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Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

I get that, and yeah have seen some of the same movies.

I do see a lot of potential in 23andMe (though I loathe the name—never put a number in your name! numbers are incredibly overloaded—millions of times less combinatorics; and they become outdated almost immediately—23 is a largely meaningless number).

But 23AndMe at least has built a large number of paying users. If they look at where medicine could be in 10-20 years, and have the courage, they've got a better shot than nearly anyone of leading the way. Someone could be a $1T universal health care company.

The health privacy issues I think are a red herring. Proper medical research entails generating strongly typed data that you can synthesize infinite records with one click. An individual's personal health data should be of little value, and if it's not, then we've got deeper fundamental problems with our system (which we do, but has nothing to do with 23andme)

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It's not meaningless. Humans have 23 chromosomes (except for those with Down syndrome). That's never going to become outdated.

Click "go to definition" enough and you will figure out what I'm talking about.

Godmode troll activated.

If 23andme had that many paying customers, they would not have needed to go the SPAC route to avoid financial disclosure. That they have chosen to go public as a SPAC after more than a decade of existence does not speak highly of their financial situation or their prospects for future earnings (and this is generally something that nearly all recent SPACs share).

It could be.

It could also be that they just saw no reason to enrich a set of insiders and saw a SPAC as a way to stick it to the man.

I have zero clue. My DD is basically on this page, and though I've been a customer since the beginning and have referred a bazillion people, a lot of that has just been due to lack of competition and not necessarily because I've been thrilled by 23andMe's stuff.

It could also be that they just saw no reason to enrich a set of insiders and saw a SPAC as a way to stick it to the man.

A SPAC is the ultimate way to enrich a set of insiders...The SPAC initiators get to buy additional shares of the SPAC at discount prices that other SPAC investors don't have access to. And unlike with a traditional IPO, the targets don't have to disclose those arrangements or other sweetheart details that the target executives receive as part of the acquisition. Another big consideration for a SPAC is that executives get to sell their post-acq stock immediately, while normal employees are still subject to a lock-up period to "protect" the stock price from downward pressure.

Ugh yeah I had a feeling this may be the case. I was hoping SPACs might be better, but haven't researched it.

It's almost like we should have a thing called "public markets" where the public can invest directly in new ventures. /s

(Gotta say I'm with Cuban and Mr Wonderful and Elon with the idea that regulators are pretty awful in their blindness to 2nd order effects)

Maybe the blockchain is the way to go after all.

Regulators are aware of these effects. They have limited ability under the law to pursue things that only have 2nd order effects.

Blockchain won't help; you would have the same problems but with even fewer ways to address them.

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