 cents/share [2] and will be delisted shortly [3]. Their failure to secure their customer DNA data with MFA cost them a $30M fine they must pay [4]. My comment you replied to was attempting to communicate that, because the CEO holds most of the control over the company, it is preferable to let it slip into bankruptcy (where equity and their control will be wiped out) vs continuing allowing them the control they have, which is not leading to a favorable outcome for the enterprise. This is potentially superior to recapitalizing the existing enterprise and continuing to allow the CEO to light capital on fire. [1] https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-reports-third-quarter-fiscal-2024-financial-results https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... (draw your attention to quarterly burn rate and cash on hand) [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ME/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ME/ [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/struggling-23andme-granted-extension-to-revive-stock-price https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/strugglin... |https://archive.today/yTo01 https://archive.today/yTo01 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494
        2y ago
LeanderK 2y ago
what am I missing? Isn't this good news (the positive phase 2 results)?
- firejake308 2y ago
  Yes, but the CEO was trying to take those profits for herself by biding to take the company private, which the Board of Directors refused to put up with
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- maxerickson 2y ago
  The board is making it clear that they don't think the CEO/largest shareholder is making good on their duty (as CEO) to the other shareholders. "Good luck ......" or so.
- ilamont 2y ago
  Phase 2 is not a slam dunk. Much more work remains, and under the guidance of a CEO who has zero drug development experience and a track record of management incompetence: - 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.
  - dekhn 2y ago
    you left out "ignored a letter from the FDA telling them to shut down"
  - gosub100 2y ago
    Could the hack have been part of the plan all along to depress the share price to make for a cheap buy-out?
  - LarsDu88 2y ago
    Mathematically, the chance of a drug going from phase 2 to phase 3 is roughly 30% This can be modeled with a binomial distribution as 1-probability of both failing. That comes out to 1-(.7^2) which is 51% of at least one drug reaching phase 3. There is literally a coin flip chance the company will reach the stage where there is another coin flip it will be worth billions (I believe ~50% of phase 3 drugs go to market), but thanks to the messaging of the CEO, right now it seems like there is a near 0% chance investors (which include former company employees) would benefit from this.
justinclift 2y ago
> Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs ... That's not entirely correct. It was two days after. ;) • https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-therapeutics-announces-phase-2-results-two-additional https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... There's also this, on the same day: • https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-therapeutics-announces-positive-vivo-results-23me-01473 https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  I stand corrected. Well maybe the board took a day to get together and draft the letter. One of the board members Neal Mohan has to stand before a judge in Google's current anti-trust trial. No doubt he has no time for this stuff.
dyauspitr 2y ago
Why is she even the CEO? Was she placed there by Google once they bought 23andme?
- sanswork 2y ago
  She founded it
- akkartik 2y ago
  She's one of the original cofounders. Google never acquired it, only invested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe
- vlovich123 2y ago
  When did that happen? A founder was married to Sergei Brin for 8 years but that’s it.
- hackernewds 2y ago
  They haven't bought 23andme. but there is overlap, Anne was the former CEO of YouTube and wife of Sergey Brin
  - bluedevil2k 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Which part is incorrect?
      - bluedevil2k 2y ago
        Anne was never CEO of YouTube
  - LarsDu88 2y ago
    Anne's sister Susan, who died a month ago of lung cancer was CEO of YouTube. Susan was the person who advocated Google acquire YouTube in the first place. Google was founded in the garage of Anne and Susan's childhood home. Anne was married to Sergei until he had an affair. One of the board members of 23andMe is Neal Mohan who is the current CEO of YouTube.
brookst 2y ago
To complete the data, the company is trading at $0.34/share, so while $0.40 is a bit lower than the typical 20% premium (~$0.41), I'm not sure it counts as "lowball". It's a typical premium over market cap. Is there any reason to think the company is worth $4.7B or whatever ($9.30/share)? If so the stock is a steal at its current price and we should all buy lots. But can the market be THAT wrong?
- austhrow743 2y ago
  My take on their comment was that it should be worth many billions if it was being run effectively but that it's not. That doesn't mean the market is wrong, it means the market thinks it will continue to be run ineffectively.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    if that is the case, isnt paying stockholders 20% over value a pretty good deal, and not a ripoff? It seems like there are contradictory facts being claimed: that the price to go private is a lowball, and that the current price is accurate.
    - austhrow743 2y ago
      If the one offering 20% over listed price is the one causing the listed price to be far more than 20% below what the company could be worth if they were running it properly, most people would consider that to be a ripoff.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        That seems like conspiracy thinking. The stockholders own part of the company with current management, not some hypothetical alternative. If they sell, they are selling a stake in the real company as it exists, not the alternate reality one. Think of a more relatable example. . A rental house with crazy tenants sells for less than a vacant one. If you buy or own a stake in a business that is controlled by poor managers, you are lucky to sell for a 20% premium.
hackernewds 2y ago
why are these companies worth so much, if not for sneakily monetizing and selling their user's most personal data?
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  The plan was always that DNA could be use for medical research, which is enormously valuable. And given that 23andme currently has a market cap 1/20th DJT (Trump Media & Technology Group Corp) -- a firm that makes less revenue than a variety store yet has huge losses -- I wouldn't really say it's "worth so much".
  - elictronic 2y ago
    I wouldn’t compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign governments laundering money to the campaign, primary shareholder prepping for exit. The companies actual revenue has zero impact and never will. Treat DJT like a NFT and it makes a ton of sense.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > wouldn’t compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign governments laundering money to the campaign, primary shareholder prepping for exit You’re right for the wrong reasons. (EDIT: I'm wrong for no reason.) Dow Jones is obsolete [1]. Its value is in its brand, i.e. other people look at it. The other factors you mention are noise. Relevant to a trader or market maker with infintessimal time horizons. But irrelevant to an investor thinking even in months. The American markets are simply too deep. The totality of dollars at work by MAGA voters, game-playing hedge funds and money launderers--through the stock market--is negligible. (Lots of political tea-leave reading funds have been attempted. Zero prevail.) [1] https://retirementresearcher.com/why-the-dow-doesnt-work/ https://retirementresearcher.com/why-the-dow-doesnt-work/
      - quickthrowman 2y ago
nextos 2y ago
Was the plan all the time to go B2B (drug development) and they just used B2C (selling SNP kits) to hoard samples? Even considering all FDA limitations, I cannot understand how bad their genetic risk scores are. They have talent, they have lots of customers and data. This is a position other companies, like deCODE, would have killed to be in.
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  If the board is resigning, and the company is selling DNA kits, running a telemedicine operation, selling pharmceuticals online AND developing cancer drugs at a 180 million dollar market cap... It's quite possible there was no plan at all...
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I saw Ann when she gave a talk at Google (that was when she was still married to Sergey). They had spit cups we could use if we wanted our DNA sequenced. I didn't. Their business plan was straight out of South Park: 1. Collect lots of DNA 2. ?????? 3. Profit!!
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      Isn't that the case for almost every single VC backed startup?
      - hennell 2y ago
        s/dna/data and you're pretty much any tech business.
  - burningChrome 2y ago
    >>> selling pharmceuticals online That would explain them selling 5 million users DNA information to GSK. Earlier this summer, the often-scrutinized at-home genetic testing company 23andMe sold genetic data from five million customers to the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This surprised a lot of their customers who had forgotten that they consented to this when they signed up for the service. https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-gsk-personalized-medicine-ethics/ https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-gs...
zzleeper 2y ago
So sad that Blackstone bought ancestry.. newspapers.com is a really nice tool for researchers (and most things that get touched by PE end up enshittified)
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I suppose I should know this: who owns newspapers.com? What's the connection?
  - LarsDu88 2y ago
    Ancestry owns newspapers.com A lot of Ancestry.com and AncestryDNA was founded to support the Mormon belief that the LDS church can posthumously baptize ancestors of living individuals into the church under the belief that many deceased individuals were not alive to hear the gospel of Joseph Smith. Thus the massive data collection effort for historical information like newpaper articles from this century and the last.
    - myth_drannon 2y ago
      I think they stopped doing it. Jewish organizations were absolutely livid once they found out they were baptizing Holocaust victims.
      - mulderc 2y ago
        It is a pretty important aspect of Latter Day Saint theology. They still do it but officially you can only baptize your own family members with the permission of surviving family members. These guidelines are not always followed. Additionally they have said they removed people from their rosters that were improperly baptized but the members I have talked with are skeptical and found it a bit laughable that the church removing a name from a database would somehow undo a sacred ritual.
        voganmother42 2y ago
bruceb 2y ago
Closest competitor does a lot of heavy lifting in this situation. Ancestry is the overwhelming leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Look at https://www.ancestry.com/ https://www.ancestry.com/ and https://www.23andme.com/ https://www.23andme.com/ 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. Their pitch is health. But that pitch is murky with no good hook to keep you hooked for a monthly subscription. So after they get the initial $99 from the customer, most of the value customer is going to get is already served up in the first report. Maybe their big database will turn into making cancer drugs but maybe it wont.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  > 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. The routine emails I get about them allegedly finding new DNA relatives suggest otherwise. The DNA relatives feature is also still pretty prominent in their UI (at least on desktop browsers; haven't looked at the app yet). That said, it certainly doesn't offer much beyond "these are your relatives; send 'em some messages or something lol". Ancestry probably has a lot more features on that front, which is unsurprising since that's the sort of thing Ancestry was doing long before they even offered DNA sequencing kits like 23andMe does. I don't know if I'd characterize that as 23andMe "giving up", though; more that it's good enough for a product that never intended to enter the genealogy software market in the first place.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    I wonder, do the "relatives" know and agree that their information is sent to other person?
    - sitharus 2y ago
      …yes that’s how it works? You opt in and choose what you share. They’re quite explicit about it.
      - nnutter 2y ago
TheRealPomax 2y ago
"closest competitor" really doesn't mean anything here. That's like calling a failing burger joint in a random US city a "competitor of McDonalds". No they're not.
phonon 2y ago
So why doesn't Ancestry/Blackstone buy out 23andMe? Antitrust? Shareholder control issues?
- ac29 2y ago
  They are deeply unprofitable and always have been. Looking at FY24, they spent $4 for every $1 in revenue.
darby_nine 2y ago
> Feels like the main thing holding this company back is the CEO Use has also dropped, no? There's serious questions about long term revenue generation. Ancestry.com doesn't require selling your genetic code to collaborate on geneology.
edm0nd 2y ago
Anne Wojcicki is also the exwife of billionaire Google founder Sergey Brin. I have always felt as if 23andMe was just her pet lil project and it doesn't matter if its ever profitable or not.
zombiwoof 2y ago
Luck and being in the right place at the right time can’t make a CEO. Anne is a terrible CEO

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Does the corporate structure support a hostile takeover? This would enable purging management and re-staffing with competent leadership.

LarsDu88 2y ago
Virtually impossible as Anne Wojcicki holds 20% of the outstanding shares and 49% of the voting power of total outstanding shares. That's essentially dictator-level power over the company. I believe the next largest shareholder is Richard Branson. Source: https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-announces-ceos-intention-pursue-potential-take-private https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... Despite the promising drug development news, the CEO signaled last month that she was willing to let public investors get hosed, with a low ball take-private offer of $0.40/share. I believe this pissed both public investors and the board members off. I'm not sure if the positive phase 2 results were icing on the cake. Quite honestly this company is a ripe target for acquisition by a biopharma company like GSK or Roche.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Regrettable. I suppose the alternative path is to let them go bankrupt and to get bought out of bankruptcy. That should wipe out all equity holders. If you’re a potential bidder, get your financing or cash lined up.
  - javierluraschi 2y ago
    She (the CEO) has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. Intentionally driving a company into bankruptcy for personal gain is a massive breach of that duty and opens her up to all kinds of legal trouble. So I would think that's a very bad idea.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      They're going bankrupt because they're almost out of cash [1]. The CEO is holding public investors hostage with the low ball take private offer LarsDu88 mentioned. The stock, NASDAQ: ME, currently trades at 29 cents/share [2] and will be delisted shortly [3]. Their failure to secure their customer DNA data with MFA cost them a $30M fine they must pay [4]. My comment you replied to was attempting to communicate that, because the CEO holds most of the control over the company, it is preferable to let it slip into bankruptcy (where equity and their control will be wiped out) vs continuing allowing them the control they have, which is not leading to a favorable outcome for the enterprise. This is potentially superior to recapitalizing the existing enterprise and continuing to allow the CEO to light capital on fire. [1] https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-reports-third-quarter-fiscal-2024-financial-results https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... (draw your attention to quarterly burn rate and cash on hand) [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ME/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ME/ [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/struggling-23andme-granted-extension-to-revive-stock-price https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-10/strugglin... |https://archive.today/yTo01 https://archive.today/yTo01 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536494
      - 2y ago

LeanderK 2y ago

what am I missing? Isn't this good news (the positive phase 2 results)?

firejake308 2y ago
Yes, but the CEO was trying to take those profits for herself by biding to take the company private, which the Board of Directors refused to put up with
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
maxerickson 2y ago
The board is making it clear that they don't think the CEO/largest shareholder is making good on their duty (as CEO) to the other shareholders. "Good luck ......" or so.
ilamont 2y ago
Phase 2 is not a slam dunk. Much more work remains, and under the guidance of a CEO who has zero drug development experience and a track record of management incompetence: - 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.
- dekhn 2y ago
  you left out "ignored a letter from the FDA telling them to shut down"
- gosub100 2y ago
  Could the hack have been part of the plan all along to depress the share price to make for a cheap buy-out?
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  Mathematically, the chance of a drug going from phase 2 to phase 3 is roughly 30% This can be modeled with a binomial distribution as 1-probability of both failing. That comes out to 1-(.7^2) which is 51% of at least one drug reaching phase 3. There is literally a coin flip chance the company will reach the stage where there is another coin flip it will be worth billions (I believe ~50% of phase 3 drugs go to market), but thanks to the messaging of the CEO, right now it seems like there is a near 0% chance investors (which include former company employees) would benefit from this.

justinclift 2y ago

> Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs ... That's not entirely correct. It was two days after. ;) • https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-therapeutics-announces-phase-2-results-two-additional https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det... There's also this, on the same day: • https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-details/23andme-therapeutics-announces-positive-vivo-results-23me-01473 https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...

LarsDu88 2y ago
I stand corrected. Well maybe the board took a day to get together and draft the letter. One of the board members Neal Mohan has to stand before a judge in Google's current anti-trust trial. No doubt he has no time for this stuff.

dyauspitr 2y ago

Why is she even the CEO? Was she placed there by Google once they bought 23andme?

sanswork 2y ago
She founded it
akkartik 2y ago
She's one of the original cofounders. Google never acquired it, only invested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe
vlovich123 2y ago
When did that happen? A founder was married to Sergei Brin for 8 years but that’s it.
hackernewds 2y ago
They haven't bought 23andme. but there is overlap, Anne was the former CEO of YouTube and wife of Sergey Brin
- bluedevil2k 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Which part is incorrect?
    - bluedevil2k 2y ago
      Anne was never CEO of YouTube
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  Anne's sister Susan, who died a month ago of lung cancer was CEO of YouTube. Susan was the person who advocated Google acquire YouTube in the first place. Google was founded in the garage of Anne and Susan's childhood home. Anne was married to Sergei until he had an affair. One of the board members of 23andMe is Neal Mohan who is the current CEO of YouTube.

brookst 2y ago

To complete the data, the company is trading at $0.34/share, so while $0.40 is a bit lower than the typical 20% premium (~$0.41), I'm not sure it counts as "lowball". It's a typical premium over market cap. Is there any reason to think the company is worth $4.7B or whatever ($9.30/share)? If so the stock is a steal at its current price and we should all buy lots. But can the market be THAT wrong?

austhrow743 2y ago
My take on their comment was that it should be worth many billions if it was being run effectively but that it's not. That doesn't mean the market is wrong, it means the market thinks it will continue to be run ineffectively.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  if that is the case, isnt paying stockholders 20% over value a pretty good deal, and not a ripoff? It seems like there are contradictory facts being claimed: that the price to go private is a lowball, and that the current price is accurate.
  - austhrow743 2y ago
    If the one offering 20% over listed price is the one causing the listed price to be far more than 20% below what the company could be worth if they were running it properly, most people would consider that to be a ripoff.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      That seems like conspiracy thinking. The stockholders own part of the company with current management, not some hypothetical alternative. If they sell, they are selling a stake in the real company as it exists, not the alternate reality one. Think of a more relatable example. . A rental house with crazy tenants sells for less than a vacant one. If you buy or own a stake in a business that is controlled by poor managers, you are lucky to sell for a 20% premium.

hackernewds 2y ago

why are these companies worth so much, if not for sneakily monetizing and selling their user's most personal data?

llm_nerd 2y ago
The plan was always that DNA could be use for medical research, which is enormously valuable. And given that 23andme currently has a market cap 1/20th DJT (Trump Media & Technology Group Corp) -- a firm that makes less revenue than a variety store yet has huge losses -- I wouldn't really say it's "worth so much".
- elictronic 2y ago
  I wouldn’t compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign governments laundering money to the campaign, primary shareholder prepping for exit. The companies actual revenue has zero impact and never will. Treat DJT like a NFT and it makes a ton of sense.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > wouldn’t compare any stock to DJT. MAGA voters value signaling, institutional investors playing games, foreign governments laundering money to the campaign, primary shareholder prepping for exit You’re right for the wrong reasons. (EDIT: I'm wrong for no reason.) Dow Jones is obsolete [1]. Its value is in its brand, i.e. other people look at it. The other factors you mention are noise. Relevant to a trader or market maker with infintessimal time horizons. But irrelevant to an investor thinking even in months. The American markets are simply too deep. The totality of dollars at work by MAGA voters, game-playing hedge funds and money launderers--through the stock market--is negligible. (Lots of political tea-leave reading funds have been attempted. Zero prevail.) [1] https://retirementresearcher.com/why-the-dow-doesnt-work/ https://retirementresearcher.com/why-the-dow-doesnt-work/
    - quickthrowman 2y ago

nextos 2y ago

Was the plan all the time to go B2B (drug development) and they just used B2C (selling SNP kits) to hoard samples? Even considering all FDA limitations, I cannot understand how bad their genetic risk scores are. They have talent, they have lots of customers and data. This is a position other companies, like deCODE, would have killed to be in.

LarsDu88 2y ago
If the board is resigning, and the company is selling DNA kits, running a telemedicine operation, selling pharmceuticals online AND developing cancer drugs at a 180 million dollar market cap... It's quite possible there was no plan at all...
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I saw Ann when she gave a talk at Google (that was when she was still married to Sergey). They had spit cups we could use if we wanted our DNA sequenced. I didn't. Their business plan was straight out of South Park: 1. Collect lots of DNA 2. ?????? 3. Profit!!
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    Isn't that the case for almost every single VC backed startup?
    - hennell 2y ago
      s/dna/data and you're pretty much any tech business.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >>> selling pharmceuticals online That would explain them selling 5 million users DNA information to GSK. Earlier this summer, the often-scrutinized at-home genetic testing company 23andMe sold genetic data from five million customers to the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This surprised a lot of their customers who had forgotten that they consented to this when they signed up for the service. https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-gsk-personalized-medicine-ethics/ https://cglife.com/blog/23andme-sold-your-genetic-data-to-gs...

zzleeper 2y ago

So sad that Blackstone bought ancestry.. newspapers.com is a really nice tool for researchers (and most things that get touched by PE end up enshittified)

AlbertCory 2y ago
I suppose I should know this: who owns newspapers.com? What's the connection?
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  Ancestry owns newspapers.com A lot of Ancestry.com and AncestryDNA was founded to support the Mormon belief that the LDS church can posthumously baptize ancestors of living individuals into the church under the belief that many deceased individuals were not alive to hear the gospel of Joseph Smith. Thus the massive data collection effort for historical information like newpaper articles from this century and the last.
  - myth_drannon 2y ago
    I think they stopped doing it. Jewish organizations were absolutely livid once they found out they were baptizing Holocaust victims.
    - mulderc 2y ago
      It is a pretty important aspect of Latter Day Saint theology. They still do it but officially you can only baptize your own family members with the permission of surviving family members. These guidelines are not always followed. Additionally they have said they removed people from their rosters that were improperly baptized but the members I have talked with are skeptical and found it a bit laughable that the church removing a name from a database would somehow undo a sacred ritual.
      - voganmother42 2y ago

bruceb 2y ago

Closest competitor does a lot of heavy lifting in this situation. Ancestry is the overwhelming leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Look at https://www.ancestry.com/ https://www.ancestry.com/ and https://www.23andme.com/ https://www.23andme.com/ 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. Their pitch is health. But that pitch is murky with no good hook to keep you hooked for a monthly subscription. So after they get the initial $99 from the customer, most of the value customer is going to get is already served up in the first report. Maybe their big database will turn into making cancer drugs but maybe it wont.

yellowapple 2y ago
> 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. The routine emails I get about them allegedly finding new DNA relatives suggest otherwise. The DNA relatives feature is also still pretty prominent in their UI (at least on desktop browsers; haven't looked at the app yet). That said, it certainly doesn't offer much beyond "these are your relatives; send 'em some messages or something lol". Ancestry probably has a lot more features on that front, which is unsurprising since that's the sort of thing Ancestry was doing long before they even offered DNA sequencing kits like 23andMe does. I don't know if I'd characterize that as 23andMe "giving up", though; more that it's good enough for a product that never intended to enter the genealogy software market in the first place.
- codedokode 2y ago
  I wonder, do the "relatives" know and agree that their information is sent to other person?
  - sitharus 2y ago
    …yes that’s how it works? You opt in and choose what you share. They’re quite explicit about it.
    - nnutter 2y ago

TheRealPomax 2y ago

"closest competitor" really doesn't mean anything here. That's like calling a failing burger joint in a random US city a "competitor of McDonalds". No they're not.

phonon 2y ago

So why doesn't Ancestry/Blackstone buy out 23andMe? Antitrust? Shareholder control issues?

ac29 2y ago
They are deeply unprofitable and always have been. Looking at FY24, they spent $4 for every $1 in revenue.

darby_nine 2y ago

> Feels like the main thing holding this company back is the CEO Use has also dropped, no? There's serious questions about long term revenue generation. Ancestry.com doesn't require selling your genetic code to collaborate on geneology.

edm0nd 2y ago

Anne Wojcicki is also the exwife of billionaire Google founder Sergey Brin. I have always felt as if 23andMe was just her pet lil project and it doesn't matter if its ever profitable or not.

zombiwoof 2y ago

Luck and being in the right place at the right time can’t make a CEO. Anne is a terrible CEO