23andMe President Andy Page, who has been in his role since 2013, will depart the company in December, according to a letter sent to employees by CEO Anne Wojcicki. It was unclear where Page is going, if anywhere, but he will remain as a board member of the personal genomics company. In the letter, Wojcicki said that “Andy and I recognize 23andMe is at a stage of strength and maturity where it would benefit from one single leader. Moving forward, Andy’s direct reports will report to me.” In his tenure, Page spent much of the time scaling the consumer business and its management team, tripling its employee base to more than 300 and growing its database of genetic information. He had been in charge of a wide swath of 23andMe, including product and engineering, marketing, finance, business development, laboratory operations and legal and regulatory issues. Page came to 23andMe from the Gilt Groupe, where he also served as president. Previous to that, he has been CFO at both PlayPhone and StubHub. He also worked at Panasas, ONI Systems and Robertson Stephens. Almost as soon as Page arrived, he and Wojcicki had their hands full with a full-blown crisis. After receiving a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration in November of 2013 about the efficacy of its direct-to-consumer health testing kits, it had to stop selling them in the U.S. Two years later, 23andMe brought itself into compliance by limiting the information it could provide to a smaller number of screenable diseases and was able to offer the $199 genetic “spit” tests again in 2015. It also offers its service in Canada as well as in some European countries, and has a research services business. But 23andMe recently stopped its efforts in developing “next-generation sequencing,” a new arena in the field that other startups like Helix and Color are working on, to focus on its core offering. This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
President of 23andMe , Andy Page , is to leave the company in December , according to a letter sent to employees by CEO Anne ##bard . It is unclear where he is going , but he will remain a board member . In his time at the company , Page scaled the consumer business and its management team , tripling its employee base to 300 , and growing its database of genetic information . Almost as soon as he arrived , he and colleagues had their hands full with a regulatory approval , prompting a warning from the FDA that led to them withdrawing their direct - to - consumer testing kits .