Anne Wojcicki
Co-Founder & CEO, 23andMe. On 2 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveanalyst@annewoj23 ↗LinkedIn ↗23andme.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
In 2006, Wojcicki co-founded 23andMe, pioneering direct-to-consumer genetic testing to help individuals access their ancestry and health data. Prior to that, she spent a decade on Wall Street investing in healthcare and biotechnology companies.
2shows
2appearances
24statements
3resolved
2supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Anne Wojcicki said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Wojcicki: Healthcare Margin Expansion Drives Patient Mistreatment
“This is what margin expansion looks like. Like the mistreatment of my grandmother is at the cost of your margin expansion.”
Wojcicki: 23andMe proved to FDA consumers don't need physician intermediaries
“And what I'm like really proud of with 23 me is that we proved out to the FDA that people are capable of getting their genetic information without having to have a physician or healthcare professional intermediary.”
Wojcicki: Healthcare Sector Incentivizes Managing Sickness Over Promoting Health
“The business of healthcare is not necessarily about you. It's a great area to invest in. There's all kinds of ways you can make money. You know, you can do all kinds of amazing discount cash flows on dialysis and like, think about like, oh, you know, all these…”
Wojcicki: Hiring external senior executives is culturally difficult in complex companies
“Bringing in very senior people, depending on the type of role, it can be really hard culturally because like they come and they want to make a mark for themselves and they want to guide it in a slightly different way. And 23 weeks, it's complicated company. We…”
Wojcicki: Early-Stage Private Company Boards Are Not Useful
“Boards at that stage are not Useful and helpful. They get lots of advisors. Like it's not like people sometimes have this misperception of like how valuable a board can be and like how much influence they can have.”
Wojcicki: The Healthcare System Treats Patients as Incompetent at Self-Care
“Like one, the healthcare world really looks at you as being totally incompetent at taking care of yourself. Like most doctors don't believe you're capable of change.”
Wojcicki: Healthcare Industry Monetizes Illness Rather Than Prevention
“At the end of the day, healthcare is an amazing business that really effectively monetizes illness, and I used to always say, you know, if I successfully get you to never be diabetic, No one makes money. But if you do become diabetic, there's all kinds of ways…”
Wojcicki: The Healthcare System Cannot Be Changed from Within
“You can't change the system from within. So we gotta do something more radical from outside.”
Wojcicki: Medicine is practiced as art, causing conflicting cancer treatment recommendations
“Part of what people don't necessarily always understand is that the practice of medicine is, is an art. Like, you can go, the reason why you can go to five different physicians and get five different ways of you know, treating cancer is because there's the pra…”
Wojcicki: Universal Healthcare Payment System Will Never Happen in US
“I think the reality is what needs to happen is never going to happen. Which is like you have a universal payment system.”
Wojcicki: Single-payer systems are structurally incentivized to maintain long-term health
“And I think for a single-payer healthcare system, or like a country they care about actually trying to keep you healthy for as long as possible.”
Wojcicki: Changing Healthcare Requires Empowering Consumers directly
“If you really want to change healthcare, in some ways you have to give power to the people, like get them to rise up.”
Anne Wojcicki: Prominence Makes People Less Direct and Honest With Founders
“If I think back on the last 15 years, the thing that has been the hardest for me is having people be less honest and less direct. Like, you hear this about, and I saw this as with the rise of Google, and, like, people started just coming up, they wanted to jus…”
Wojcicki: High-profile founders pay a 20% 'Google tax' on personal projects
“If I'm doing a landscaping project, we always assign what we call, like, there's always a Google tax. Like, you just assume that I will have to pay 20% more than, like, what any normal person, like, so there's just a tax that comes with it.”
Wojcicki: Board Meetings Should Debate Key Questions, Not Show Off
“Your board is really busy and it's not a dog and pony show and you should tee up like, what are your top questions for them? And then have the debate around that.”
Wojcicki: Healthcare patients lack decision power because they aren't the direct payer
“The main thing in healthcare is that you don't actually ever have a voice. Like, you don't, like, you don't actually, because you're not the payer in healthcare, like, you the individual, you don't actually make decisions. It's, you know, your insurance compan…”
Wojcicki: Science Startups Must Publish Peer-Reviewed Data to Build Credibility
“It's one thing I always advise science companies is you can't speak, like, I can't just tell you, like, oh, we're great. We have great science. Like, no one, like, no one believes that. So what you need to do is you need to publish. Like, you put, like, I neve…”
Wojcicki: 23andMe twice attempted and abandoned building an internal lab
“We started building a lab twice and shut it down twice.”
23andMe Advertised on a Zeppelin Backed by Ex-Husband Sergey Brin
“We did do the blimp. We did. 23 and me had, there was a Zeppelin. Back in, my ex-husband had a Zeppelin, or he was an investor in a Zeppelin. Anyways, it had, like, a big 23 me on it.”
Wojcicki: 1969 JAMA study found 90% of doctors withheld cancer diagnoses
“One of my favorite papers is there's this JAMA paper, the Journal of American Medical Association from 1969, I think, where they asked doctors, would you tell your patients that they have cancer if they had a cancer diagnosis? And over 90% of them said no.”
Wojcicki: 23andMe Post-Launch Sales Dropped to 15 to 25 Kits Daily
“And we were probably selling 20 to, you know, 15 to 25 kits a day.”
Wojcicki: Startups dealing with regulators must prove claims with data, not trust
“The onus is on us a little bit to explain how we're doing it, how that works, and the way they speak, just like I mentioned about scientists, is they speak in data. Like, you can't just say, like, oh, no, no, no. Like, trust me. Like, I'm the good guy. Right. …”
Wojcicki: 23andMe's 2007 Series A OKRs match its 2018 operational goals
“Our Series A documents and our OKRs from 2007 are remarkably similar to what they are today.”
Wojcicki: 23andMe ran a 70,000-person genetic weight loss study
“So we did our first one on weight loss. So we had 70,000 people doing, you know, a six arm weight loss study. So that's the first time we're doing it in that kind of scale, specifically to see based on your DNA, are there differences in weight loss?”
The other half of the tape: Anne Wojcicki's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Larry Aschebrook 4
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 4
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Anne's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, 23andMe | 1 +1 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, 23andMe | 1 | 12 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |