Talking20 is an ambitious startup attempting to make a wide variety of blood tests available at the surprisingly cheap price of $2 per test. Getting the drop of blood needed will still be a pain, but doing it at home and mailing in a postcard will simplify the process a lot.
If this succeeds it would dramatically increase our knowledge of things such as our cholesterol levels.
But I get the impression that they are being rather optimistic about how quickly they can get enough sales volume to make money.
Their attempt to use Indiegogo doesn’t appear to be as appropriate to their needs as seeking angel or VC investment would be.
I’m also concerned that the institutions they would compete with will try to get them regulated in ways that would drastically increase their costs.
I’m somewhat tempted to order something from them via Indiegogo, but I’m not confident in their ability to deliver.
You seem to imply that your last paragraph follows from your previous paragraphs. It seems to me that you need an additional hypothesis, either that you also worry about their failing in a month or that you’re not interested in one-off testing, but want a steady stream of highly comparable tests.
One reason not to want one-off testing is that you don’t trust the quality of the results. But then you probably don’t want to be the first customer, even if the company is going to continue. If you’re worried about systematic biases, a long stream of tests addresses that and being the first customer is OK.
If you are interested in one-off testing and you think they will deliver cards and results in a month, then you might worry that you can use one card, but they will fail or be shut down before you use the other two. If you would buy these tests at current market cost, it is worth the gamble (but maybe timing and bundling makes the hypothesis implausible). Alternatively, give away the other cards so that they get used immediately. (Are they tied to individuals?)
My concern is that if they don’t raise $100k to buy a mass spectrometer, they’ll be losing money on every order and may not have enough money to deliver my results or may take forever to deliver. I expect that if I get results they will be higher quality than the erratic CardioChek system I’ve been using to test my cholesterol at home.
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your interest in Talking20. Keep in mind that we have designed a price guarantee and a refund policy for our Gold Card subscribers. These subscribers make up the core of Talking20, and we hope that you will join our community soon. We are looking forward to tracking your data!
Scarlett