A siblings results was enough for me. We share the same ancestry. There were no surprises in their result.
23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
91–100 of 458 posts
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#92> Wojcicki has theories Think the obvious one is that the results are shared and whether someone is a criminal or not (or will be one in the future), people are not particularly comfortable with sharing to parties they didn't initially trust it to for the purposes they trusted it for. Anecdotally, I bought a 23andme kit (just the genealogy one) but never submitted it because the labeling was to send it to the lab in…
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) specifically prohibits health insurance companies from denying coverage or setting rates based on such tests.
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#93Everyone paying attention the pattern of layoffs? Ebay, Mozilla, DigitalOcean, 23andMe, Intel... Pay down your credit card debt and make sure you have at least 6 months of expenses in the bank, if you're young and haven't been through this before.
Luv 2 watch 10yr bond yield inversions and increasing fed interventions in overnight repo markets to protect overleveraged institutions. Also luv to read about family offices switching to stable assets. Recessions are basically caused by rich people deciding they can make more money by crashing the economy than by lending.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/world-s-w...
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#94>Wojcicki has theories I have a theory for her. It's too expensive. It was really cheap when I got it (on deep discount) but there are discounts, and then there are discounts. The discounts in the last few years have been very weak. For the past few years I would have bought it for as many as five family members if only it had gone back to the price I got it for. And now that the privacy concerns have understandably…
I saw one of the kits on sale in Rite-Aid the other day, and I looked at it, and it was only like $35 dollars. That's down in the "sure, what the hell, maybe it'd be interesting" range. Then I looked closer, and realized that in the fine print that was just for the testing kit. When you send it in and get it processed, there was an additional $99-150ish lab processing fee, depending on what you picked, to actually get the results back. A little rich for my blood at that price.
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#95They sold 10M kits, and they primarily market in the US. DNA never changes, so you have a lifetime max of 1 purchase of 23andMe per lifetime. Their competitors have likely sold 15-30M as well, so maybe 30-40M of these kits have been sold. That's 10% of US market.
What's the max conceivable penetration here? 20%?
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#96> Wojcicki has theories Think the obvious one is that the results are shared and whether someone is a criminal or not (or will be one in the future), people are not particularly comfortable with sharing to parties they didn't initially trust it to for the purposes they trusted it for. Anecdotally, I bought a 23andme kit (just the genealogy one) but never submitted it because the labeling was to send it to the lab in…
Honestly, I would also say that a partial reason why these would've dropped is that everyone who can do it has done it. You only need these kinds of results once because your DNA doesn't change. I knew people who were giving or had gotten these as gifts, but those are one-off purchases. And if you've heard of people doing it then you'll do it too but that's also a one-off. I don't think I'd personally benefit because…
That's not quite true. Your DNA doesn't change, but 23andMe only does partial sequences on those test kits. As new techniques become available they can't necessarily retest old samples, so customers who want more complete results in the future will likely have to buy and submit new kits.
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#97I can't believe they've received three quarters of a billion dollars of investment.
The largest chunk, $300 million, was a buy-in from GlaxoSmithKline, with which it purchased access to the database and research. Given the slowing pace of drug development, that was probably a very good "investment" by GSK. But maybe it was a bad one for 23andMe if it limits the scope of deals they can do with other pharmaceutical companies.
It remains unclear that 23&Me's data will truly be transformative in drug development (this has been a criticism of the human genome project since it finished and most predictions for human health still haven't panned out). There's a lot of narrative and noise there, but not a lot of useful activity (yes, I know 23&Me is touting one drug at this point).
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#98> Wojcicki has theories Think the obvious one is that the results are shared and whether someone is a criminal or not (or will be one in the future), people are not particularly comfortable with sharing to parties they didn't initially trust it to for the purposes they trusted it for. Anecdotally, I bought a 23andme kit (just the genealogy one) but never submitted it because the labeling was to send it to the lab in…
Honestly, I would also say that a partial reason why these would've dropped is that everyone who can do it has done it. You only need these kinds of results once because your DNA doesn't change. I knew people who were giving or had gotten these as gifts, but those are one-off purchases. And if you've heard of people doing it then you'll do it too but that's also a one-off. I don't think I'd personally benefit because…
New people are being born all the time. There are many industries based around one time purchases. Think appendix removal or weddings (that one may be more than once for some people)
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#99“This has been slow and painful for us,”
I'm gonna give you some slack here, Anne, but TBH Silicon Valley executives don't really understand what these words mean.
“I think the tech world needs to own this[sic] better communicate privacy standards to build trust,” she said. “I want to jump in and really own it.”
Or maybe instead of jumping in with your billionaire executive pants on, Anne, you could listen. People are sick of being told what's being done to them. You didn't miscommunicate, you screwed up. People are pissed off.
Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I would also say that a partial reason why these would've dropped is that everyone who can do it has done it. You only need these kinds of results once because your DNA doesn't change. I knew people who were giving or had gotten these as gifts, but those are one-off purchases. And if you've heard of people doing it then you'll do it too but that's also a one-off. I don't think I'd personally benefit because…
That's not quite true. Your DNA doesn't change, but 23andMe only does partial sequences on those test kits. As new techniques become available they can't necessarily retest old samples, so customers who want more complete results in the future will likely have to buy and submit new kits.
I've never seen them push that as a marketing angle.
As a 23andMe customer from a couple years ago, it never even occured to me to try re-running the results.