The "daring" CEO of 23andMe who went too far was Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki envisioned a revolution in medicine and personal genomics

In 2006, she founded 23andMe to fulfill her dream. According to James Mackreides, the company's bankruptcy serves as a warning.

Anne Wojcicki, a pioneer in the medical field who "wont give up on her dream of using DNA kits to discover new drugs," is regarded by some as an "eternal optimist," according to the Financial Times. However, many people aren't quite as giving now that the once-flying 23andMe has entered bankruptcy protection. In the midst of intense criticism, Wojcicki has resigned as CEO to pursue an "independent" bid after multiple attempts to take the failing genetics testing company she co-founded private.

It makes sense why shareholders are so irate. According to the ft\., Wojcicki organized a number of celebrity-filled "spit parties" in 2008 to promote her new DNA-testing startup. The stars "dutifully filled 23andMes test tubes with their saliva." "Wave aside customer privacy fears and regulatory scrutiny" was made possible by Wojcicki's "unwavering optimism and charisma."

To find out more about their health or ancestry, 15 million people spent £99 on the kit over almost 20 years. Nowadays, a lot of people seem to regret that choice. The company's website and shaky stock recently crashed as buyers scrambled to remove their genetic information before it was put up for auction. Since 2021, when Richard Branson's "blank check" company, 23andMe, went public and became "a £6 billion unicorn," the shares have lost 99 percent of their value. Already, the business is "locked in investor disputes." The atmosphere won't get any better if Wojcicki manages to get the assets, which were cleansed by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, at a discount.

Anne Wojcicki: Who is she?

The closest Silicon Valley can get to a royal clan is the Wojcicki family. Former YouTube CEO Susan, Anne's sister, famously rented her Menlo Park garage to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who later became Anne's husband (they divorced in 2015). Susan passed away last year. Janet, the third sister, teaches pediatrics at the University of California.

Business Insider reports that the sisters were raised in a highly academic setting. Their mother Esther was a prominent journalist and educator who was sometimes referred to as the "Godmother" of the Valley, while their father Stanley chaired Stanford's physics department. In addition to scientific inquiry refined by "a childhood roaming around" the Stanford campus, Anne Wojcicki attributes her parents' gift of "a taste of freedom" to her.

Wojcicki went to Wall Street after earning a degree in biology from Yale and worked for ten years as a biotech and healthcare analyst. BusinessWomen claims that she "decided to disrupt the industry" because she was "weary" of Wall Street's greedy approach to healthcare. When 23andMe first launched in 2006, its primary goal was to enable individuals "to take control of their well-being." The startup quickly rose to prominence as "a trailblazer in personal genomics," naming itself after the 23 pairs of chromosomes found in the human genome. After the kit won Times' 2008 "Invention of the Year" award, Fast Company named Wojcicki one of America's most "daring CEOs."

Maybe too bold, says Fortune. 23andMe is a prime example of overreach. It started using the data in 2015 when it entered "the staggeringly expensive business of drug development," having created one of the largest DNA databases in the world. In the end, the business's retail division was insufficient to pay expenses. The company, which was already struggling, was almost destroyed by a well-publicized hack in 2023 and has never fully recovered. Although Wojcicki is renowned for her perseverance and had audacious ideas from the beginning, the ft\. claims that it seems unlikely that the company will be rebuilt.