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by michaelt
871 days ago
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> But why not focus on the B2B side? Sell access to their databases. I'm sure computational biology and/or pharma companies need this information. Are you sure? I mean, presumably there are different types of DNA testing. Doesn't 23andme run basically the cheapest test they can get away with? A user can't tell if the test measured 16 bytes or 1.6 gigabytes of genetic information, and if I was trying to launch a consumer DNA geneology service, I'd want to get network effects, so I'd want a test that was very easily affordable. Who says their records are thorough enough to be valuable to drug companies? |
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No. That's part of why they're test is so expensive and their financials are so lackluster. They are apparently using a customized version of the lllumina's Global Screening Array according to their website and several other sources that show up in search results. That's a legit research quality genotyping platform from a world leading laboratory in the genetics space. This post from 2020 has a decent high level overview about it in the context of 23&me [0] though it might be slightly outdated by now and I've never heard of the company (xcode?) that wrote it (nor did I bother to look at what their product is.)
> If I was trying to launch a consumer DNA geneology service, I'd want to get network effects, so I'd want a test that was very easily affordable.
That's a pretty neive perspective. It ignores the value propositions of 23&me's product, economies of scale in the direct to consumer genetic testing space which were in large part enabled by 23&me's success, and all of the thorny bits related to questions about accuracy when presenting results. Not to mention that 23&me certainly capitalized on the network effect (which is being criticized a fair amount in this thread.)
> Who says their records are thorough enough to be valuable to drug companies?
GSK. See my other comment in this thread [1]
[0] https://www.xcode.life/23andme/23andme-v5-chip-dna-raw-data-...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39202583#39204621