Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 458 posts

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#201

Post by cstejerean »

war1025 wrote: post #100
nradov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do, it depends how far back you signed up I guess. I did this many years ago, around the time they first launched and I got constant reminders that this or that new information is not available for me unless I upgrade to their latest chip. I think once I was able to upgrade by having them rerun the first sample I submitted, but at this point I think I’d have to send a new sample in if I remember the message correctly. But that seems like too much hassle so I haven’t done it.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#202

Post by umeshunni »

ThrowawayH4MCb wrote: post #47

Current, unaffected employee here. Throwaway for obvious reasons. A big chunk of the layoff is the new lab that we built in Phoenix. That only made economic sense in the scenario where we were selling far more kits than we succeeded in selling. The rest of the layoffs have a similar root cause: a massive overestimate of how much we were going to sell. I'd blame the shortfall on some combination of growing privacy con…

And competition - I purchased and ran a 23andme test ~10 years ago and it seemed magical that this was something that could be done. Now there are 3-5 others who do the same thing (at least in a consumer's eyes) and it's unclear what the uniqueness of 23andme is.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#203

Post by xivzgrev »

bobthepanda wrote: post #82
jsgo wrote: post #79

> 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…

This. Only so many people willing to spend $100 on a novelty purchase, and they do it once

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#204

Post by shoguning »

rfc wrote: post #107
marcell wrote: post #95

They 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%?

Your germ line genome rarely changes. Your exome changes all the time. Your gut biome changes all the time. There's massive market opportunity but a ton of regulations around how to tap into that market opportunity. On a separate note, Ancestry is going through a similar issue. They've had double digit revenue declines in their DNA testing suite. The truth around 23andMe and Ancestry is that they're really doing a su…

Exome could plausibly change due to alternative splicing, but my guess is that what is meant here is transcriptome, which is which genes are actually transcribed and their quantities.

Unfortunately RNA is chemically unstable. Not sure if cDNA synthesis could be done with a consumer kit.

Gut biome population sequencing/gene panels probably easier to get.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#205

Post by big_chungus »

untog wrote: post #181
ab_testing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your kids were born in the United States,the states already has their genetic information. https://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states

That page doesn't say they store it? In any case, the government having this data and a private, for profit company having this data feels like two quite different things.

Certainly, they're different. I'm pretty confident about a company's profit motive; not so much with the government which changes every few years. I don't like a company having it (and will never take such a test), but like the government even less. The government's the one that can bust down my door at 3 AM, haul me away, and shoot me if I resist.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#206

Post by rowathray »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #10

Everyone 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.

Also, there have been a few rather defensive sounding VC posts on HN lately. Usually it's all Techbro Tony Robbins platitudinal stuff, but it's been getting darker these days. Did you see the one with Paul Graham lashing out at "haters" or whatever? Yikes. Gives a sense things aren't going that well, and they want to justify their decisions.

Moreover, I'm getting less recruiter spam on LinkedIn, but to be fair half of that was just WeWork.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#207

Post by ibeckermayer »

untog wrote: post #181
ab_testing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your kids were born in the United States,the states already has their genetic information. https://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states

That page doesn't say they store it? In any case, the government having this data and a private, for profit company having this data feels like two quite different things.

Governments are made up of people capable of good and evil just the same as private companies. If we’re simply going by the historical record, governments have committed some of the world’s greatest atrocities in the name of certain genetic theories.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#208

Post by brigandish »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #186
ab_testing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your kids were born in the United States,the states already has their genetic information. https://www.babysfirsttest.org/newborn-screening/states

I trust the government more than a for profit corp for this.

Which form of abstract grouping of people is the most trustworthy?

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#209

Post by RobAtticus »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #83
ilamont wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancestry.com has also stepped up its marketing game. Used to be a follower with DNA, now a leader, and discounting heavily. And, unlike 23andMe which got rid of family tree tools used by genealogists, Ancestry still has a very strong suite of trees and traditional genealogy tools. Some people really want to have both genetic and traditional genealogy accounts under the same provider, and are either unaware or don't r…

One thing I would add is the data for places outside of Europe looks pretty weak for both Ancestry.com and 23AndMe, at least it was the last time I looked. If you are from European descent they can practically tell you what village your ancestors are from (how accurate that is I don't know) but if you are Asian about the best you get is yep, you're Asian! I married into an Asian family and the reports I've seen from…

Perhaps its changed since you looked because my fiancee is Latin American and her results tell her the provinces/areas of her home country where her extended family is originally from.

Re: 23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

#210

Post by catalogia »

rfc wrote: post #107
marcell wrote: post #95

They 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%?

Your germ line genome rarely changes. Your exome changes all the time. Your gut biome changes all the time. There's massive market opportunity but a ton of regulations around how to tap into that market opportunity. On a separate note, Ancestry is going through a similar issue. They've had double digit revenue declines in their DNA testing suite. The truth around 23andMe and Ancestry is that they're really doing a su…

> "Your gut biome changes all the time."

I don't think "mail us your poop" will ever be more than a niche.

Post reply on HN