“Who am I?” YouGene’s Answer - Vasily & Raegan Piccone | #85

Raegan Piccone (0:00)

And the issue with personality tests like MBTI and identity tools like that is every time you take them, there's about a 40, 50% chance that you'll get a different result than the last time. Well, with genetics, genetics are hard coded, so you don't have any subjective kind of metric.

It's something concrete and definitive that is stable across time.

Vasily Piccone (0:21)

You go on Ancestry, you go on 23andMe, it's cool you got this beautiful, colorful map, but in terms of action ability, there's nothing. In terms of knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and how you should tweak your lifestyle, there isn't much there.

That was a big motivator for us to start YouGene, which is how can we take this very rich, this very new data source and turn it into something people can actually make informed decisions on.

Nathan Halberstadt (1:07)

I'm joined today by Vasily Piccone and Raegan Piccone. They're co-founders at YouGene. Vasily has a background in aerospace, including at SpaceX, and he's the co-founder and CEO, and Raegan is the chief science officer, and she has a background in law and also in biochemistry.

I am extremely excited to talk about this startup because they're in the business of genetic testing and genetics and working to improve our ability to, let's say, well, maybe I'll just ask you, what does Eugene do and why did you start Eugene? Yeah.

Vasily Piccone (1:52)

So in a nutshell, Eugene reads your character stats out from your DNA. So at a high level, you have a score across cognition, athleticism, aesthetics, energy and longevity out of 100 that we get from compiling various single markers and various polygenetic scores.

This is very different from the interface that current genetic testing companies have. Because you go on Ancestry, you go on 23andMe. It's cool, you got this beautiful, colorful map. But in terms of action ability, there's nothing. And in terms of knowing your strengths and your weaknesses, and how you should tweak your lifestyle, there isn't much there. So that was a big motivator for us to start YouGene, which is how can we take this very rich, this very new data source and turn it into something people can actually make informed decisions on?

Nathan Halberstadt (2:53)

When I think about why somebody buys a genetic test, let's say Ancestry or 23andMe, there are maybe two things that come to mind. One is maybe they're screening for some sort of, maybe there's some health related reason or something like that. But more often, I think it's probably just something like, they want to know who they are. It's an identity question.

Raegan, I'm curious what you think about the landscape of how people answer that identity question. I saw the personality test and other things, and where you think there are strengths and weaknesses in the existing landscape?

Raegan Piccone (3:35)

It depends on the specific demographic, but I believe in 21st century America, there's been some atomization that's led to a individual seeking out of identity tools and identity products. Something like, number was over 200 million people had taken MBTI, and over 80% of the Fortune 500 had used it. So not only was it being used as an identity product, it was also being used as some type of corporate tool in terms of sussing out the individual traits of prospective employees or employees.

And so people, not only do people look for people looking for identity tools, they like to quantify themselves. So something like MBTI, it's kind of a soft way to quantify yourself, and it's using subjective metrics. And the issue with personality tests like MBTI and identity tools like that is every time you take them, there's about a 40-50% chance that you'll get a different result than the last time. Well, with genetics, genetics are hard-coded, so you don't have any subjective kind of metric.

It's something concrete and definitive that is stable across time. And so I think that as an identity tool is much more stable and useful for empowering decision-making than something like MBTI.

Nathan Halberstadt (5:10)

Yeah, and that's the example you gave. When I was at BCGI, we did an MBTI. I think in our onboarding training, we had a half-day MBTI tip and it was to understand our working style or something like this. But there's a whole other suite of these things. I remember in college the Enneagram was very popular.

I never really did. I was told I was a lot of different, like this number with like a wing, something else, no idea. But I think what you're getting at is that, well, there's two issues with these. One is they're not really rooted in any good science, or let's say they're not rooted in it, they're not sufficiently rigorous. But yeah, it's the fact that people, they do change quite a bit across their life. You could have some significant life experience happen, and you could maybe like shift on the MBTI scale of it based on how that changes you maybe. But your genetics don't change.