Each year the Thiel Foundation, an organization led by billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel, gives $100,000 to a handful of young startup founders with one requirement: They must drop out of college.
This year's crop of Thiel fellows includes Chicagoan Ana Cornell, a 21-year-old former engineering student at Northwestern University. Cornell is the founder and CEO of Acorn Genetics, a startup that provides privacy-focused, at-home DNA testing kits.
Cornell said she'll invest the $100,000 back into Acorn as she begins working on the business full time. Dropping out of school wasn't a terribly agonizing decision, she said, given the pandemic disruptions to traditional college life.
"College as I knew and loved it ended in March of 2020," she said.
In an email Q&A, Cornell talks more about her decision to drop out of school, why the Thiel Fellowship was appealing, and the genesis of Acorn. The interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity.
Why did you apply for the Thiel Fellowship program? What was appealing about it?
I applied for the Thiel Fellowship because I felt like school was holding me back. With some members of my team graduating, and my classes getting increasingly more difficult as I approached the senior year of my biomedical engineering degree from Northwestern University, I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up the pace and development of Acorn if I remained fully in school. As classes went remote during Covid, I found there to be even less value in my degree, as I was suddenly restricted from the mechatronics lab, shop tools that I was using, and the lab where I conducted the majority of my research. After months of Zooming into lectures from my room at my parents' house and struggling to learn real-world skills, I went part time with my class load, devoted myself entirely to Acorn, and submitted the application for the Thiel Fellowship.
Was dropping out a difficult decision to make?
For me, dropping out was a fairly easy decision. My education had already been disrupted significantly as a result of the pandemic, and I had grown Acorn past the point of being able to be a full-time, in-person student and run it to the degree that I would have liked to. I will miss college, but even if I were to go ahead and be a full-time student for my senior year, college as I knew and loved it ended in March of 2020.
Tell me more about Acorn. How did the company begin and what problems are you tackling?
Acorn Genetics started out of a personal need of mine. My family has a genetic condition found in three members on my father's side, including him. I wanted to get tested for it, but found that insurance wouldn't cover the cost, and as a result the test would be several thousand dollars. I also looked into existing commercial genetic testing companies, but found a lot of concerning information about the lack of privacy in their data selling practices. Unwilling to break the bank or have my DNA be a part of a traded database, I decided to take my years of research in various genetic labs, the skills I had gained from my biomedical engineering degree, and my intimate understanding of the problem to design what we call the AcornLab. As I was working on the design, I also started talking to people about the problem I was experiencing, and found a massive untapped market of privacy concerned individuals such as myself. After going through a National Science Foundation program and interviewing over 100 people about genetic testing, I only became more certain in the mission of Acorn Genetics.
What will you do with the $100,000?
The entirety of $100,000 will be invested back into Acorn to make it a reality. I'm primarily going to be putting it into prototype development, since I already have a grant of about $50,000 from the NSF to use for customer discovery and research.
Do you anticipate remaining in Chicago?
I will likely stay in Chicago for the next few years, since my team is still very strongly linked to Northwestern. I love Chicago, and I'm a Chicagoan born and raised, and would want to stay in the city. That being said, I will be moving to wherever Acorn will have the greatest chance of success after these next couple years.
