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Venture Capital - Monday, March 12, 2007

Is Sergey Financing Fiance's Start-up?

Is Google's Sergey Brin the financier behind his fiance's start-up 23andme.com? The Mountain View-based start-up was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the Google-wife-to-be. 23andme says little more than it is developing tools and producing content to help people make sense of their genetic information.

We cannot locate any public records that might indicate who is funding the startup. 23andme notes in its recruitment propaganda that it has “strong financial backers.” The a:c tossed over a request for clarification to 23andme but until we hear back this is our line of inquiry.

Our radar locks in on what we can only see as significant funding requirements and burn-rate backed by a management team that has little start-up experience.

Burn rate
+ 23andme.com not only has an Executive Assistant on staff but it has a full time recruiter.

+ The firm also has a Director: Reputation & Governance, three product managers, an architect, and a science writer. All seem to be terribly well educated (product manager finished Stanford with a PhD in Biomedical Informatics and came out of Harvard with an AB, Applied Math.

+ Additionally, it is recruiting: Web Interface Software Engineer, Web Application Software Engineer, Web Operations Specialist, Statistical Geneticist, Bioinformaticist, Population Geneticist, Genetic Anthropologist, another Science Writer, and a Scientific Curator.

Fund-raising qualifications
+ The Google fiance, Anne Wojcicki, graduated with a BS in Biology from Yale and did molecular biology research at the National Institute of Health, Weizmann Institute and UC San Diego. She was also a health care analyst at Passport Capital for 2 years.

+ We could not find much on the firm's co-founder Linda Avey. She claims 20 years sales/business development/alliance management experience in the biotech/pharmaceutical/life science arena.

These education pedigrees are all impressive but we generally see investors financing proven entrepreneurs or start-ups that have brought home the bacon. 23andme seems to have neither in strong supply.

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