4 ms·

Anne Wojcicki Wins Bidding for 23andMe

61 points by mfiguiere 1y ago

The28thDuck 1y ago
This is a great outcome no?
- woleium 1y ago
  Who knows. What we do know is someone intimately familiar with the data and its potential utility is no longer bound by any prior contractual obligations as to its use. I doubt this will end well, but i am a cynic.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    This. Nonprofit status is no assurance of governance. Just look at Firefox. The limiting factor is the ethics of the new/returning management/board of directors layer(s).
- JohnFen 1y ago
  What makes it a great outcome?
mrguyorama 1y ago
So, found company, SPAC it to get some of that sweet sweet public market cash, run it poorly so that it goes bankrupt and you resign, and then buy it at auction for less than it's supposed assets? Surely that does something bad to economics of investing and running businesses if you can just steal public investment dollars like that, right? Is there an alternative that doesn't reward a rich CEO for killing their own company, even if it wasn't done on purpose? She put very little of her own money into it. One of the first investors was Google, ie her husband, then it just kept raising money (how much of that money went directly to Anne), billions of dollars of investment, never made profit, and now she gets it for $300 million or so.
- abxyz 1y ago
  The principle is that employees matter more than shareholders: wiping out shareholders to save jobs is the greater good even if it enriches a nefarious or incompetent executive. Many retail investors are shocked to learn in their first bankruptcy how low they are in the pecking order when a company goes under.
- nradov 1y ago
  The alternative is just to not make stupid investments in the first place. The shareholders knew (or should have known) the risk. If "dumb money" hasn't purchased the stock then the CEO wouldn't have been able to burn their capital.
  - sidewndr46 1y ago
    aren't scenarios like this ultimately enabled by the application of the Greater Fool theory?
    - nradov 1y ago
      No one is required to be a fool. You can opt out.
- LarsDu88 1y ago
  Very few companies have CEOs that actually have the voting shares to run their own company to the ground to buy it privately. Wojcicki was actually able to stand against the rest of the board to bring this company down to bankruptcy level because of her 49% voting shares
- refulgentis 1y ago
  She wasn't rewarded, she asked to take it private twice because it was going to go bankrupt, board said no both times, now she has to pay 7.5x her last offer to them. I think you're misunderstanding it as if the company endogenously failed due to missteps on her end, which sort of trivially can't be the case, there's a very defined product here where you can charge more for the output than the input. Thing is, investors / board didn't wanna run that sort of business, apparently.
OutOfHere 1y ago
The tech behind 23andMe has long been grossly obsolete. AFAIK, they test a small sample of DNA only, whereas serious people do whole genome testing. A newer company in the field with more to offer is Nucleus Genomics, but I advise finding the full genome test provider that's right for you.
- Someone1234 1y ago
  And then what? So you find a full genome test provider, and now you have a full array result: What do you then do with it that doesn't violate your privacy?
- oxygen_crisis 1y ago
  Isn't the real prize the library of personally-identified samples preserved in their "biobank" and not the methodologies or analysis they've applied to it so far...
  - OutOfHere 1y ago
    The prize to the user is the quality of the data and the analysis, not the prospect of it.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  I rarely used the 23andme website for much of anything and always used it to export into Promethease.
  - OutOfHere 1y ago
    The 23andMe scan just doesn't have all the necessary data. It scans just a small sample of the data that's biologically relevant. Think 700K SNPs versus 5 million SNPs with full genome.
- yread 1y ago
  They have the freezers filled with biological material that could be resequenced though. Or not?
tintor 1y ago
Is there any full genome sequencing company which doesn't keep dna results associated with user name? ie. strong privacy guarantees
- londons_explore 1y ago
  I thought they all gave you the option to delete your data? That's effectively the same.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    I requested deletion, but I have no faith whatsoever that it was honored.
  - londons_explore 1y ago
    Big companies that have a legal team and operate in the EU generally do honour deletion requests - I have worked with/for some and a big part of the system architecture usually revolves around being able to be sure that deleted data is erased even from backups within 30/60/90 days. Smaller companies, all bets are off - good chance your data is sitting on a dusty hard drive/tape backup or in some 'data_extract_test_2023.tgz' file in an S3 bucket.

61 points by mfiguiere 1y ago

The28thDuck 1y ago

This is a great outcome no?

woleium 1y ago
Who knows. What we do know is someone intimately familiar with the data and its potential utility is no longer bound by any prior contractual obligations as to its use. I doubt this will end well, but i am a cynic.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  This. Nonprofit status is no assurance of governance. Just look at Firefox. The limiting factor is the ethics of the new/returning management/board of directors layer(s).
JohnFen 1y ago
What makes it a great outcome?

mrguyorama 1y ago

So, found company, SPAC it to get some of that sweet sweet public market cash, run it poorly so that it goes bankrupt and you resign, and then buy it at auction for less than it's supposed assets? Surely that does something bad to economics of investing and running businesses if you can just steal public investment dollars like that, right? Is there an alternative that doesn't reward a rich CEO for killing their own company, even if it wasn't done on purpose? She put very little of her own money into it. One of the first investors was Google, ie her husband, then it just kept raising money (how much of that money went directly to Anne), billions of dollars of investment, never made profit, and now she gets it for $300 million or so.

abxyz 1y ago
The principle is that employees matter more than shareholders: wiping out shareholders to save jobs is the greater good even if it enriches a nefarious or incompetent executive. Many retail investors are shocked to learn in their first bankruptcy how low they are in the pecking order when a company goes under.
nradov 1y ago
The alternative is just to not make stupid investments in the first place. The shareholders knew (or should have known) the risk. If "dumb money" hasn't purchased the stock then the CEO wouldn't have been able to burn their capital.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  aren't scenarios like this ultimately enabled by the application of the Greater Fool theory?
  - nradov 1y ago
    No one is required to be a fool. You can opt out.
LarsDu88 1y ago
Very few companies have CEOs that actually have the voting shares to run their own company to the ground to buy it privately. Wojcicki was actually able to stand against the rest of the board to bring this company down to bankruptcy level because of her 49% voting shares
refulgentis 1y ago
She wasn't rewarded, she asked to take it private twice because it was going to go bankrupt, board said no both times, now she has to pay 7.5x her last offer to them. I think you're misunderstanding it as if the company endogenously failed due to missteps on her end, which sort of trivially can't be the case, there's a very defined product here where you can charge more for the output than the input. Thing is, investors / board didn't wanna run that sort of business, apparently.

OutOfHere 1y ago

The tech behind 23andMe has long been grossly obsolete. AFAIK, they test a small sample of DNA only, whereas serious people do whole genome testing. A newer company in the field with more to offer is Nucleus Genomics, but I advise finding the full genome test provider that's right for you.

Someone1234 1y ago
And then what? So you find a full genome test provider, and now you have a full array result: What do you then do with it that doesn't violate your privacy?
oxygen_crisis 1y ago
Isn't the real prize the library of personally-identified samples preserved in their "biobank" and not the methodologies or analysis they've applied to it so far...
- OutOfHere 1y ago
  The prize to the user is the quality of the data and the analysis, not the prospect of it.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
I rarely used the 23andme website for much of anything and always used it to export into Promethease.
- OutOfHere 1y ago
  The 23andMe scan just doesn't have all the necessary data. It scans just a small sample of the data that's biologically relevant. Think 700K SNPs versus 5 million SNPs with full genome.
yread 1y ago
They have the freezers filled with biological material that could be resequenced though. Or not?

tintor 1y ago

Is there any full genome sequencing company which doesn't keep dna results associated with user name? ie. strong privacy guarantees

londons_explore 1y ago
I thought they all gave you the option to delete your data? That's effectively the same.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I requested deletion, but I have no faith whatsoever that it was honored.
- londons_explore 1y ago
  Big companies that have a legal team and operate in the EU generally do honour deletion requests - I have worked with/for some and a big part of the system architecture usually revolves around being able to be sure that deleted data is erased even from backups within 30/60/90 days. Smaller companies, all bets are off - good chance your data is sitting on a dusty hard drive/tape backup or in some 'data_extract_test_2023.tgz' file in an S3 bucket.