Anne Wojcicki built the world’s biggest genetic research database, and booked an estimated $475 million in annual sales, by selling 10 million consumers 23AndMe genetic test kits. Now, she's betting on the next medical breakthrough SelfMadeWomen
z), whom she met after her oldest sister, Susan, rented out the garage of her Menlo Park home in 1998 to two ambitious Ph.D.s trying to index the world’s information: Google cofounders Larry Page and Brin. Susan became Google’s 16th employee and eventually the CEO of YouTube. The middle Wojcicki sister, Janet, is now a globe-trotting epidemiologist who teaches at the University of California, San Francisco.
The human genome was first sequenced in 2003, and scientists were entranced with what the code could unlock. Wojcicki got introduced to Linda Avey, who had studied biology as an undergraduate and was creating research programs at Affymetrix, a gene-testing company in Santa Clara, California. The two began brainstorming over dinner in December 2005.
Anne Wojcicki values individual agency, both in her own life and for her customers. She wants them to be able to take action from their DNA results."The goal of the company is not to give you information and then be done," she says.To drum up publicity among a crowd who wouldn’t blink at the $999 price tag, 23andMe held spit-test parties at events from Davos to New York Fashion Week, where celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Diane von Furstenberg and Rupert Murdoch spit into little tubes.