My Next Adventure

As many of you know, 2014 has been a challenging year for me professionally. In February my business partner and I made the decision to shut down our company, CPUsage. While the decision to do so was not as hard as I thought, the reality of closing the door on that chapter of my life was painful. Starting and running a company has been my dream since I was a young boy and I never imagined how tough it would be to walk away.

That said, I sprung back to my old self quickly and began planning my next move. Today, I am excited to announce that I have accepted a position with New Relic, a software startup that's nothing less than a rocket ship. At New Relic, I'll be the Product Manager for their latest and greatest product called Insights, a data analytics platform. New Relic is headquartered in San Francisco but I'll be based in the Portland office with about 40% of the company's total staff. If you'd like to learn more about New Relic, head on over to http://www.newrelic.com.

I'm also excited to announce that as part of a personal plan to remain involved with startups & entrepreneurship, I've signed on as an advisor at two exciting Portland companies. Both of the below named companies have products I am excited about and founders I believe in. They WILL disrupt industries and I'm honored to be along for the ride. I've limited myself to 3 advisor roles at any given time, leaving me with room for one more if the right opportunity comes along. The companies I'm currently advising are:

• SendSmart is a Unified Cloud Communications tool that allows sales people to easily communicate with their customers via phone, text, email, and social media all from a single platform. Learn more at http://www.sendsmart.com.
• Scratch-it is a unique and interactive marketing tool that infuses the engagement of a lottery scratch-it into standard email campaigns. Learn more at http://www.scratch-it.com.

In addition to active advisor roles with early stage startups, I plan to stay active in two other ways:

• Mentoring & Volunteering- I am a long time and active volunteer with Startup Weekend where I plan to participate in an increasing number of events (18 so far!). I am also humbled to be a TechStars mentor for their current startup accelerator with Sprint and their past startup accelerator with Nike. I plan to continue mentoring with TechStars corporate programs as opportunities arise and I'll be adding other startup accelerators to that list, with a new announcement coming soon!
• Speaking Engagements- I love to talk and now I finally feel that I have something valuable to say! I am currently working on a speech that can be adapted to general business or entrepreneurship and given at conferences, events, and other venues. If you know of anyone that might benefit from hearing about my experiences, please let me know! I'll be sure to invite you to my first public talk.

So, in the coming months you can find me working my butt off at New Relic, advising awesome early stage startups, volunteering for Startup Weekend, and sharing my experiences with others on stage at events. I hope to connect with each and every one of you in person soon, stay in touch!

Jeff the Great Ponders His DNA

For Christmas, I got my wife a personal genetic test for health and ancestry from a company called 23andMe. Essentially, a DNA test. After spitting in a tube and mailing it in, the company tells you all sorts of cool things like where your recent ancestors come from, where your deep genealogical roots are in the ancient world, what the chances are that you'll pass on more than 40 inherited conditions, and your chances at developing more than 250 different diseases. You also have the opportunity to contribute to important research around things like genetic diseases or even the discovery of what gene causes back hair. All that for the price of $99.

Pretty amazing to think about how far technology has come to deliver personal genetic analysis for only a hundred bucks. While this service offered by 23andMe is not a full gene sequencing, I'd like to offer an example of how far technology as come in such a short period of time. In 2005, a full genome sequencing for a single person cost approximately $17.5 million dollars. Just 7 years later in 2012, the cost had plummeted to just $7,500 (source: genome.gov). Similarly, the less complex genetic analysis at 23andMe has dropped in price. Starting out at $999 in 2007, the price dropped to to $299 and finally $99 in December of 2012.

So the price is right and I am ready to jump. Except, I have all these long term implication questions in my head. Not about how I'll handle learning about potentially scary health things or surprising ancestry, I'm fine with all that. I am worried about the privacy and legal implications.

If I become a customer of 23andMe, will I be putting my life, freedom, and/or privacy at risk in the future? Could a court subpoena my genetic information from 23andMe and use it against me in a trial? Could a health insurance company ever get their hands on my personally identifiable information and use it to effect my rates? When required to disclose health information, would I be legally and morally obligated to disclose information from the 23andMe results? Could the optionally stored saliva sample, with personally identifiable information, be handed over to anyone else in the future?

My mind is running with all sorts of crazy thoughts! Increased insurance premiums, conviction of a crime, etc, etc! Could I be denied the opportunity to be President of the United States in the future because my health isn't up to par, or because my recent ancestors were discovered to be from outside the country? Crazy thoughts, I know....but who knows what the future holds, right?

So, I'd love to hear your thoughts or if you have participated in 23andMe, your experience. If you are a legal professional, I am especially interested in your opinion.