It occurs to me that they could have followed the software trend where everything is a subscription service. As more is learned from the genome, they can deliver more value to the customers over time.
Yeah, it seems like a major mistake to sell this as a one-time purchase. Market it as "genetic monitoring" Charge
a monthly or yearly fee to keep getting new genetic insights as research discovers the function of more mutations. Offer upsell re-tests with more complete or accurate sequencing.
I think they must have been banking on the data-set itself being highly valuable and made the tests cheap, then ran out of customers on both ends of the equation.
I believe they actually did have it as a subscription model at one point (I think it was at a time that it was a choice of either $400 one-time, or $99 for the kit + extra for the subscription), but I guess they have more competition now, plus it's cheaper?
