Usually, introductory meetings with startup executives are perfunctory and fade to irrelevance within an hour. But I still remember the first moment I met 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki in 2007.
My editor at the time had set up a meeting between my reporting partner and I and Wojcicki, along with 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey, at an upscale sandwich shop on East 13th Street in New York City. It was a hot day. Three of us were already chatting when Wojcicki careened in, began talking at a mile a minute, and unselfconsciously grabbed a glass of water from the table — my glass — and took a big sip.
That moment has stuck in my head because it sums up so much about who Wojcicki has always been as she has lived what must be one of the 21st century’s most interesting lives, pinballing through a world of biology, high tech, and finance. She is someone who indefatigably but sometimes carelessly has managed to take what she needs, and given her dedication to her mission, it generally seems pretty much OK when she does so.
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