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23andMe's Fall

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Re: 23andMe's Fall

#241

Post by bart_spoon »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #105
layer8 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What use is that growth in terms of valuation if the company never manages to break even?

VC logic is that 5% of the companies they invest in returns 100x their investment in those. So even if 95% of the companies never manages to break even they are still profitable.

VC logic is that a company does not need to be profitable for a VC’s investment to be profitable. Simply getting the company to an expensive IPO is all that is required for VCs to make money. And that is possible even if the company has never made a dime.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#242

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

astrange wrote: post #214
justrealist wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem you describe. In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. Have maybe a small ounce of humility in this respect.

> Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem you describe. Thousands of very smart people do a lot of dumb things. People still work on string theory. The people working on proper causal inference are also smart, work hard, and have Nobel Prizes. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/202…

> > In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes.

> You need to choose a study design that's correct in the first place.

That's precisely what a sibling study is: a study design that's correct in the first place, as far as the problem we're discussing goes.

> You're describing a natural experiment

That is correct: a sibling study, which corrects for the problem we're discussing, often contains aspects of a natural experiment, namely that the siblings tend to naturally be siblings, rather than raised together purely for the purpose of a study :)

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#243

Post by lupire »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #194
ilamont wrote: post #77

This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. Failed execution on the drug development strategy over 10+ years, lying about growth, pushing out the cofounder, never making a profit, hack that went undiscovered for months ... about the only area she's had success is raising money and that's in large part thanks to being a member of the Silicon Valley elite. If she can't convince her family, fri…

I want to learn the secret dark arts of VC capital raise on lies. I don't need the money but more for the hacking.

Try marrying a billionaire.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#244

Post by 331c8c71 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #240
331c8c71 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just in case, you know, your DNA changes /s It absolutely does. That's how cancer occurs btw. The term is "somatic mutations".

I'll confess my ignorance here, but would your saliva cells also show it (assuming it's not a mouth or throat cancer)? And it is is, wouldn't you have noticed something before your regular "checkup" from 23andme?

Good question. I think this should answer your questions

https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/

Speaking of detecting cancer indirectly, it is actually the fact that sometimes you can detect tumors (early) because their DNA or RNA products reach the blood or other bodily fluids (cfDNA/cfRNA for "circulating free"). It is a big and a recent thing - for many cancer types e.g. lung there was basically no easy way to test. Biopsies are very invasive obviously....

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#245

Post by kjellsbells »

bumby wrote: post #152
kjellsbells wrote: post #110

Ah, 23andMe, the Experian of DNA. Look, I give her great credit for the women in STEM thing, her perseverance in the light of obstacles, and making a 10$ lab kit worth $399 to buyers. But to not understand how far actors would go to get hold of that data, to not understand that the drug industry is brutal because humans are poorly-understood meatsacks (see: anything by Derek Lowe), well, seems like that Yale educatio…

> 10$ lab kit worth $399 Can you elaborate? Does this mean they've added $389 in value, or they swindled people of $389? If it's the former, what did they do to create that value? (Not being snarky, I don't know enough about their business and am legitimately curious. There seems to be a lot of comments here about unfulfilled promises.)

The former. That is, they convinced people to pay a premium over the material cost of the test. Nothing skeevy about that, just good marketing. Assuming that customers were not misled.

"It's not a pencil, it's the thing that writes the next Moby Dick" - that sort of thing.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#246

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #139
pc86 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sentence immediately preceding your quote are things that a "rock-solid businessman" would never do according to Rind. So it sounds like he is saying that theoretical person has a higher code of ethics for whatever reason.

Because they're intending to be around for the next decade or more, they need to preserve their appearance of probity, and so they'll do fewer things which would make them look bad.

[deleted]

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#247

Post by sorokod »

hasoleju wrote: post #54
Shank wrote: post #33

> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. As media companies launched streaming “+” channels, Wojcicki rolled out 23andMe+, offering personalized health reports, lifestyle advice and unspecified “new reports and features as discoveries are made” for an initial $229, with annual renewals of $69. I was a heavy believer of 23andMe until this point. I answered all of th…

> think the stored data they have is their only advantage, but they don't seem to know how to leverage it. I really wonder what happens to that data if they get acquired or shut down. The possible new owner of the data might have a completely different business case in mind. This scenario is something you usually don't consider when you give your data to a company that you trust at the moment.

No need to wonder, imagine the worst case scenario and assign it a non zero probability.

This scenario is something you usually don't consider when you give your data to a company that you trust at the moment.

Why would you not consider it?

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#248

Post by AlbertCory »

331c8c71 wrote: post #244
AlbertCory wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll confess my ignorance here, but would your saliva cells also show it (assuming it's not a mouth or throat cancer)? And it is is, wouldn't you have noticed something before your regular "checkup" from 23andme?

Good question. I think this should answer your questions https://bmcmedgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4009603/ Speaking of detecting cancer indirectly, it is actually the fact that sometimes you can detect tumors (early) because their DNA or RNA products reach the blood or other bodily fluids (cfDNA/cfRNA for "circulating free"). It is a big and a recent…

23andme wasn't offering blood testing every year, though, right? Nor claiming to detect new mutations in subsequent saliva tests, AFAIK.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#249

Post by beaugunderson »

shellfishgene wrote: post #89
Shank wrote: post #33

> To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. As media companies launched streaming “+” channels, Wojcicki rolled out 23andMe+, offering personalized health reports, lifestyle advice and unspecified “new reports and features as discoveries are made” for an initial $229, with annual renewals of $69. I was a heavy believer of 23andMe until this point. I answered all of th…

Is there a Promethease equivalent for ancestry data?

there's this for example, not as open as Promethease but similar in that it's "bring us your data and we'll give you new analysis on it":

https://yourdnaportal.com/advanced_ancestry_analysis

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