The New Era of Consumer DNA Tests

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
You feel comfy?

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:01)
I feel ready to go. Ready, yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:03)
All right, I think we're locked in. We're good. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, if there's nothing else I could tell you.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:12)
Let's get started.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:12)
We'll go into it. All right. Kian Sadeghi.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:16)
Sadeghi.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:17)
Sadeghi, okay, I wanna do it over again.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:19)
Okay, do it.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:20)
I prepared for this. I listened to other videos where people said it, but I knew, I was like, did they say it right?

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:26)
Yeah, it's hard, it's hard, it's a hard name.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:28)
That's what I was worried, okay. Kian Sadeghi.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:44)
Sadeghi, yes, yeah, that's correct.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:45)
Thank you for rolling in here. You are the co-founder and CEO of Nucleus Genomics.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:51)
Founder, CEO.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:52)
Just founder.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:52)
Just founder, there's actually no co-founders.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:54)
It's important to make that distinction.

**Kian Sadeghi** (0:56)
Yeah, I mean, I think it is.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:58)
No, no, it is, it's good. All right, I'm just gonna do a little, I'm just gonna introduce people to you, just a little bit.

**Kian Sadeghi** (1:03)
Okay.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:04)
And then we'll jump in. But, so Nucleus, we're gonna get into it pretty deep, but it's a new type of DNA testing, and there's lots of ins and outs to it. You went to the University of Pennsylvania.

**Kian Sadeghi** (1:16)
Briefly.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:16)
You are a dropout, you're a Teal fellow, so fallen into that camp. I think the company started in 2021

**Kian Sadeghi** (1:25)
Yes, it was incorporated, yes.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:26)
And then you've been rolling out new services, you have a service, if I remember right, the one that you really first started getting attention for was around measuring people's IQ.

**Kian Sadeghi** (1:37)
Yeah, we do an adult DNA testing, which includes traits like IQ, all the way to diseases as well.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:42)
Right, and then just in the last month, I think, launched Nucleus Embryo.

**Kian Sadeghi** (1:47)
Yeah, so we have basically three main products. One is the DNA health product, Nucleus Health, you can think of it as. Another is genetic matching, so you can see if you're a match with your partner, basically if your care is for the same rare hereditary marker, and then now we have Nucleus Embryo. So one of the things that's really unique about us as a business is we go the entire stack, right? So we do basically sequencing and analysis from adults, now all the way to embryos, which I think really violates a lot of the underlying assumptions of what it means to be a genetics company today.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:15)
We're going to get into all this. I just wanted to cover some of the bases.

**Kian Sadeghi** (2:19)
Are we live though?

**Ashlee Vance** (2:19)
Yeah, we're live.

**Kian Sadeghi** (2:20)
We're going.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:21)
We're going, man. I have to. Before we get too much farther, I just have to say that this podcast was made possible by the good people at E1 Ventures. We'll give them a little applause.

**Kian Sadeghi** (2:34)
Okay, what will these buttons do is the question now. Does that one, does that?

**Ashlee Vance** (2:38)
We got good sounds, but I try not to go too wild with the soundboard. That was just a little love for the people helping us along. Okay, so the note, that was just the intro. Now we'll get in to the good stuff. I mean, I don't think this is meant to be as radical as it sounds. I guess you're, I would say, a lively and semi-controversial figure, I think, in this realm. Yeah, I mean, you guys, you made a big play. At one point, as 23andMe was going through financial difficulties.

**Kian Sadeghi** (3:13)
That's a whole other story. That could be another podcast.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:15)
Which I want to get into. There's some people who gripe online. You're not alone in this. Companies like Orchid get these gripes about eugenics and things like that with these DNA tests. And then there's some people when you launch the IQ tests that were grumbly about, like, can we trust the science on all this? And then beyond all that, you're just like, you're a good marketer, you're active on Twitter, you're, yeah, like I said, lively, I think is fair.

**Kian Sadeghi** (3:39)
I think that's a, yeah, I think that's true.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:41)
Okay. So I want to, I mean, I want to cover the company's technology. I do want to do like a little bit on your backstory first. I mean, I think you're of Persian-Iranian descent. Correct. And your father immigrated to the United States.