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

23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

mediacenter.23andme.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 181 posts

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#131

Post by vmception »

lordnacho wrote: post #26
detaro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to speed and guaranteed price a SPAC merger also has less reporting requirements, because the SPAC already did go trough the IPO paperwork when it was created. And didn't have to explain weird things about the business to investors because it had no history or things to be going on. It then can relatively easily buy 23andMe, and 23andMe doesn't have to explain its business risks etc to the public as much…

Am I the only one who thinks that's a massive hole in the rules? You IPO an empty shell, which passes easily because it does nothing, and then any old shop with a messy business can then be bought by it?

That’s why everyone is riding the gravy train as fast as possible

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#132

Post by zetazzed »

trott wrote: post #111
Wronnay wrote: post #95

I think too many people don't understand that the $VGAC shareholders only get 11 % of 23andMe. At 19 USD that's a valuation of nearly 8 billion and completely overvalued - I wrote a blog post about this: https://blog.m5e.de/post/on-the-23andme-and-vgac-merger/

Genetic testing used to be very expensive: $3B to sequence the human genome. So Ancestry/23/etc. tried to guess certain properties based on very sparse features of your genome, which is hard. But today, whole genome sequencing cost is approaching $100. This cost reduction will upend this industry, in my opinion.

The cheapest WGS I can find for consumers is $299 (30x WGS from Nebula). Do you know a cheaper alternative? I'd much rather get a whole genome that I can download rather than the handful of little snips from 23 and me... At $100 I would buy in a sec. Would be a nice motivator for bioinformatics hobby/learning projects too.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#133

Post by Wronnay »

trott wrote: post #111
Wronnay wrote: post #95

I think too many people don't understand that the $VGAC shareholders only get 11 % of 23andMe. At 19 USD that's a valuation of nearly 8 billion and completely overvalued - I wrote a blog post about this: https://blog.m5e.de/post/on-the-23andme-and-vgac-merger/

Genetic testing used to be very expensive: $3B to sequence the human genome. So Ancestry/23/etc. tried to guess certain properties based on very sparse features of your genome, which is hard. But today, whole genome sequencing cost is approaching $100. This cost reduction will upend this industry, in my opinion.

That's not the point.

The point is: at 19 USD per share you nearly buy at a valuation (8 billion) at which the institutional investors bought Ancestry ($4.7 billion) and 23andMe ($3.5 billion)

Also: 23andMe had declining revenue in the past years and does only make around 200 million revenue.

You buy a business at a valuation at 8 billion which makes only around 200 million revenue.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#134

Post by r00fus »

dehrmann wrote: post #118
theptip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt Levine has the best ELI5 on this subject that I've seen: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-08/spac-m... Here's the high-level summary from that article, though there's a lot more detail that's worth digging into: > Here’s how a SPAC works: 1. You give me $10. 2. I put your $10 in a pool with a bunch of other people’s $10, held in a trust account at a bank. 3. I give you back one share in the poo…

I don't see anything especially wrong with them and what they do because they're really just a way around the IPO paperwork and restrictions. Usually, a lot of that feels like a formality, but it did surface some interesting things about Wework. That said, it's a bet on the team, and you have no idea what they're going to find. It's a little like investing in a less-diversified, late-stage venture fund.

The investing public loses out on valuable information. It's an end-run around disclosures.

That's not a good thing.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#135

Post by gruez »

offtop5 wrote: post #93
sjg007 wrote: post #75

I work in this space and even I have a hard time seeing 23andMe being profitable.

Monetization of user data. Integration with the Match.com API, 'Sure you want to go out with her, you share 12.5% of your DNA'. Open access to various government agencies, ' You share 47% DNA with this GUY who owes taxes , WHERE IS HE'.

> Monetization of user data. Integration with the Match.com API, 'Sure you want to go out with her, you share 12.5% of your DNA'.

this is confusingly worded. It could be interpreted as

> Sure, you [do] want to go out with her

or

> [Are you] sure you want to go out with her[?]

12.5% DNA match would be a second-cousin, so I'm assuming you meant the latter.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#136

Post by breck »

runako wrote: post #102
breck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Lab Corp and all them work a lot on the supply side, but last mile consumer experience is awful. I think it's equally as hard to perfect that last mile consumer UX and distribution challenge, and probably more valuable long run (if you own the customer relationship, you have a lot of leverage to negotiate prices with vendors, and swap them out lego lego pieces, a la Apple). Not to say that 23andMe will be the Ap…

> last mile consumer experience is awful Interesting perspective. When we used labs similar to LabCorp in the past, the last mile was our physician (who we like!). I'm curious what part of the last mile is negative with traditional labs? > if you own the customer relationship I'm not sure any testing provider is ever going to be in a position to own the customer relationship. The physician and healthcare team will by…

> I'm curious what part of the last mile is negative > with traditional labs?

Well for one, why do I even have to go a mile? I've spent some time on the bench. All of this stuff will eventually be done at home (won't even need to mail in things!).

Last February when I got COVID I couldn't get a test because "I hadn't been to China". But they tested me for perhaps everything else (even though I had been exposed to COVID folks, and had the symptomns). Not surprisingly everything was negative (except for typical metabolic changes you see in fighting viruses). The best part was 6 months later I got a bill in the mail for I kid you not, ~$1,800, for these lab tests! Insurer says "if it was March then those tests would have been covered, but because it was February we didn't have those policieis in place yet". Still fighting that one, lol.

But recent events aside, let's just take a typical lab results report. Where's the "go to definitions" on these things? Where is the ability to drill in and see where my measurements fit in regard to my close 8 billion relatives?

This industry is still in the stone age.

> The physician and healthcare team will by definition > always be closer to the customer.

And the wearables will by definition always be closer to the customer.

I am not going to tell my daughter that being a physician is a viable future career like it is today (engineer or nurse would be 2 good options though).

> perhaps younger generations will not care about this aspect of privacy.

I agree. Or at least, I hope younger generations continue Obama's work and fix the laws so that your health information cannot be used against you. What a sad and stupid state of affairs that is. We need to fix that.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#137

Post by fennecfoxen »

strofcon wrote: post #99
offtop5 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetization of user data. Integration with the Match.com API, 'Sure you want to go out with her, you share 12.5% of your DNA'. Open access to various government agencies, ' You share 47% DNA with this GUY who owes taxes , WHERE IS HE'.

Very much this. Not to mention, "sorry, Health Insurance won't cover you because you show a slight genetic predisposition toward fingernail cancer. Good luck."

Notwithstanding that slight predispositions for minor conditions could be priced into an underwriting model without all that much pain — I'm not even sure this sort of exclusion you propose has been legal in the past decade or so.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#138

Post by breck »

gamblor956 wrote: post #109
breck wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, and yeah have seen some of the same movies. I do see a lot of potential in 23andMe (though I loathe the name—never put a number in your name! numbers are incredibly overloaded—millions of times less combinatorics; and they become outdated almost immediately—23 is a largely meaningless number). But 23AndMe at least has built a large number of paying users. If they look at where medicine could be in 10-20 y…

If 23andme had that many paying customers, they would not have needed to go the SPAC route to avoid financial disclosure. That they have chosen to go public as a SPAC after more than a decade of existence does not speak highly of their financial situation or their prospects for future earnings (and this is generally something that nearly all recent SPACs share).

It could be.

It could also be that they just saw no reason to enrich a set of insiders and saw a SPAC as a way to stick it to the man.

I have zero clue. My DD is basically on this page, and though I've been a customer since the beginning and have referred a bazillion people, a lot of that has just been due to lack of competition and not necessarily because I've been thrilled by 23andMe's stuff.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#139

Post by fennecfoxen »

fartcannon wrote: post #78
AlexandrB wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird push and pull on Hacker News where if a company does something unethical it's: "Well what did you expect, they have an obligation to maximize shareholder value", but at the same time founder and CEOs are often venerated as hard-working, almost selfless individuals who dedicated their lives to make the world a better place in spite of their own self-interest. It's pretty jarring.

Try not thinking of Hackernews, or any forum on the internet, as a single entity, but as many individuals. Some of them have conflicting views with the others. Averaging the thoughts of a diverse group will just end up as white noise.

> many individuals. Some of them have conflicting views

This goes double for major political parties, and a key reason why all them end up known by their enemies as hypocrites.

Re: 23andMe to merge with VG Acquisition Corp. to become publicly-traded company

#140

Post by trott »

Wronnay wrote: post #133
trott wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genetic testing used to be very expensive: $3B to sequence the human genome. So Ancestry/23/etc. tried to guess certain properties based on very sparse features of your genome, which is hard. But today, whole genome sequencing cost is approaching $100. This cost reduction will upend this industry, in my opinion.

That's not the point. The point is: at 19 USD per share you nearly buy at a valuation (8 billion) at which the institutional investors bought Ancestry ($4.7 billion) and 23andMe ($3.5 billion) Also: 23andMe had declining revenue in the past years and does only make around 200 million revenue. You buy a business at a valuation at 8 billion which makes only around 200 million revenue.

It's a good point. I'm just saying that this coming tech revolution is another issue to consider.
Post reply on HN