- Headquarters: Pasadena, CA
- US Employees: 25
- Industry/Focus: Consumer genomics
- Year founded: 2014
When CEO Brandon Colby founded consumer genomics firm Sequencing.com in 2014, fully remote companies were still seen as an unusual niche. Now, the company’s remote roots allow flexibility, efficiency, and a “Silicon Valley mentality,” according to Colby. “The company was founded with this remote culture, and COVID just gave us more tools and more validation that it could work,” he said. “It allows us to bring in the best of the best onto our team, no matter where they are.”
Sequencing.com, officially headquartered in Pasadena, CA, offers genetic testing and analysis directly to consumers. The company has a single goal, according to Colby: to change the lives of its customers for the better. “It's different than other [consumer genomics] organizations, … where the customer is the product: where you sell genetic testing to them, you get their DNA, and then you sell access to that DNA data to some third party,” he said. “We don't do that at all. Everything that we do comes back to, ‘How can we improve the experience of our customer?’ … It's a unique model, but it also makes our employees feel really good about the model.”
Sequencing.com is a small company with a relatively flat organizational structure where everyone is encouraged to propose business ideas at regular “Ideas Meetings,” and roles are often fluid, Colby said. “Everyone executes. Everyone works on things. Even myself as CEO. It's not pure strategy. I am going and helping to execute a lot of the ideas that people put forward,” he said. This type of organization, while not for everyone, gives employees the opportunity to work on many different kinds of projects, he added. An important precept at Sequencing.com is “great is not good enough,” Colby said. “We all strive — every member of every team — to always do better than we did the previous day — just a little bit better.”
While being fully remote saves employees time and money on commuting and other expenses, it also allows for a diversity of lifestyles, Colby said. “It’s almost like changing into a different type of person for employees to go into an office, putting on different clothes that they would normally not wear, preparing themselves both mentally and physically to be presentable in the office, then all the cues of being in meetings in person,” he said. “Not having to do any of that allows people, I think, to maintain a lot more individuality, and we highly respect that.”
The remote culture also allows for an optimal work-life balance, as employees can work when and where they want, as long as they’re committed to making their work a little better each day. Employees are instructed to leave their work computers at home during vacation. Sequencing.com offers 10 paid holidays a year, 15 vacation days in the first year of employment, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and 20 hours of paid volunteer time. Additionally, the company matches retirement contributions and offers tuition reimbursement for work-related courses.