What Went Wrong at uBiome, Part 2

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

News, Daily News, Business News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

uBiome raised millions of dollars in venture funding with the promise that insurance companies would pay for its customers' microbiome tests. But that pursuit ultimately led to an FBI raid and a federal indictment alleging a fraud scheme. WSJ's Amy Dockser Marcus tells the story of uBiome's spectacular downfall. Plus, we try to track down uBiome's leaders, Jessica Richman and Zac Apte, who the government says are fugitives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, today we're bringing you part two of what went wrong at you biome.
0:10.9	If you haven't heard part one, start there.
0:13.3	It's in your feed.
0:16.9	Previously, you biome had an exciting new concept.
0:21.0	They build themselves as the 23NB of poop.
0:24.4	Yeah, you're poop.
0:25.9	We want all of your poop.
0:27.7	A take home test for the microbiome sold directly to consumers.
0:33.2	They had just raised a hot mass of money, and so spirits were pretty high.
0:39.2	Then you biome introduced a new product called SmartGut, and we now have this clinical
0:45.5	test, which is truly a medical product.
0:48.2	Well, the culture was very secretive.
0:51.4	I said, you know, look, I was being polite there.
0:55.9	I don't want to be listed as an advisor because I don't think you're doing things correctly.
1:02.6	It's always tough to tell the difference between incompetence and deception.
1:09.2	And for a lot of us, it was just hard to tell whether we had crossed that line or not.
1:14.2	Today, in part two, you biome comes under scrutiny.
1:20.7	Our colleague, Amy Doxer-Marcus, is going to take it from here.
1:28.5	In 2017, you biome was a company to watch.
1:31.8	It had launched two new products, SmartGut and SmartJane, and it was getting great publicity.
1:38.2	Jessica Richmond, you biome CEO, was a keynote speaker at a Harvard Medical School Conference.
1:43.7	I'm really, really grateful for Jessica for having come here.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Wall Street Journal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Wall Street Journal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.