101–110 of 372 posts
For the record, 23andme is one of the few companies where the CEO never once responded to one of my emails (2017, 2019, 2022, 2024). You can make a lot of money just by betting on companies where the CEO (or the CEO's office) takes listening to customers'(who are rooting for them!) emails seriously, and shorting those that do not.
You cold e-mail CEOs and get a >70% hitrate? I gotta try this more often.
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I'm curious to know the topic of these emails. I never once thought to cold email the CEO of a company. (Then again maybe that's why I'm a programmer, not a CEO myself.)
Most of them are minor ideas like the ones I just copy/pasted below. But sometimes they are longer like this one: https://hub.scroll.pub/applecard/applecard.pdf ----- Nope, we don't have one yet though it would be a good idea. I'm looping in Joe for this. Thanks for the nudge! Nathan Co-founder & CTO Help: www.airbnb.com/help Recent press: Washington Post http://bit.ly/KkEzT On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Breck Yu…
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Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
Maybe too far fetched? Company sells/loses data, insurance companies use data to deny coverage, or deem claims as pre-existing.
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My oldest brother did so I'm already screwed
Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
Now imagine that person is innocent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My oldest brother did so I'm already screwed
Can even one single person here articulate their specific fears of using 23andme, or is it all FUD?
It's bad enough they took my fingerprints when I worked for a school district.
They also just settled a class-action lawsuit stemming from their data breach: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/23andme-to-pa...
I think data-breaches could carry the death penalty for companies. I just got a notification from some health services company that my and my toddlers data was accessed. Including medical history, diagnoses, payment details, SSN, birthday. Why was this not encrypted? Given the world today, this is negligent. The government should be able to disolve the company and give the money to the victims. If there was a willful…
And…? You’re going to try and give me credit monitoring when I literally have 2 overlapping credit monitoring offers from the other companies that leaked my data?
For the record, 23andme is one of the few companies where the CEO never once responded to one of my emails (2017, 2019, 2022, 2024). You can make a lot of money just by betting on companies where the CEO (or the CEO's office) takes listening to customers'(who are rooting for them!) emails seriously, and shorting those that do not.
You cold e-mail CEOs and get a >70% hitrate? I gotta try this more often.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cold e-mail CEOs and get a >70% hitrate? I gotta try this more often.
I do put try to make them a mix of feedback + entertainment. Example To: jeff@amazon.com subject: The Day the Music Died I was looking forward to playing my Yamaha Digital Piano that I ordered from Amazon today when I got home from work at "the country club". Instead I'm stuck tapping this UPS "Delivery Attempted" notice and the melodies just aren't coming through. ? In the last 6 months I ordered 37 packages from Am…
I'm occasionally prone to self-indulgence in written correspondence.
... (There, I said it.)
I hope that my coworkers are blissfully unaware of this tendency. Sometimes I must write dense things which they must read, because a formal record is required and technology is complicated. But I hope they perceive me as a crisp and clear communicator who makes copious but appropriate use of sentence fragments in bullet point form (not too deeply-nested). With judicious and limited use of humor, and only of the sort that is adequately subtle to be overlooked by any who would not readily accept it.
I would especially hesitate to attempt anything but the most simplifed and direct version of my message in a request for help!
Although I guess when you're emailing a consumer product corp c-suite, you have a greater expectation of patience for customer communications, and of general literacy.
In truth, the exec's mail-tenders are likely relieved to receive anything not written in a hostile tone, and perhaps delighted by anything in complete sentences. All the more so, if they are able to help.
Thank you. May every minor wickedness find its appreciative audience.
Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs: https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/ The board of directors of 23andMe just resigned in protest. The CEO, Anne Wojcicki (who's sister Susan died of lung cancer last month, and was the former CEO of YouTube) had tried to low ball take the company private at only $0.40 a share -- a more than 96% dr…
Was the plan all the time to go B2B (drug development) and they just used B2C (selling SNP kits) to hoard samples? Even considering all FDA limitations, I cannot understand how bad their genetic risk scores are. They have talent, they have lots of customers and data. This is a position other companies, like deCODE, would have killed to be in.
(sorry, it takes a while to load but wired has killed most of their long-term links)
IMHO she and Avey were just naive about the actual science and business of using genomic information for drug discovery. Remember, around the time the company started, the human genome had only recently been sequenced and Craig Venter was trying to capitalize on that, and lots of folks figured it would quickly turn into a multi-billion dollar market.
On the other hand, the product is quite good at finding relatives (identity by descent) and to be honest I wish they'd run 23&me as just that service, without the medical angle. My father did 23&Me mainly to figure out more about his ancestry, but also it helped a number of children conceived via IVF (he had provided a sample for fertility testing many years before) identify and contact him (I can't even imagine what the experience was like; to me, it's just a bunch of half-siblings I didn't know about)