Friday: up late and early

I was up late last night finishing Stacey Abrams’ _While Justice Sleeps_. It was a ton of fun, lots of little puzzles strung together — chess puzzles that mean little to me, law puzzles that I probably only understand partly, a scavenger hunt. But there are also the ongoing puzzles throughout the book about how the various characters relate to each other, and whether those relationships retain the ability to change. Abrams did a really amazing job depicting the addiction damaged, complex relationship between the protagonist, Avery, and her mother, Rita, and how that shaped who Avery is. It’s not clear if there will be more books with Avery in them, but I’d sure read a lot of them if Abrams writes them.

Yesterday’s podcast interview ended abruptly when the other person’s internet went down (for several hours), but good news, what we had done was not lost, so we wrapped up the rest this morning. I had put the shirt I had on for it aside, so hopefully the continuity on the video that no one will watch won’t be too bad.

Also yesterday was 2 weeks from my second shot! So I am now Free to Move About, altho of course Massachusetts won’t be lifting mask mandates generally until May 29. Still, it is nice to no longer have any particular concerns about getting or transmitting The Thing. Also, tomorrow I get to go on a double date with my husband and friends of ours. Indoors! At a bar! So exciting!

Payment Streams or Unspecified Shenanigans

Maybe I’ve been reading Matt Levine’s column for a little too long, but when I learned that Blackstone had bought Ancestry, I immediately thought, yeah, nice juicy little payment stream there; of course Blackstone wants it.

Apparently, everyone who is not in finance assumes there are other motives.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-04-13/column-blackstone-ancestry-genetic-privacy

“I don’t believe for a second that Blackstone bought Ancestry simply because they love people,” Ruge said. “You don’t spend $4.7 billion unless you have a plan to make it back, and more.” [Ruge is a long-time researcher into her own family tree, using Ancestry.]

Also:

“Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. “I don’t believe it for a second.””

“Amy Lynn McGuire, a professor of biomedical ethics at Baylor College of Medicine, said that regardless of what Blackstone says now, “that could change with changes in leadership and as new business opportunities present.””

“”It’s naive to think Blackstone would spend almost $5 billion for an asset it has no plans to exploit, said Ellen W. Clayton, a professor of law and health policy at Vanderbilt University. “Why else would they buy it?” she asked.”

All I can really say here is what is obviously Blackstone’s motive, and which Blackstone is quoted as giving as its motive repeatedly in the article: We Bought It Because It Is A Nice, Juicy Payment Stream.

I would add, in addition to that, given what little I know about the Juiciness of that payment stream from the outside, $5B is a screaming deal for that payment stream. Especially since if you, say, wanted to duplicate that payment stream with any kind of debt instrument, it would take 5-10 times as much money currently. Best of all, _Everything_ about genetic genealogy indicates that the growth runway is … ample.

“Exploiting” DNA through Ancestry is simple: tell people they can pay $100 or whatever they currently charge for each person to spit in a cup, mail it in, and then look at all their nth cousins. Oh, but if they want to _keep_ looking at their cousins, they’ll need to cough up an additional $30 a month, or thereabouts.

No one, and I mean _no one_ is going to disrupt that Juicy of a payment stream with any other effort to monetize the data that Ancestry has access to.

ETA:

This seems to be Ellen W. Clayton:

https://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/ellen-clayton

She has a really impressive list of initials from a remarkable group of institutions. I am sure she is smarter than me. I mean, obviously. However, smarter != better at understanding money, and both doctors and lawyers are notorious for being spectacularly bad at investing. Professors are not generally _as bad_ as doctors and lawyers, but they are definitely worse than average, and she has achieved the trifecta of Incredibly Brilliant While Simultaneously Unable to Grasp Investing.

This seems so simple, tho. $30 a _month_. A $100 a vial. You can give it as a present to everyone at the holidays, and then they too will probably sign up at $30 a month for at least a while. Genealogy is shockingly addictive as a hobby and extremely respectable. The older you get, the more likely you are to find it appealing. _It_ _is_ _an_ _immune_ _to_ _inflation_ _demographic_. Unlike signing up for a streaming service, there is essentially no churn. For $5 B, you get some perverted cross between a golden goose and a cash cow.

I haven’t even mentioned how one of the most successful religions in the country considers participation in genealogical research to be a core component of their spiritual practice. Nor have I mentioned the shocking lack of competition for Ancestry. I particularly haven’t gotten into how the limited competition that does exist for Ancestry is all _non-payment-stream_, offline, etc. And if you are sitting around thinking, gosh, What Might They Do With My DNA!?! And want to go with an open / freebie thing, well, _they_ were crucial to catching a whole bunch of serial killers recently.

ETA: Above, I said $5B didn’t sound like that much money to me (and they did not pay that — it was $4.7B). Just for reference purposes, I’m reading about the winter Texas energy event from a few months ago over at ars:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/texas-gov-knew-of-natural-gas-shortages-days-before-blackout-blamed-wind-anyway/

When the Samsung fab in Austin shut down, they lost all the wafers in production. How much did that cost?

$268M.

NXP lost $100M. And Samsung and NXP both lost a month of missed production on top of that.

$4.7B is not that big a deal.