101–110 of 181 posts
I never saw the point of stuff like this. Aside from misplaced ancestral pride, so what your great great great grandpa owned the biggest farm in Spain, doesn't change the fact you work at Vons.
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I don't know the space well, but I have been in a position to have purchased a few (IIRC at least 4) genetic tests used in clinical diagnoses. 23andMe was not a vendor that was used in any of those situations. Also, those tests cost a lot more than 23andMe's tests (this can be good if you are an investor). Even if you suspect something based on a 23&M test, your doctor will likely require confirmation from a clinical…
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…
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 definition always be closer to the customer.
Also I should have noted above: I don't have to worry about Lab Corp or my doctor selling my health information due to HIPAA compliance. That may be generational; perhaps younger generations will not care about this aspect of privacy.
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> you could get in at the ground floor for incredible and almost immediate share price growth Hence why you can't predict it. If you could, everyone else could, and there would be no appreciation of the shares when the news is released. Only way to know in advance is good old insider information.
It's a new trend. I didn't have "insider information" to make $300k on Gamestop. The evidence was in the open. Right now I'm thinking that you might be able to connect the dots between SPAC owners / founders, their investment prospectus, and similar business they've dealt with. I wonder if anyone's already done this research and found correlations.
As it turns out, you really can't connect the dots between SPAC owners and the company the SPAC will acquire.
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The sponsors of the SPAC set aside for themselves a big chunk of the shares of the newly combined entity. So in general, the company gets a worse price than it would if it had gone public via an IPO.
So if the principals involved in a startup set up their own SPAC to take the company public, they could screw minority shareholders in the original company like, say, employees?
This company is just one big ethical dilemma packaged Silicon Valley style to look hip.
My parents tried to gift me a kit for xmas one year, "hey we think this is fun, might be useful to know if you're prone to eyeball cancer or whatever." I explained all the privacy issues and politely declined. But of course they and my sister had already gone ahead and done it, so now my family’s genetic fingerprints are in their databases, nothing to be done about it.
This is how the "Golden State Killer" was nabbed, which is obviously an example of this kind of thing being put to good use… I hope I don't have to argue against the dumb old "people who are innocent have nothing to hide" discussion here
Why would a company go through a SPAC instead of an IPO? Does the SPAC merger constitute a hedge against uncertainty in an IPO? What I mean is, 23andMe gets cash NOW and the SPAC gets the company at a discount but accepts the risk the IPO might not meet its goals? Could someone please explain the strategy?
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 pool (representing $10 of money in the pool), and one-quarter of a warrant to buy another share for $11.50. (The combination of the share and part of a warrant is sometimes called a “unit.”)
4. I try to find a company to take public within two years.
5. If I fail, I give you back your $10 with interest.
6. If I succeed, I merge the pool with the company, giving the company the money in the pool and giving you and your fellow shareholders shares (and warrants) in the new combined company. Also I get a bunch of shares and warrants in the combined company, as a reward for my work.
7. When I do this, I give you the choice to either (a) let your money ride and take a share in the new company or (b) get your $10 back, with interest.
I never saw the point of stuff like this. Aside from misplaced ancestral pride, so what your great great great grandpa owned the biggest farm in Spain, doesn't change the fact you work at Vons.
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?
Does that make sense to you ?
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Wow that seems like the kind of behaviour you'd see in a massive speculative bubble. People buying blank cheque companies without knowing what they're going to get.
Once the SPAC has identified a company to buy, investors in the SPAC get a choice to either stay invested or get their money back with interest. So it's only a blank check initially, but not once it matters. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-08/spac-m...
There are very good reasons IPOs require all sorts of public documentation and due diligence. All that regulation which SPACs attempt to side-step is there because of previous scams run in just the same style as SPACs.
They are reminiscent of the weird companies formed during the South Sea Bubble e.g. A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is
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Fair enough, but however altruistically you might hold her motives, it doesn't change the fact that the new owners will surely be looking to maximize their returns through new and creative ways of using pre-existing assets. I've watched this movie many, many times over the past couple of decades.
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…
Why would a company go through a SPAC instead of an IPO? Does the SPAC merger constitute a hedge against uncertainty in an IPO? What I mean is, 23andMe gets cash NOW and the SPAC gets the company at a discount but accepts the risk the IPO might not meet its goals? Could someone please explain the strategy?
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…