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23andMe's Fall

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Re: 23andMe's Fall

#261

Post by bumby »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #223
bumby wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

You have to define "value". Personally, I roll my eyes any time someone questions "value". If a customer is willing to pay $399, then obviously they put the value of whatever the results may be from it at at least $399.

“Utility” is the value I was looking at. I.e., they’ve added something (tests, insight, even just ease of use) that wasn’t available with the $10 version.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#262

Post by mancerayder »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #257
mancerayder wrote: post #256

The amount of success she had because of being connected to Brin is absolutely wild. It's literally make-or-break for her success. And her sister, CEO of YouTube? It's a cliché what we say about connections and success, etc. and so forth. But that WSJ article really hammered how in this case how absolutely tied to connections this company, and her wealth, were, and how luck plays a role. In a business idea people are…

But she's failed. Zero success. And that failure is all over the wall street journal. The lesson is, no matter who your connections are your business will fail if it doesn't provide lots of value at a cost structure where it all adds up. Compare it to old Sergey - he was a know nobody 20 something nerd studying computer science. He co-created one of the most valuable businesses in the world.

Fair enough! The business failed. It's embarrassing, and so forth. Sure. And the employees of that business (and stock owners, which may include many of those employees) are not in a good place.

But something tells me the sisters aren't going to be starving any time soon. I don't know her assets but I suspect even with a failed business there's a few million in real estate and savings set aside, even if her big ownership in the business is in the penny stock category. A position that many of us wouldn't mind.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#263

Post by dundarious »

sjducb wrote: post #206
dundarious wrote: post #190

Why do people believe genetic testing offers a pathway to a wide array of beneficial (non-snake oil) tailored drugs and treatments? What is the scientific basis for this belief, other than "seems plausible" reasoning?

20 years ago it was pretty plausible. Most of the genetic effects that we knew about were large. Maybe all of them were large? Now we know that most effects are small, and there aren’t useful interventions that can treat the effects.

That is my feeling also. And well, no useful drug interventions at least. For most genetic risk factors, lifestyle factors dominate the total risk.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#264

Post by [deleted] »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #257
mancerayder wrote: post #256

The amount of success she had because of being connected to Brin is absolutely wild. It's literally make-or-break for her success. And her sister, CEO of YouTube? It's a cliché what we say about connections and success, etc. and so forth. But that WSJ article really hammered how in this case how absolutely tied to connections this company, and her wealth, were, and how luck plays a role. In a business idea people are…

But she's failed. Zero success. And that failure is all over the wall street journal. The lesson is, no matter who your connections are your business will fail if it doesn't provide lots of value at a cost structure where it all adds up. Compare it to old Sergey - he was a know nobody 20 something nerd studying computer science. He co-created one of the most valuable businesses in the world.

[deleted]

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#265

Post by bArray »

mplscarnut wrote: post #64
bArray wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, it's not. I've seen start-ups worth 100x than a smaller successful business due to speculation, despite the smaller business employing more people and actually turning profit for many years.

There’s plenty of successful businesses chugging along growing at about the rate of inflation. It’s really hard to grow a business at 10 or 500 times that rate. Why would it be surprising to value the latter kind of business higher than the former?

> There’s plenty of successful businesses chugging along growing at about the rate of inflation.

Even outpacing inflation by 1.2 - 2 times. It's not insane growth, but it is consistent. Better yet is that they tend to have a decent number of assets too.

> It’s really hard to grow a business at 10 or 500 times that rate.

How often is 10 to 500 times growth seen in reality? I think most start-ups fail before the second year.

> Why would it be surprising to value the latter kind of business higher than the former?

Highly stable and proven growth as opposed to highly unstable and unreliable growth.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#266

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

It's all going to come out in discovery. She used to work for a hedge fund. Data collection and disregard for other peoples' privacy runs in the family.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#268

Post by dumb1224 »

timy2shoes wrote: post #123
epistasis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion has always been that this sort of data–common SNPs from all comers and no specific phenotype collection–is not very useful for any sort of drug design. And if it is, publicly available data will be just as good as 23andMe's larger amount. It was a bet worth trying, IMHO, but always a risky bet. And with bio, you don't find out if your bets work for a decade or more, because the iteration cycle is 10x slo…

My suspicion has been that SNP array data is not that useful for drug discovery. They’re targeting the most common/variable SNPs, which I suspect don’t have a large health effect (except for maybe late in life, otherwise how would they get passed down). I would suspect the more valuable targets would be rarer, or arise de novo (as is common in cancer, eg driver mutations).

There are SNPs that have significant clinical impact and alter the downstream translation and associated with poor outcome.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8129253/

They could help in stratifying patients and strategically targeted therapy. They can't be easily targeted (drugged) drirectly but they could lead to therapeutics if I understand correctly.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#269

Post by luma »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #220
txru wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom, dad and sister have all done 23andMe, so it doesn't matter if I have or not. They have an entirely complete genome for me. I agree with your limited license idea. It's just not ok that something like that can be dischargeable in bankruptcy. We don't have the ability to refuse consent in the first place, if our family provide it.

How can they link your family's DNA to you if they don't have a profile or account for you? How do they know you exist? And if they know you exist, how do they know you are related to that particular family without some DNA information about you to link to them?

OSInt will happily fill in the rest. Even if you don’t have a social media footprint, your family does and they shoved their contact list, with you in it, to Facebook 10 years ago.

Re: 23andMe's Fall

#270

Post by danielmarkbruce »

mancerayder wrote: post #262
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she's failed. Zero success. And that failure is all over the wall street journal. The lesson is, no matter who your connections are your business will fail if it doesn't provide lots of value at a cost structure where it all adds up. Compare it to old Sergey - he was a know nobody 20 something nerd studying computer science. He co-created one of the most valuable businesses in the world.

Fair enough! The business failed. It's embarrassing, and so forth. Sure. And the employees of that business (and stock owners, which may include many of those employees) are not in a good place. But something tells me the sisters aren't going to be starving any time soon. I don't know her assets but I suspect even with a failed business there's a few million in real estate and savings set aside, even if her big owner…

Sure, but the answer there is to marry a billionaire.

And, I never met Susan who ran YouTube, but I have heard she's very capable.

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