DNA testing company 23andme – one of the most popular startups in the Silicon Valley –declared bankruptcy on Monday. Anne Wojcicki, co -founder and executive director who popularized the genus testing focused on consumers, also resigned.
“We had a lot of success, but I was equally responsible for the challenges we have today,” Wojcicki wrote in a statement she shared On social media. “There is no doubt that the challenges facing 23Andme through the evolutionary business model are real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering.”
Bankrot 23andme was not a completely surprise with respect to recently Committee and shares of unrest in a firm with a cash company. However, the turnaround expressed concern for 15 million customers of a company whose DNA seems in a recess. (23Andme said There will be no change in the way it stores or protects customers’ information.)
The decision of Wojcickija to step down the months of pressure on the co -founder, whose entire plate remained on the same day last fall. For many years, Wojcicki has been seen as a leading thinker, a consumer health champion and one of several women who runs an influential biotechnical company. Through her relationships in technology, politics and Hollywood, she helped push 23Andme and genetic testing in mainstream culture. But events in recent years have asked questions about her legacy.
Here are the time lanes of events that shaped 23Andme trajectory:
2006: Linda Avey, Genetics Expert, Paul Cusenza, Engineer and Executive Director, and Anne Wojcicki, a former analyst for investment health, launch 23Andme. Avej previously He imagined the idea and set it to investors, including Google co -founders. According to Avey, Sergey Brin suggested that Wojcicki became a co -founder. (Brin and Wojcicki got married at the time.)
2007: 23Andme begins to offer DNA tests for $ 1,000 per order, asking customers to send their showers to a company in a bottle in exchange for information about their gender and some health risks. The company’s test allows users to decide to share their information with researchers and answers to questions about their lifestyle, creating a potentially valuable database for future mining.New York Times Journalist Amy Harmon writes a detailed personal display of testing her DNA with 23Andmebringing a wide awareness of the company and its potential. The company also becomes known for celebrities “Spitting fun.”
2009: Wojcicki and the Committee announce that Linda Avey leaves the company. (Cusenza left in 2008) years later, Avey tells Podcast She leads: “Not something I chose.” She also calls the ejection “devastating”.
March 12, 2015: Wojcicki launches Drug detection workWanting to use the data he collected from the consumer. This leads the company to an expensive job, with Wojcicki later recounting that she was warned of drug research, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, require several years and does not guarantee success. Wojcicki recruit Top scientific researchers and 23Andme eventually develop two goals of cancer drugs that will be examined by the clinical phase.
November 22, 2015: FDA sends Wojcicki Warning letter During their spit tests that offer customers information about the risk and risk of illness. The company takes its health results from the market and employs experts to move in regulatory affairs. Two years laterThe FDA approves 23AndMe’s genus health tests aimed at consumers, creating a product that is the first of such, approved by the FDA.
July 25, 2018: GSK Signs the contract with 23andme that enables the exclusive approach to the 23AndMe database-based drug-based DNA data for the then-5 million customers-four years. “The aim of the collaboration is to collect insights and discover new medicines goals that trigger the progression of the disease and develop therapies for serious dissatisfied medical needs based on these discoveries,” GSK says in a statement for the public. This partnership will later be extended by 2025, and GSK will announce that it has led to a potentially sustainable objectives of medicines.
June 16, 2021: 23Andme goes public through the Richard Branson and Virgin group – inserted SPAC Demerger. The list briefly appreciates the company at $ 6 billion, but by the end of the year it will be worth $ 3 billion.
1. November 2021: 23Andme buys Telehealth Company Lemonaid Health for $ 400 million. It was always Wojcicki’s goal 23Andme offer retail DNA testing, conducting drug research and integrating genomic testing and clinical medicine.
6. October 2023: Main data violation exposes DNA 6.9 million people target hackers. The company later confirms that the hackers were targeting the customers of Jewish and Chinese Ashkenazi. A violation also leads to Class lawsuit This will force the company to pay A $ 30 million settlement 2024.
31. January 2024: Wall Street Journal publishes Explosive story Looking at the reasons of 23Andme, they approached the store as a stock and never made a profit. As a public company, the main shortcomings in their business model become obvious. The sources in the story ask whether Wojcicki pays enough attention to the basics of the company or build a personal brand.
April 18, 2024: With 23Andme Financials still exacerbates, Wojcicki expresses interest in the private acceptance of the company. As a control shareholder, she also says she will not be open to external offerings. (It changes its attitude several times later.) The 23Andme Committee makes a special committee to prepare for an assessment of the agreement.
2. August 2024: AND The Committee replies Wojcicki is the first offer to bring the company privately for 40 cents per share. She does not believe that the price price is appropriate and is dissatisfied with the lack of details on sales financing. “Our expectation after many months of work was to submit a fully funded, completely diligent, effective proposal that is in the best interest of shareholders who are not connected,” the committee writes. It also offers the possibility that the proposal is re -surrendered later. The company re -expands that deadline when Sister Wojcicki, Susan Wojcicki, Executive Director YouTubeIt dies from lung cancer.
September 18, 2024: In a shocking turn, the entire Committee of 23Andme Strait on the same day, explaining in a public letter That his members felt that they had several other options. Wojcicki, as a control shareholder, said he would not entertain other offers, and the Committee did not receive an improved offer while the company faced terrible straits. Group – which included lamps like Neal Mohan, Executive Director YouTubeand Roelof Both, head Sequoia capital– They wrote that they “wholeheartedly” believed in a company mission to personalize health care genetic data, did not agree with Wojcick’s strategic direction.
October 16, 2024: 23Andme completes the division of reverse stock To avoid deviation from Nasdaq. The price price has dropped below $ 1 earlier.
17. October 2024: Wojcicki narrates Wealth In her first public interview, he still believes that “can land this plane” from the resignation of the committee, and that she was as surprised as all about the resignation of the committee. She also responds to the proposals of former employees that her over -controlled management style helped to sink the company. “I’ve always been talking from the very beginning, I don’t have to be the main one,” she said Wealth. “There is no ego for me. I take care of the vision and the mission.”
20. February 2025: After closing the drug detection jobs, the release of almost half of the 23Andme staff and adding Three CFO Its new Board Wojcicki is associated with the new mountain capital and tolerates a new proposal buy 23Andme that applies to a company at $ 75 million. Nervous investors at little say Wealth They hope that the Committee will not accept her first offer.
2. March 2025: Wojcicki explains in New public application This new mountain capital is no longer interested in partnership with her at the proposal. Wojcicki includes a new offer, this time by assessing the company at $ 42 million. The Committee rejects that proposal later on the same day.
24. March 2025: 23Andme announces that he gets bankrupt, Encouraging the care of data privacy. Anne Wojcicki leaves as an executive director, but says she will still give another offer to buy a company. “Consumers rise and seek greater control over their health and want greater knowledge of how to be healthy and why they can have health problems,” she writes on x.com. “We fought for consumers to have a direct access to their information and have a choice and transparency compared to their personal information. As I think about the future, I will still tirelessly advocate for customers to have a choice and transparency compared to their personal information, regardless of the platform.”
This story is originally shown on Fortune.com
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