[comrade1]

There's a big difference between the 5 - 15 years and billions of dollars to product in biotech/pharma, and the few at most years and relatively cheap amount of money for the payoff in software.

And if you think there are shortcuts like uber and airbnb, there are not. Even 23 and me, a pretty innocuous idea, is essentially a failure.

[paul]

I was also told by the HN crowd that Facebook is a fad that would never make any money :)

The best investments always take a long time. Fortunately we are very patient investors, happy to fund "crazy" things like nuclear fusion and cancer treatments.

[sama]

As I often said--it's a good thing we don't let HN make our investment decisions.

[Gatsky]

23 and me is an example of the least ambitious thing you could do with genomics. Honestly, I think you are being needlessly negative. There is a lack of life sciences research funding and an oversupply of life science researchers. What's the disadvantage of more biotech startups? Public-private collaborations with small nimble startups sounds like a dream come true, compared to years waiting for the wheels to turn in collaborations with big pharma.

[dluan]

That's a pretty large and unfair statement, and I'd like to know how you are measuring failure.

23andme has created an affordable market for personal genomics, single-handedly forced modernization in regulation and policy, built a mineable database of live genome data that is helping researchers find cures, and amassed nearly 1M paying customers.

I'd love for you to say that just because they aren't yet profitable means that they are a failure.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/23andme-to-use-genetic-database-...

[comrade1]

They are not profitable and they are not able to fulfill their original mission due to FDA regulations.

[dluan]

I think a reasonable observer would expect FDA regulations to change.

[spellboots]

They are in other countries. I just did my kit in the UK.

https://www.23andme.com/en-gb/

[coherentpony]

> 23andme has created an affordable market for personal genomics

Fair.

> single-handedly forced modernization in regulation and policy

Personal DNA kits were not pioneered by 23andme. The NHS in the UK sends out personal kits to test for colon cancer. One rather smart child, Jack Andraka [1], devised a personal kit to test for pancreatic cancer. And regulation in FDA policy is constantly shifting and changing. A notable such shift is due to a club set up by Ron Woodroof in 1988 [2].

23andme may have helped push science further, but single-handedly? Hardly. Science and discovery is a collaborative effort. They couldn't have done it without shoulders to stand on.

> built a mineable database of human genome data that is helping researchers find cures

The Human Genome project is a mineable database of chemical base pairs the make up human DNA. This has been an enabling technology used by researchers for drug and disease discovery since 1987 [3].

> and amassed nearly 1M paying customers.

The article you link to claims the number is closer to 850,000. A claim of 1M implies a relative error of 17.6%.

> I'd love for you to say that just because they aren't profitable means that they are a failure.

I agree that non-profitability does not imply failure.

May I ask what your affiliation with 23andme is?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Andraka#Research_and_exper...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Woodroof

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project#History

[dluan]

One of the biggest challenges they've had to and continue to try to overcome is an outdated policy system around personal health data, within the U.S., and I'm not sure if Jack Andraka has attempted to mass produce and mass release his pancreatic kit. The statement was about their recent FDA battles, not about 'advancing science'.

The 23andme dataset provides more value than HGP since it's an dataset of active participants. I don't know too much about the specifics or privacy mechanics, so I can't comment on how, but this article is an example (http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_27487046/23andme-quest...). The way researchers are using the dataset is very different because they are able to do followups. That's a very significant difference, it's why they have pharma companies lining up to get access to the dataset.

Last I heard, they were closer to 1M than 850k, unfortunately can't find any live stats. Maybe someone else can chime in?

I don't have any affiliation, and I'm surprised that you'd assume so. I recognize that there's an overeagerness from both startup people and academics to crap on biotech startups, rightly or wrongly. I haven't quite figured out why spectators are motivated to do so.

[jghn]

One big negative is that they're only running a snp pnel for most cases and just now starting to toe the water of exomes

[chmille4]

I figured I could add a little clarification to this comment.

* The human genome project created a "single" genome (thats not quite right, but close enough for this discussion). This was and is incredibly useful, but a single genome can only do so much. To answer population genomics questions (e.g. is this mutation common and therefore probably not disease causative) you need lots of people and the more the better.

* The 23andme dataset is not whole genome data, but instead some subset of genomic locations that they consider more interesting. Still valuable but not as much as whole genome data.

Also, for big whole genome datasets you can check out the 1000 Genomes Project, which has somewhere north of 2000 genomes. And there are many more big datasets in the works, which will continue to be incredibly useful!

[dluan]

Good clarification, amended my comment too. Although, the 23andme dataset is with live participants with genealogy data. That's a dimension HGP doesn't offer.

1000 Genomes looks great, but how is it funded? Also, how is the sequencing done? Presents a few more open variables, and 23andme is orders of magnitude larger.

[chmille4]

Absolutely, I meant to add above that the 23andme dataset has huge value due to its size. Also you bring up a good point about potential easy access to participants. If 23andme allows researchers to contact people who were of interest to their particular study and ask for more information, which could be as easy a questionnaire, that could be incredibly valuable. I don't agree with the above commenter that 23andme was a failure. Genomics is still incredibly young and we are just getting to the point where we can have an impact on the average persons life.

As for the 1000 genomes project, it was funded with government money (I think mostly the NIH, although the UK may have been involved too) therefore the data is free and open. The data was generated using illumina sequencers.

[jghn]

Worth noting that the sequencing was done at multiple centers, eg the broad institute

[dominotw]

I paid a fortune to get 23andme when it first came out and have gotten all the subsequent paid updates also.

So far its mere entertainment for me, nothing more.

[EpicEng]

Having spent my entire career in biotech startups (mostly digital pathology and diagnostics) I can tell you that you are seriously mistaken. It does not cost anywhere near "billions of dollars" to develop, say, a diagnostic. We get by with ~10-30m funding rounds, perhaps 2-3 rounds. Not sure where you are getting your (mis-)information from. Of course, if you're looking to develop a new drug... yeah, that costs a boatload of money, but that's hardly the only area of biotech.

[toufka]

If you think that biotech = pharma, you're about 2 decades behind. Biotech = fabrics, materials, health, food, chemicals, etc.

Perfumes, flavors, spider silk, biosensors, glowing plants, etc. are all biotechnology that require the one thing cheaper than software on this planet - dirt. They copy code orders of magnitude cheaper than bandwidth - water & sugar & light.

The billion dollar tools developed by big pharma now are running in the thousands of dollars, and there are no shortage of million dollar problems.

[car]

Regarding 23andMe, I'd reconsider that view.

They are sitting on a treasure trove of medical and genetic data. And they have begun to monetize this data, which I believe was their endgame all along.

More here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/01/06/surpris...

[lvs]

Yes, you're absolutely right, and YC and other SV funders really have no clue what they're doing. It's a boon for biotech startups because the relevant VCs are very puckered up right now when it comes to biotech/pharma.

[srunni]

> the relevant VCs are very puckered up right now when it comes to biotech/pharma.

There are some great posts on the LifeSciVC blog on this topic (and I highly recommend reading all the posts on there for anyone interested in biotech startups):

* Where Does All That Biotech Venture Capital Go?: http://lifescivc.com/2015/02/where-does-all-that-biotech-ven...

* Venture-Backed Biotech Today: Reflections On Exits, Funding, and Startup Formation: http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-re...

* Talent: The Biggest Issue In Biotech Boardrooms Today: http://lifescivc.com/2014/09/talent-the-biggest-issue-in-bio...

* Early Stage Biotech Venture Scarcity: Fitness, Fear, And Greed: http://lifescivc.com/2014/09/early-stage-biotech-venture-sca...

* Startups, Exits, And Ecosystem Flux: Bullish For Biotech: http://lifescivc.com/2014/09/startups-exits-and-ecosystem-fl...

An excerpt (italics added by me):

> Why is biotech startup supply so constrained? First, there aren’t dozens of breakthrough biomedical ideas created every day; while substrate for startups is very rich, figuring out which are likely translate successfully into high impact medicines diminishes the viable number of big, attractive ideas quickly. Second, there are very few biotech venture investors still active today, and fewer still that are focused on early stage company creation. Third, and of critical importance, it’s not easy to start biotech companies, and in most cases requires entrepreneurs with decades of apprenticeship inside larger R&D organizations – navigating the drug discovery and early development process requires experience well beyond simply advanced degrees (MD/PhD).

* High-Performing Boards in Early Stage Biotech: http://lifescivc.com/2012/03/high-performing-boards-in-early...

Another excerpt:

> The nature of the problems and people involved are very different [between tech and biotech]: Internet-enabled Tech startups launch products on tiny amounts of capital, led by Lean Startup Ninja’s and 22-year old soon-to-be-billionaires, these companies can iterate rapidly around things I don’t understand, minimally viable products, and real-time market feedback...Compare that to Biotech. We are trying to manage the challenge of science-based businesses: biology is full of “unknown unknowns”, drug R&D has long and unforgiving timelines, we face very high project attrition rates, we have to work in a highly regulated environment, capital intensity is typically higher, etc… The people involved are also different: the typical senior team has some grey hair and often collectively has 100+ years of experience in (or biases from) drug R&D.

Life science VCs see themselves and their industry as very different from the tech industry.