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23andMe’s entire board resigned on the same day. Founder Anne Wojcicki still thinks the startup is savable

What really happened at the once hot DNA testing company.

In a public letter, the group—which included luminaries such as Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, and Roelof Botha, head of Sequoia Capital —wrote that while they “wholeheartedly” believed in the company’s mission to personalize health care with genetic data, they disagreed with Wojcicki’s strategic direction. It was a mindset that also defined the up-and-coming tech stars of the Bay Area, including her future husband Sergey Brin, whom Wojcicki met when he and Larry Page famously began renting her sister Susan’s Palo Alto garage, in 1998, to build what became Google. The board’s resignation letter was signed by all seven independent directors, including Sequoia’s Botha, as well as Patrick Chung, head of Xfund, who was among 23andMe’s earliest investors; Scheller, the former head of therapeutics who left in 2019; Sandra Hernández, CEO of the California Health Care Foundation; Valerie Montgomery Rice, president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine; Peter Taylor, former president of the ECMC Foundation; and Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, who had tweeted a tribute to his former boss Susan Wojcicki, Anne’s sister, just weeks before the board collectively quit.

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