Anne Wojcicki: the 'daring' 23andMe CEO who reached too far

To some, Anne Wojcicki is an “eternal optimist”, says the Financial Times – a medical industry pioneer who “won’t give up on her dream of using DNA kits to discover new drugs”. But, following the descent of the once high-flying 23andMe into bankruptcy protection, plenty of others aren’t quite so charitable. After repeated attempts to take the ailing genetics-testing firm she co-founded private, Wojcicki has now resigned as CEO to pursue an “independent” bid, amid plenty of sniping.

The rancour of shareholders is understandable. In 2008, Wojcicki used “her charm and Silicon Valley connections” to orchestrate a series of celebrity-studded “spit parties” publicising her new DNA-testing start-up, says the FT. The stars “dutifully filled 23andMe’s test tubes with their saliva”. Wojcicki’s “relentless optimism and charisma” helped “wave aside customer privacy fears and regulatory scrutiny”.

Over nearly two decades, some 15 million people splashed out for the $99 kit to learn more about their ancestry or health. “Many now appear to regret that decision.” Recently, both the company’s website and its wobbly shares crashed as customers rushed to delete their genetic data before it goes up for auction. The shares have lost 99% of their value since 2021, when 23andMe went public via a “blank cheque” company owned by Richard Branson, and became “a $6 billion unicorn”. The company is already “locked in investor disputes”. The mood won’t improve if Wojcicki secures the assets, washed clean by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, at a bargain price.

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Who is Anne Wojcicki?

The Wojcicki family is the closest that Silicon Valley gets to a royal clan. Anne’s sister Susan, the former YouTube CEO who died last year, famously rented her Menlo Park garage to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin – the latter became Anne’s husband (they divorced in 2015). A third sister, Janet, is a professor of paediatrics at the University of California.

The sisters grew up in an intensely academic environment, says Business Insider. Their father, Stanley, chaired Stanford’s physics department; their mother, Esther, was an influential journalist and teacher, sometimes dubbed the “Godmother” of the Valley. Anne Wojcicki credits her parents with conferring “a taste of freedom” as well as scientific inquiry – honed by “a childhood roaming around” the Stanford campus.

After graduating from Yale with a biology degree, Wojcicki headed for Wall Street and spent a decade working as a biotech and healthcare analyst. “Weary” of Wall Street’s avaricious approach to healthcare, she “decided to disrupt the industry”, says BusinessWomen. The founding aim of 23andMe, which began life in 2006, was to empower people “to take control of their well-being”. Named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human genome, the start-up swiftly became “a trailblazer in personal genomics”. The kit was Time’s “Invention of the Year” in 2008, and Wojcicki was later named by Fast Company as one of America’s most “daring CEOs”.

Too daring, perhaps, says Fortune. 23andMe presents a bad case of overreach. Having built one of the world’s largest DNA databases, it began leveraging the data in 2015 – moving into “the staggeringly expensive business of drug development”. Ultimately, the retail side of the business wasn’t enough to cover costs. Already ailing, the firm was nearly torpedoed by a high-profile hack in 2023, from which it has never really recovered. From the outset, Wojcicki had bold visions and is known for her persistence, says the FT. But rebuilding the company seems a long shot.

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