At a dinner last night at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 23andMe founders Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki announced that they are providing 1,000 free 23andMe personal DNA testing kits to conference attendees. Damn, I thought, I already paid $1,000 (more) for my kit (so much for the benefits of being an early adopter). Rumor is the company is also sending 100 free kits to attendees of the TED conference.
Anyway, after long minutes of negotiation regarding a refund since I could now get a kit for free, Linda and Anne agreed to give one more kit out, to give to a lucky TechCrunch reader. Just tell me in the comments why knowing your genetic background is important to you, and we’ll choose a winner. We’ll stop comments after 24 hours and choose then.
The company won’t say how many kits have been purchased, other than commenting that sales are “way above expectations.” Yesterday the company started selling kits in Europe and Canada. And they just recently launched their corporate blog, fittingly called “The Spittoon.”
I just recently got my 23andMe test results back. I’ll be posting highlights next week.