23andMe will appeal to more and more masses as genetics becomes core part of health care says CEO

And welcome, I want to start off with the impact of this economy on your business. Help me understand as consumers potentially have less to spend on discretionary things. What's the impact there? And then you did also call out inflation's impact on some of the company's costs. For sure. I think a couple things. There's no doubt, you know, consumers are tightening their wallet that they are definitely being conservative about, you know, how they want to, you know, think about spending. At the same time, one thing that we did see during COVID, and I do think that trend continues, is that people are very, even more mindful of their health. And you definitely start to see that more and more as people are thinking about how they can be proactive about managing their health, how they can stay healthy longer. So one of the key things that genetics does for an individual is it helps you understand your risks and really helps you, you know, be healthier longer and understand if you do have a condition, how can you better optimize that? So we definitely do see increases in costs. You know, you see that with labor costs. We see that. We have not seen a huge amount cut through suppliers, but we definitely see that with labor. My sense, and correct me where I'm wrong here, is that there is a certain population of people that are into the quantified self, right? The people who are wearing their Apple watches and checking this and that metric every day, and perhaps who proactively signed up to 23andMe and are participating in those sorts of studies. But to reach the mass market, do you need more partnerships with healthcare providers, with doctors who are walking people through the genetic reports and the implications and helping them to understand it? And how much of that is part of your strategy? I think, look, I think that the trends, and again, if you look at the data, more and more there is a consumer element of healthcare. And people are really, it's not, it's more about a partnership between things that you have to do on your own and things that you get from your physician. So more and more people are stepping up, and I would disagree strongly, like that 23andMe is just on the quantified self individuals. This is absolutely a product that will, you know, that does appeal to the masses and will appeal more and more to the masses as genetics becomes a core part of healthcare. So one of the key things we did last quarter is we hired two individuals who are incredible leaders in the genomic medicine space. And what we see is this opportunity to integrate genetic information in all aspects of primary care. And I think one of the big disconnects here is that there's all, you know, we see personalization in the entire economy, but you don't have that largely in healthcare. You know, you look at your prevention recommendations. We're all told to get a colonoscopy at the same time. We're all told to get mammograms at the same time. But there's a whole opportunity for us to actually start to personalize that. And that is exactly what 23andMe is going to be leading. And we're developing that expertise in genomic medicine that will be applicable to all aspects of healthcare. That is a compelling case. Dan, it's Deirdre, by the way. I wanted to ask you a broader question in the healthcare space, especially among competition. With Amazon's acquisition or planned announced acquisition of First Medical, what kind of player do you think that they will be in the space? And you guys rely so heavily on Amazon, things like Prime Day to sell your kits. Do you have any worry that Amazon now knows who's buying your kit, who your customer is, and that they could eventually compete with you? I'm thrilled to see more individuals getting into healthcare in a serious way. And if you think about it, healthcare is a $4 trillion industry that everyone agrees is relatively dysfunctional. No one raises their hand and says, I love the experience. So if Amazon's coming in and they can provide care in a new way that is going to really be more efficient and better for individuals, that's great. But going back to what I just said, 23andMe is going to be the genomic medicine experts here. So we will be able to partner with all those various groups to say, we can help you really understand how to apply genetic information to those individuals to see whether or not there's an application and whether or not they can be better managed with their genetic data.