How World Genetics Built a Scalable Instant DNA Analysis SaaS for Ethnicity Insights

World Genetics started as short-form videos about the genetic makeup of various ethnicities. This did especially well on TikTok and Instagram, so I kept posting these regularly and quickly grew a large audience. I wasn't happy with what DNA testing companies were offering (lack of data about genetic distance to both modern and ancient ethnicities, no ancestral breakdown, no heatmap/PCA), so I figured more people were probably feeling the same way about it. The thing is that the tools available at the time were quite niche and required extensive research, so I decided to use my knowledge and sell customer-friendly personalized ancestry reports. I started doing them manually, but it was quite slow and not scalable. I realized it wasn't great for customers either, as they had to wait for their report and it wasn't an interactive format. So that's why I built World Genetics, to allow people to get an instant DNA analysis beyond results from traditional DNA testing companies.

Worked, - Dynamic short-form videos involving real people from the ethnicity I'm talking about, extremely viral for some ethnic groups, quite easy to replicate. - Summary of DNA studies as carousel (Instagram), threads (X/Threads), or single image posts with a long description (Facebook), both educational and interesting. - SEO using a detailed page for each ethnicity showing their genetic makeup, the closest ethnicities to them, and more info about their ancestry. That way, if a person searches for "[insert ethnicity] DNA," they end up on my website. Flopped, - AI videos, on paper they look scalable but in my experience, they usually don't do that well. It might somewhat work on some social networks depending on the format, though (ok results on Facebook). - Not adapting the content format to the type of social network. For example, carousel posts don't work on Threads, but the same exact post as a thread goes viral. A short-form video might go viral on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook but will flop on X, as it's mainly a text-centered social media.

People had trouble saving or retrieving results when I first launched the web app since I didn't have an account system yet, and their results would only be temporarily available on the browser they were using at the time of purchase. What happened is that they would often end up on my website from an organic social media post, from Instagram, for example. The problem is that they would purchase a report from the Instagram browser, and they wouldn't have access to it once they tried to access the website again from another browser. That's why I decided to have an account system for all people who want to use the app. That way, purchases are automatically saved in the "saved coordinates" section, and they can always access it by logging in using their Google account. I'm still thinking about only having the account system for paying customers. I still need to test whether this creates too much "pre-payment friction" or not.

One might think that the journey of a customer ends when they get their DNA results with fixed percentages telling them they're X% this and Y% that, but they always want to know more and dive deeper into their ancestry. Additional features such as new ancestral breakdown calculators or expanded databases are always welcome. This is why raw data provided by DNA testing companies has value beyond the report they sell. Once people have their data, they can still use it on multiple websites that offer additional data on ancestry or health. I also think the "social" aspect of population genetics is still undervalued. People really like to share their results and compare themselves to others (see how active the 23andMe subreddit is), and as far as I know, there are currently no good features related to this. This would also allow expanding the database for currently under-sampled ethnicities.

Posting short-form videos regularly as this works really well to bring traffic to my website, more presence in other social media (mostly X), expanding the modern population database and making the ancient population labels more user-friendly, improving ancestry modeling for non-West Eurasian ethnicities (additional calculators), adding more heatmap-related tools (timeline, info about labels) and making it more accurate in general, adding more languages (only English, French, and Spanish available for now), making it possible for users to share their coordinates.

Over 1,500 sign-ups and 100 paying customers last month.

I created different types of video content for years and decided to do it for population genetics since I had an interest in it for years. I knew about video editing and had already created viral short-form content for other creators, so I used it to make videos in a niche I was interested in, in a dynamic. In just a few months, I managed to build a very large audience and became number 1 in my niche on several social media platforms. I already knew how to use different genetics-related software and tools, so I decided to sell ancestry reports to my audience.

The biggest mistake was the initial product flow. The whole uploading DNA, paying, and retrieving results journey wasn't clear enough and was confusing for a lot of customers. One customer even ended up paying multiple times because he wasn't properly getting to his results. I underestimated how confusing it could be for first-time results and was more focused on developing and improving different tools. I was also thinking primarily about delivering the analysis, rather than what customers would want to do afterward. This is why I introduced the account system later on so that customers could always come back to see their results.