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

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

#171

Post by bagacrap »

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.

I'm assuming they're going to try to start monetizing the data they've collected, not that they expect people to keep paying for more and more tests. I wouldn't read too much into the revenue that the old model generated.

(People complain that Facebook etc have become big and powerful by sucking up all your data, but at least Zuck didn't charge you for the data.)

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

#172

Post by jVinc »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #38
lordnacho wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On top of this, SPACs usually have private PIPE investors who get shares at the "IPO" price, typically 10 dollars, while people who buy the public SPAC shares typically have to pay twice that, which feels super scammy. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pipe.asp

That sounds a bit like claiming that it's scamy a company founder gets a higher salary than future employees. Of cause the company is allowed to raise money anyway it sees fit, including providing discount for individual investors for any given reason. If you don't like how they are carrying out their business you can just not invest. Which you might be leaning towards, which is why if you where a potential big investor they might offer you a discount to get you onboard as well.

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

#173

Post by ericmay »

freeone3000 wrote: post #122
ericmay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're material. The IPO prospectus for companies is a sales pitch with a bunch of legal "we may never make money" comments. If you commit fraud you'll wind up in court, disclosures or otherwise. Oh and nobody reads any of these documents, let alone any quarterly numbers. I think SPACs are certainly a more risky way to put your money to work, but they're fine. Companies that don't make money, have neve…

I disagree in the importance of an S-1 disclosure. Detailing the actual business plan of the company, as to what people think the plan is, was invaluable for WeWork. Uber's quarterly earnings are a continual source of entertainment. I personally wouldn't put any money into a public company before an actual SEC-required statement, and an SPAC bypasses the first.

I think it depends on what we're talking about, right? My suggestion is that largely nobody cares or looks at these disclosures, not that they aren't important. I think institutional investors probably do, but they're certainly willing to invest in SPACs as well, it's not like it's only retail investors who buy shares of SPACs.

Your point about the business plan is interesting... it depends on the perceptions that investors have that the company can achieve a business plan, but it's not necessarily accurate right? Uber was going to do all this autonomous taxi stuff, and had it outlined in their business plan. WeWork was punished for having a crappy business plan before it filed, Uber has a crappy one (or at least one that turned out to be crappy in my opinion) and went public anyway. The disclosures certainly didn't help much - they aren't a guarantee. Things like Adam Neumann leasing his own properties to WeWork came out before any of these disclosures. If WeWork went the SPAC route (and it actually looks like it will at a $10bn or so valuation), it's not like you really hide all that stuff any more than you hide it in the normal IPO process.

If you don't like that Social Capital Hedosophia is taking SoFi public via IPOE SPAC, you can dump your shares. It's not like you have to hold the shares. It's a speculative position to take. Hell, at least you can actually dump the shares before the listing even happens - for IPOs there can be lockup periods where you wind up losing money because the IPO was way overpriced. Banks get their fees either way (which is fine).

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

#174

Post by breck »

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/

Doh! Thank you for the tip. I'll be honest, I was a little confused by the ~$1B market cap, but I did buy VGAC thinking I was getting a slice of 23andMe at a ~3.5B market cap, because that's how the press release made it sound.

In the future it would be nice if SPACs and the companies made that dead simple. I don't think this is something that needs to be regulated though. From the events this month I think we just need to allow the public to invest in whatever, abolish copyrights (which allow lies to flourish and buries the truth), and let the market figure it out.

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

#175

Post by da_big_ghey »

jhardy54 wrote: post #170
jhardy54 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've flagged your post for being unnecessarily hostile while also being ignorant of the type of features that 23andMe has. Maybe you're thinking of ancestry.com?

Happy to answer any questions or accept feedback if someone thinks I should have done something differently. I've been trying to flag posts with misinformation rather than arguing, and it seems polite to explain my flags. The downvotes suggest I should've flagged silently?

offtop5 offered his opinion that the service was not valuable in exchange for the data privacy concerns. Are you claiming that he misrepresented what this company offers? Because it appears to advertise exactly that: https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry

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

#176

Post by asdff »

sjg007 wrote: post #163
asdff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time seeing how they won't be. They have name recognition. It's like the kleenex of DNA testing. The SNP chips they use are cheap at scale. They don't need to spend money on innovation, they could continue just running SNP chips priced above cost indefinitely. Consumers don't understand the current technology, they aren't going to start one day clamoring for long read sequencing or anything that require…

SNP chips for what? Ancestry? Also carrier screening is a competitive market.

Yeah, 23andme uses a DNA microarray to genotype your sample whether it be for health screening or ancestry. It's cheap technology today.

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

#177

Post by jhardy54 »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #175
jhardy54 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy to answer any questions or accept feedback if someone thinks I should have done something differently. I've been trying to flag posts with misinformation rather than arguing, and it seems polite to explain my flags. The downvotes suggest I should've flagged silently?

offtop5 offered his opinion that the service was not valuable in exchange for the data privacy concerns. Are you claiming that he misrepresented what this company offers? Because it appears to advertise exactly that: https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry

I remember their comment being something to the effect of "I don't understand why people care about a service that tells you about your wealthy ancestors when you're working a minimum wage job".

They confused 23andMe, which is focused on genetics, with the other sites (ancestry/myheritage/etc) that focuses on individual ancestors and their stories, and shows that they aren't familiar enough with the topic to be able to post valid criticisms.

I share their privacy concerns, but those concerns are undermined when we share uninformed takes that fumble the absolute basics.

I'd feel similarly about "I don't know why people use Twitter and let Mark Zuckerberg exploit our emotions to keep engagement as high as possible".

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

#178

Post by asdff »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #161
asdff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is in fact not how the golden state killer was nabbed. Uploads to GEDmatch are voluntary.

It very much was. His relatives, not knowing who he was, voluntarily uploaded their data to GEDmatch. Those fingerprints were used to identify him. Did you think he voluntarily uploaded his DNA on a lark?

His distant relatives did, like second or third cousins. The point of GEDmatch is to connect you with other potential DNA matches in their database. That is not the point of whatever service your family presumably used, and their data is not used in this manner. Apples and Oranges.

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

#179

Post by goatcode »

astura wrote: post #148
goatcode wrote: post #147

Remember when the FBI scanned the anonymous DNA database, from either this or some similar company, found a match, then used that match to get a warrant for the match's personal info? I do.

You're so wrong about the specifics that you're being (intentionally?) misleading. The database they use is GEDmatch, which is a fully volunteer non-for-profit operation. The entire point of the database is for users to upload their dna to allow anyone from the public to conduct genealogical research. GEDMatch does not even provide sequencing services, so there's no way someone would accidentally share.

There were no specifics at all in what I posted. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I welcome actual information, though.

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

#180

Post by Eric_WVGG »

asdff wrote: post #178
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very much was. His relatives, not knowing who he was, voluntarily uploaded their data to GEDmatch. Those fingerprints were used to identify him. Did you think he voluntarily uploaded his DNA on a lark?

His distant relatives did, like second or third cousins. The point of GEDmatch is to connect you with other potential DNA matches in their database. That is not the point of whatever service your family presumably used, and their data is not used in this manner. Apples and Oranges.

Okay, I think maybe we’re trying to making different points here. You are saying that the policies of GEDmatch are different than those of 23andMe and… I don't know who else is in this industry… mormonhumangenome.com or whatever

The point I was trying to make is that not registering with one — any — of these databases is completely pointless because the nature of the information is such that you can be fingerprinted if your siblings decide to play.

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