Full genome 30x coverage + mtDNA for $299 at Dante Labs now!

Question

I'm sorry if this runs afoul of any rules although I have no connection with Dante Labs, but this is too good not to share.

Dante Labs is now offering a promotion on 30x coverage full genome sequence including full mtDNA sequence for $299 (or 259 euro), marked down from $899.

This is an incredible deal to get high quality results on all your sequenceable DNA. Many of us paid much more for just mtDNA or limited Y DNA results.

DNA has been getting cheaper over time but in the near term this is an incredible deal as the real cost of this test for machine time and materials is ~$1000. Maybe they are trying to turn things around from the recent botch where they sent 5 used kits back to new customers :-O due to a vendor screwup. If so I am more than happy to jump on this. Sequence the whole family!

EDIT: I see they had a Black Friday sale last year for $199 briefly and had delays in fulfilling them, so there's that. I missed it so I'm still going to go for this, I personally don't mind a delay, but don't expect to get kits or results overnight.

Looks like this firm is heavily subsidized by investors and likely indirectly by the Chinese government; they seem to have issues with quality, timeliness, and communications, but with patience and persistence this would still seem to be a good deal.

Answer 1

Too good a deal to miss. I ordered the kit!

Comments

Picked my kit up from the office today, it has probably been sitting there a couple of days. I had an issue getting the blue liquid to work, had to cut the top off the little container and pour it in. But the whole process was simple enough. I'll try to get it in the mail tomorrow.

It came from Germany to Australia in less than nine days.

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Progress report:

I waited until last Tuesday to email Dante that their shipping labels hadn't been sent for five days, and that their system seemed to have lost my transaction details after I entered the kit number. Francesco got back immediately to say they had found the problem, and the labels duly arrived.

There's a trap. DO NOT remove the self-adhesive strip and seal the package, despite what the instruction sheet tells you. The courier needs to inspect inside before accepting it, which is explained by the DHL instructions.

You'll need access to a laser printer to print the labels, nothing else can do the fine printing needed. Use a print shop if you don't have one available. Ideally you would use an A4 self-adhesive label and manually trim the sheet, but I got away with using one that has four quarter sheet sized labels on it. Don't forget the delivery receipt for the driver.

My kit is now awaiting the courier pickup. 16 days from order, it's all done. I notice that they've set the price at $599 now, glad I got in when it was cheaper.

Answer 2

Yes, no one has yet got anything back from them from those of us that ordered through the Black Friday deal.

But it’s good that you guys keep buying their offers/DNA tests as this hopefully avoids them running out of cash and going bankrupt.

BTW, they aren’t heavily subsidized, http://www.seedinvest.com reports that they raised $536,190 so far. This is the only investor that is reported at pitchbook.com for this privately held company

Comments

If they aren't heavily subsidized one way or another, ordering more kits at this price is going to make them worse off, not better. Even running nanoball machines in China, they are losing a lot of money on every test.

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Sorry Nathan, I wasn’t precise enough what I meant. It helps us as you finance the loss they probably make with the Black Friday prize (as some work is outsourced and only so much can be cut internally but not externally).

So it’s a bit of a snowball system, extended the runway (that a startup has) by pushing out more loss making offers to get fresh money in and all the while hope that your cost decreases enough that you will eventually recover your losses.

Just look at Elon Musks Tesla and you can see the same scheme just amplified by 1000x

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Apparently they have their own lab now, because I had to return the package to Italy, which is where it came from. Did you ever get your results?

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Rob, that's probably their logistics contractor. In the US my package went to Spectrum DNA in Utah. As far as I know they still use BGISEQ nanoball machines. Whether that's still done in their Chinese lab with their BGI partnership I can't confirm; most likely. Those are a big capital investment and a big part of their cost equation as the sequencing with the BGI tech is cheaper than Illumina tech used by most competitors. If they switched that would be apparent in the raw data they ship. But I only know what's in the public domain.

The return delivery on my kit was on February 25, but Dante Labs still lists it as "Waiting confirmation from Dante Labs", which doesn't bode well for their backlog.

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They do quote several months for a result so I wouldn't be too concerned just yet. If I don't have it by the end of May I'll start to sweat. :)