
23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M - cryptoz
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/10/14/23andme-prepares-a-comeback-raising-115-million-at-a-1-1-billion-valuation/
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ececconi
I was so excited when 23andMe dropped their prices to $99 a few years ago and
immediately gave myself a 'Christmas Present' and bought a 23andMe kit.

I seriously thought this was the future. I was so excited to see my health
information.

It was really cool to see that my spit could confirm that I'm 1/2 asian and
1/2 european. Also, I found it interesting that I have more neanderthal DNA
than 99% of people who took the 23andMe test.

Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best.

I log into my account once a year or so when I get an email from 23andMe. I
understand these things take a lot of time, but I think a lot of the initial
users aren't so ready to tell everyone that they need to sign up for a testing
kit. I think people were so much more interested in it years ago.

~~~
mmanfrin

      Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best.
    

Part of it is that the FDA successfully sued 23AM from showing things like
health risks.

~~~
dekhn
That's not correct. The FDA made them stop doing something they were doing
illegally. Their genetic test is a medical device and they didn't have federal
approval.

Further, when the FDA informed them they needed approval, they didn't respond.
The FDA finally had to invoke the law.

Also, I don't think 23&Me's test results have enough medical value to be used
for evaluating health risks.

Further, 23&me's database has serious problems; for exmaple, they still report
tongue rolling as a Mendelian trait. That alone shows that they aren't being
careful with their analysis.

~~~
streptomycin
_Also, I don 't think 23&Me's test results have enough medical value to be
used for evaluating health risks._

For some things they do, like they test for mutations related to Alzheimer's
that can drastically alter risk, ranging from "you're probably never going to
get it" to "you're probably going to get it, and there's a good chance it'll
be much earlier than you would have imagined".

But their marketing material was vastly overstating the value of their
results, which is near 0 for most diseases. And it was misleading people into
thinking it was more comprehensive than it really was (like, it's not a full
genome, and it doesn't include every SNP that we know matters like most BRCA
mutations).

~~~
2bitencryption
Do they actually still show the Alzheimer's information? If so, I'd be very
interested in doing that...

~~~
streptomycin
They don't show any medical information for new customers, but you can analyze
it yourself with stuff like
[https://www.promethease.com/](https://www.promethease.com/)

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greglindahl
For me, the most interesting thing about my 23andMe results was that my Y
chromosome confirmed the family rumor that my grandfather was not actually the
son of his father. If enough people join 23andMe, it's possible that I may
find my actual relatives.

Many people find this sort of thing creepy. I'm OK with it.

And on an even-more-personal note, as a guy with long hair, it was exciting to
learn that I didn't have the male pattern baldness gene, even though my
maternal grandfather was bald as an egg by the time he turned 40.

~~~
hugh4
How did it confirm that? Did they have a sample of your (purported) great-
grandfather too?

~~~
greglindahl
My fathers-fathers-father was an immigrant from Norway (a village now in
Sweden.) The family rumor was about a wealthy man named Cooper, a common
English name. My Y chromosome is from Doggerland. Occam's Razor favors Mr.
Cooper.

~~~
hugh4
Interesting, but I'm confused. I had to look up Doggerland but apparently it's
been submerged for 6000 years and was in the North Sea, why couldn't your
Norwegian ancestors have come from Doggerland originally?

~~~
greglindahl
If you look at the modern distribution of Doggerland Y, then it's clear that
it's much, much more common in England and the Netherlands than in Norway-now-
Sweden. You are correct that I can't be 100% certain.

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tashoecraft
My brother-in-law's brother learned of a 28year old daughter he never knew he
had because of 23andMe and met her last year.

~~~
irremediable
How did that happen?

~~~
tashoecraft
brother-in-law was signed up and he got a message saying his niece was on the
service. He doesn't have any nieces. They chatted and he figured it must have
been his brother and it was. Pretty crazy.

~~~
throwaway_xgqtr
I'm sorry, could you explain in a bit more detail? It sounds like what you're
saying is that your sister's husband signed up for 23andMe and sent in his DNA
sample. Then, 23andMe said "based on your DNA, we believe another of our
members is likely your niece, here is her contact info...". Then, your
sister's husband contacted this person (the potential niece), and after some
chatting it seemed likely that your sister's husband's brother was indeed the
girl's biological father, and this was then later confirmed with additional
DNA testing.

If this is in fact the story, doesn't this seem like an invasion of privacy on
the part of 23andMe?

~~~
Karunamon
Invasion of privacy? Considering that you can't even get the health
information now, ancestry matching is literally the only reason to use the
service. Why would you sign up and go through the whole spitting in a cup song
and dance if you didn't want to find relatives?

~~~
throwaway_xgqtr
Oh, wow, I am out of date. I didn't realize they had pivoted in that way.
Sorry for the distraction :)

~~~
irremediable
I made the same mistake here -- I only knew about it from the health-related
stuff.

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nacs
Strange placement on that Forbes cover of the "Viagra going up" headline while
the CEO looks directly up at it:

[http://thumbsnap.com/i/xIyNOKkl.jpg](http://thumbsnap.com/i/xIyNOKkl.jpg)

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allsystemsgo
This would make me anxious. I remember reading about someone who learned from
23andMe that they had a terminal disease or something like that, and it
drastically altered their life. I'd rather just live in ignorance.

~~~
toomuchtodo
23andme user here (one of the first).

If the disease in question could be hard to handle mentally/emotionally, they
specifically include a warning that is very direct and says "Are you sure you
want to know this?".

~~~
hueving
That's basically telling them with ambiguity attached. I'm not sure it's much
better.

~~~
alextgordon
They should do a product that only tests for preventable, curable conditions.

Telling someone they have a high risk of breast cancer or bowel cancer is
helpful: they can get regular checkups.

Telling someone they have a high risk of Parkinson's or MS is just cruel.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm not sure how that well that's going to work, with genome sequencing now
below $1000. The data is going to be out there, putting your head in the sand
isn't going to solve your mortality issues.

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kozak
I would be happy to have my DNA analyzed by them for whatever price, but I
can't do that because I appear to live in a "wrong" country.

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amelius
I don't like this sentence from the wikipedia page [1]:

> The price of the full direct to consumer testing service in the United
> States has reduced from $999 in 2007 to $99 in 2012, and it is effectively
> being sold _as a loss leader_ in order to _build a valuable customer
> database_.

First, why can't companies these days just sell me a product for the cost
price plus a margin? This seems like a fair way of doing business.

Second, what do they want to do with my data? Why do they think it is valuable
(will they sell it)? Why can't I just get my data without them keeping a copy
of it?

(It isn't because they offer an online comparison/discovery tool, since they
could easily offer that as a downloadable app, so they don't need my data on
their servers; it also isn't because they need to do research on the data,
i.e., to find correlations, because they could make that voluntary).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe)

~~~
2bitencryption
You misunderstand. The point is that the more data they have, the more
valuable and "accurate" their analysis is -- it's like crowdsourcing genetics
by building one large database.

So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin"
doesn't work here. They're dropping the price because they're paying you for
your information to make their service better.

It's like Tumblr not having ads (for a period of time). "Why are you giving
this to me for free?" you ask. Because then you're more likely to use us, and
then we'll have a bigger user base and make tons of money later.

That's how SAAS models can give away their "service" for free and still be
valued at billions of dollars.

~~~
amelius
> The point is that the more data they have, the more valuable and "accurate"
> their analysis is

This is covered by my comment that participating in research should be
voluntary.

> So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin"
> doesn't work here.

Yes, my complaint makes perfect sense here. They are selling below cost price
to build themselves a bigger market. This is not a fair way of doing business,
in my opinion. The fact that you are framing this as "we are paying you to
help us build a bigger market share" does not make a difference.

In my opinion, everything that is being built by crowdsourcing belongs in the
public domain. It is not fair to have one company keeping that information
hostage.

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fizixer
This is well and good. But what about going back from 'ancestry discovery' to
'full medical discovery' just like originally conceived?

FDA put a stupid ban on them, and then they got something approved but that
was a fraction of what they were offering previously.

Just another example of how politics and bureaucracy is hampering progress.

~~~
adevine
Yeah, I was and 23andMe customer before the ban, and I loved the data it
provided. In particular, I thought 23andMe did an excellent job of describing
the statistics behind genetics in layperson terms (that is, it wasn't "you're
going to get this disease", but "out of a 100 people, 3 people without this
gene got it, but 6 people with this gene did get it", together with great
illustrations and more details to explain the probability). I thought the fact
that the FDA thought consumers would be confused or overwhelmed by the
analysis was kind of insulting to anyone with an elementary school education.

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merpnderp
What happens if they go bankrupt? Will they sell off everyone's DNA and
personal info like any other company?

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windsurfer
Is the link broken? The site keeps redirecting to
[http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/](http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/)

~~~
arm
See this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384595)

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AndrewKemendo
_Forbes understands the investment values 23andMe at $1.1 billion._

There's that number again...

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emmet
> €169

:(

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NN88
oh snap son! Its lit!

