All seven independent directors of 23andMe’s board have immediately resigned, they wrote in a public letter Tuesday, expressing concerns over their differing views with CEO Anne Wojcicki. The chief executive and co-founder remains as the sole board member amid a monthslong attempt to take the struggling startup private.
The departing directors said they “continue to wholeheartedly support the Company’s mission and believe deeply in the value of the personalized health and wellness offering,” but they said it is “also clear that we differ on the strategic direction for the Company going forward.”
In recent months, the board rejected Wojcicki’s take-private offer. Last week, she wrote in an SEC filing that she’d be willing to hear proposals from third parties.
It didn’t appear to appease the board members.
Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe CEO (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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“After months of work, we have yet to receive from you a fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders,” the ex-directors wrote. They said they provided Wojcicki “ample time” for “such a proposal” but have seen no “notable progress over the last 5 months.”
“Because of that difference and because of your concentrated voting power, we believe that it is in the best interests of the Company’s shareholders that we resign from the Board rather than have a protracted and distracting difference of view with you as to the direction of the Company,” they wrote.
Spokespeople for 23andMe didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry.
“I am surprised and disappointed by the decision of the directors to resign,” Wojcicki said in a memo to employees, according to CNBC. She thanked the directors and said the company “will immediately begin identifying independent directors to join the board.”
Identity crisis
The Bay Area company has floundered drastically since going public at a $3.5 billion valuation by way of a blank check tie-up in June 2021. Its market cap $ME stood at $172 million as of Tuesday’s close.
23andMe hasn’t been able to woo investors over its two-pronged strategy of genetic testing and drug development. It also suffered a data breach and recently inked a $30 million settlement.
“Tech investors don’t like the therapeutics burn. The therapeutics people don’t understand consumer,” Wojcicki said in an interview with Endpoints News at the beginning of this year. “You’re straddling a fence and no one is there. In a bull market, people are more open to that, and in a market like now, people want vanilla ice cream. If you’re not vanilla, if you’ve got toppings in there, you’re out.”
The company shed its drug discovery unit earlier this summer and is now focused on finding partners for shelved assets. It’s still chugging along with two clinical-stage drugs, for which it presented more data this weekend at the annual European Society for Medical Oncology conference. And 23andMe is also trying to get into the weight loss market via its subsidiary Lemonaid.
The independent directors are Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha; Xfund managing general partner Patrick Chung; California Health Care Foundation CEO Sandra Hernández; YouTube CEO Neal Mohan; Morehouse School of Medicine president Valerie Montgomery Rice; former 23andMe Therapeutics CSO Richard Scheller; and retired ECMC Foundation president Peter Taylor.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include details from Anne Wojcicki’s memo to 23andMe employees.