23andMe is raising about $200M, led by Sequoia
I really liked the old 23andme and was an early customer. I felt it did a good job of presenting scientific conjecture with notes on confidence and how to use the data. It gave me some encouragement to cut down on my caffeine consumption, and to exercise more to try to influence specific gene expression, and if I was a carrier for a serious genetic disease, I definitely would want access to that information.<p>I logged in recently after not looking for a few years and was so disappointed with what the site has become--essentially ancestry astrology with the defaults presenting a preposterous level of precision on your racial mix. I&#x27;d like to think that this was just a result of inflexible regulation from the FDA, but I suspect that they are also bending to market demand for meaningless information like how 1 or 2 of your 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents happened to share some genetics with a bunch of people from the Asian steppes.<p>On the other hand... I do enjoy reading about identitarians of all stripes having emotional crises when they learn that they can&#x27;t claim purebred status.