It's worse than that, I talked my parents into doing one of these tests, now I don't ever have to pay for one.

also, the value you get out of it seemed to be mostly curiosity and novelty. Getting a bunch of stats on your heritage is nice and all but it's not any sort of ground-breaking consumer service.

They could charge you a monthly fee to keep you up to date on discoveries in this field relating to your personal DNA? (not sure how often this actually happens....)

their data could be very valuable depending on the evolution of personal medicine.

That was probably the justification for a high valuation. Also explains the recent pharma pivot.

Their existing data can't really be used for personalized medicine. If they want to pursue that market they'll need different testing protocols and additional regulatory approvals.

regulatory approval is easy to get with the right kind of lobbying.

i would say assays are useful for personal medicine. they get about 6m variants.