23andMe Shares Pop as Company Makes its Market Debut

Genetic testing company 23andMe made its public debut under the ticker symbol “ME” yesterday, after a merger with a Richard Branson Spac, VG Acquisition Corp.

Company founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki told CNBC the company is planning to build a big consumer business off its base of 11 million customers and drug research and development platform with near-80% of test takers opting into sharing their genetic information for disease R&D.

23andMe is a five-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company.

Wojcicki is the former spouse of Google founder Sergey Brin, who was an early investor in the company.

The merger with the Branson Spac is a deal that raised near-$600 million and valued the company at $3.5 billion.

Shares of the company rose by 21% on the Nasdaq in its first day of trading as a public company.

“It will take time … really making sure we are getting all communities to participate in research,” Wojcicki said in an interview with CNBC’s “TechCheck” on Thursday morning. “You can’t make discoveries in a population if you don’t have those people participating. We need the right customers and to represent the product back to them in the right way.”

According to the CEO, there are big things ahead for both its consumer and drug research & development platforms.

“Our genetics represent all of life on this planet, and we have the opportunity to understand what it means and with that, it will improve your own life but also contribute to all kinds of research discoveries,” Wojcicki said.

“The last 15 years was putting together the infrastructure for how we can take off, proving to consumers we can get the information and proving they can understand it without a medical professional,” she said.

“We want them to truly have a personalized health-care experience and … benefit the human genome from seeing all of this aggregated data turned into therapeutic programs,” Wojcicki said. “When I think about the future of therapeutics, in the next five years it is really about moving these programs forward and getting them into the clinic.”

“We get thousands of people who call every week to the customer care team who would like to know how to use this information and apply it to live a healthier longer life,” she said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.