You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

You can find podcasts and videos of these lectures online at eChorner.standford.edu.

On today's episode, we have Anne Wigiske, the CEO and co-founder of 23Mee, a genomics and

biotechnology company that provides genetic testing. The company's personal genome test kit

was named Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2008, and in October 2013, Fast Company

named Anne the most daring CEO. She holds a BS in biology from Yale.

Here's Anne. I would love for you to tell us your story of what happened from getting from being a

biology major. Do we have any biology managers here? Okay, a handful of biology. I was actually, I did my

PhD in neuroscience,

so I'm a biologist as well. And how did you go from that to starting 23 Me? Can you give a little

bit of a snapshot of your story? Sure. So I think the real, like that's the advice I give to young

people now, like the reality is whatever you think your life is going to be

at the age of like 18 to 22, your life will not be that. And so in some ways, like the best

thing you can do is just really push yourself to keep learning. And I was really lucky because

my parents were people who really didn't worry about, like, oh, you have to find what you want to do right away,

and they, like, were really supportive of, you know, you should find what you're really passionate

about. So I graduated. I was a biology major. I always dreamed. I was like, oh, I should so

want to be a doctor. Like, I like, I love my pediatrician. I like sick people. I love medicine.

Like, I love molecular biology. I find it so fascinating.

But there was something that just didn't feel right. And so I graduated college and I was one of those

people I graduated with no job plan. So I drove cross country. I was a nanny. I nannied actually for

a Stanford professor, John Donahue, and his wife in the law

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