Overview

Clear Genetics was a San Francisco-based genomics software company founded in 2016 that built AI-guided workflow tools to address a structural bottleneck in clinical genetics: too few genetic counselors to serve a rapidly growing volume of patients being sequenced. The company's core product, Gia (Genetic Information Assistant), was an NLP-powered chatbot that guided patients through consent, risk assessment, insurance navigation, and results interpretation—tasks that previously required direct counselor time. A companion product, Clinic Hub, handled clinician-side triage and care management. Rather than a failure, Clear Genetics represents a textbook capital-efficient exit: the company raised approximately $2.5M in total, deployed its product at named enterprise health systems including Geisinger and Huntsman Cancer Institute, and was acquired by Invitae in November 2019 for approximately $50M—roughly 20x its total capital raised. The founders subsequently returned to Y Combinator in 2022 with a successor company, signaling continued conviction in the underlying thesis.

Founding Story

Clear Genetics was founded in 2016 by three people whose backgrounds converged precisely on the problem they were trying to solve.

Moran Snir brought the deepest domain expertise. She had previously co-founded MorNetware with Motti Shohat, where the team built Genometer—software that by 2005 was screening 90% of Israeli pregnancies for ethnic-based carrier status.^[1] That prior company was not a startup experiment; it was a functioning population-scale genomics infrastructure product deployed in a national healthcare system. Moran also served as an officer in the IDF's elite software unit and holds a B.A. and M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering alongside an MBA from the Wharton School.^[2]

Guy Snir, Moran's husband, brought the consumer product and engineering credibility that clinical software companies often lack. He had held senior product roles at Twitter, SnappyTV, and Google/Motorola, and holds a Computer Science degree alongside an MBA from Duke and Tel Aviv University.^[3] His background meant the team could build software that patients—not just clinicians—would actually use.

Motti Shohat M.D. completed the founding team as the clinical genetics anchor. A co-founder of MorNetware alongside Moran, Shohat brought physician credibility and the institutional knowledge of how genetic workflows actually function inside health systems.^[4]

The founding insight was grounded in direct prior experience rather than market research. Genometer had already demonstrated that software could automate genetic screening at population scale in Israel. The founders' observation was that the US clinical genetics system faced an identical structural problem—rapidly expanding genomic testing volumes colliding with a fixed supply of trained genetic counselors—but lacked the software infrastructure to address it. As Moran Snir later articulated: "Having to talk to a genetic counselor every time we want information is not an effective use of these experts."^[5]

The team entered Y Combinator's Winter 2017 batch, which provided $2.5M in seed capital, a US enterprise sales network, and the credibility needed to open doors at major health systems.^[6] The husband-and-wife co-founding structure and shared Israeli entrepreneurial background gave the team unusual cohesion for an early-stage company navigating a complex regulated market.

The founding mission, as Moran Snir stated at the time of acquisition, was explicit from day one: "We founded Clear Genetics with a mission to simplify the genetic testing process for as many people as possible by providing easy-to-use, automated tools that help both patient and clinician from initial appointment to results."^[7]

Timeline

• 2005 — Moran Snir and Motti Shohat co-found MorNetware; Genometer software begins screening 90% of Israeli pregnancies for carrier status, establishing the founders' proof-of-concept for automating genetic workflows at population scale.^[8]

• 2016 — Clear Genetics founded in San Francisco by Moran Snir (CEO), Guy Snir (COO), and Motti Shohat M.D.^[9]

• January 2017 — Clear Genetics enters Y Combinator Winter 2017 (W17) batch.^[10]

• March 20, 2017 — Clear Genetics closes $2.5M seed round with Y Combinator and Compound as lead investors.^[11]

• March 2017 — TechCrunch covers Clear Genetics at YC W17 Demo Day, describing the company as having "created the future of genetic counseling."

• August 7, 2017 — CNBC covers Clear Genetics; company is in beta with several large US health systems. Geisinger CSO David Ledbetter publicly endorses the chatbot approach and confirms the genetic counselor shortage problem.^[12]

• 2018 — Geisinger deploys Gia for its MyCode precision medicine program; GenomeWeb covers the deployment with quotes from CEO Moran Snir.

• November 11, 2019 — Invitae announces definitive agreement to acquire Clear Genetics for approximately $50M (~$25M cash + Invitae stock). Gia is already deployed in Invitae's direct channel. Named enterprise customers include Geisinger and Huntsman Cancer Institute.^[13]

• December 8, 2019 — Final funding round closes, per LinkedIn records, likely reflecting acquisition close.^[14]

• January 2022 — Moran Snir and Guy Snir co-found Nest Genomics, accepted into YC W22 batch, continuing their mission to scale genomic services in clinical care.^[15]

What They Built

Clear Genetics built a two-sided software platform designed to automate the most time-intensive parts of the genetic testing workflow—the patient-facing education and consent process, and the clinician-facing triage and care management process.

Gia: The Patient-Facing Chatbot

The flagship product was Gia (Genetic Information Assistant), an NLP-powered conversational chatbot developed in direct collaboration with practicing genetic counselors.^[16] Gia was designed to handle the informational and administrative interactions that consumed the majority of a genetic counselor's time but did not require their clinical judgment.

A patient interacting with Gia would move through a structured but conversational flow: understanding what genetic testing was being recommended and why, completing informed consent, learning about their insurance coverage and out-of-pocket costs, receiving pre-test education about what results might mean, and—after testing—receiving guidance on how to interpret their results. Each of these steps had previously required a scheduled appointment or phone call with a human counselor.

The platform was HIPAA-compliant and covered multiple clinical specialties: prenatal care, cardiology, carrier screening, hereditary cancer, and pediatrics.^[17] This breadth was deliberate—it made Clear Genetics a viable enterprise platform for large health systems serving diverse patient populations, rather than a point solution for a single specialty.

A peer-reviewed study published in PMC documented Gia's deployment at Johns Hopkins Hospital for pancreatic cancer patients, providing clinical validation of the product's use in a high-stakes oncology context.

Clinic Hub: The Clinician-Facing Platform

The second product, Clinic Hub, served the other side of the workflow. It gave clinicians software to manage patient care, including automated patient triage—helping clinical teams identify which patients needed immediate counselor attention versus which could be handled through Gia's automated flows.^[18] Together, Gia and Clinic Hub formed a complete workflow layer sitting between the patient and the genetic counselor.

The Design Philosophy

The product philosophy was explicit and strategically important: Gia was not positioned as a replacement for genetic counselors but as a tool that freed them for complex cases. Moran Snir stated directly: "Having to talk to a genetic counselor every time we want information is not an effective use of these experts."^[19] This framing reduced clinical resistance to adoption—a common failure mode for healthcare automation products that threaten existing professional roles.

Invitae's CMO Robert Nussbaum later described the product as a "digital navigator"—a framing that captures how the software was positioned: not as a diagnostic tool, but as infrastructure that guided patients and clinicians through an otherwise fragmented process.^[20]

Market Position

Target Customers

Clear Genetics targeted three distinct buyer types: large integrated health systems (like Geisinger), specialty cancer institutes (like Huntsman Cancer Institute), and commercial genetic testing laboratories (like Invitae itself).^[21] Each buyer faced the same core problem—growing genomic testing volumes with insufficient genetic counselor capacity—but in different institutional contexts.

Health systems were the most strategically important customer segment. They controlled large patient populations, had existing genetics programs, and faced the most acute counselor shortages. Geisinger's situation was illustrative: the health system had sequenced 250,000 patients through its MyCode program but struggled to recruit even 25 genetic counselors to serve them.^[22] That ratio—10,000 patients per counselor—made automation not a convenience but a clinical necessity.

Commercial labs like Invitae were a second natural buyer. As labs scaled their testing volumes, they needed patient-facing infrastructure to handle the pre- and post-test communication that accompanied every result. Gia was already deployed in Invitae's own direct channel before the acquisition was announced—meaning Invitae had validated the product as a paying customer before deciding to acquire the company outright.^[23]

Market Size

The genetic counselor shortage was not a niche problem. The number of certified genetic counselors in the United States was estimated at approximately 4,000–5,000 at the time Clear Genetics was operating, while genomic testing volumes were growing rapidly due to falling sequencing costs and expanding clinical indications. The structural mismatch between counselor supply and testing demand created a clear and growing addressable market for workflow automation software.

The broader clinical genomics software market—covering workflow tools, patient engagement platforms, and lab informatics—was expanding alongside the genomic testing market itself, which was projected to reach tens of billions of dollars globally. Clear Genetics was positioned at the patient-engagement and workflow layer of this stack, a segment with recurring software revenue potential tied directly to testing volume growth.

Competition

No direct competitors are documented in the available record for the 2017–2019 period. The competitive alternatives were primarily the status quo—human genetic counselors handling all patient interactions—and general-purpose patient communication platforms not designed for genetics workflows.

The absence of direct competitors likely reflects the specificity of the problem. Building a clinically credible genetic counseling chatbot required simultaneous expertise in genomics, clinical workflow design, NLP, and HIPAA-compliant software infrastructure. The founding team's combination of Genometer experience, clinical genetics credentials, and consumer product engineering was unusual enough that replication was non-trivial.

Geisinger's CSO David Ledbetter's public endorsement in August 2017—"I think this is a very good use for AI"^[24]—from one of the most respected genomics programs in the country served as a competitive moat signal: the product had cleared the clinical credibility bar that most competitors would struggle to reach.

Business Model

Clear Genetics operated as a B2B software company selling to health systems, specialty clinics, and commercial genetic testing laboratories. The platform was licensed on an enterprise basis, with customers including large integrated health systems (Geisinger), cancer institutes (Huntsman Cancer Institute), and commercial labs (Invitae).^[25]

The natural pricing structure for a platform like Gia would be volume-based—tied to the number of patients processed through the system—which would align revenue growth with the customer's testing volume growth. This structure would make Clear Genetics' revenue a direct function of the genomic testing market's expansion, providing a durable growth mechanism without requiring new customer acquisition.

No specific contract values, ARR figures, or pricing tiers are available in the public record. The company raised only $2.52M in total capital^[26] and operated with a team of fewer than 50 people,^[27] suggesting either strong capital efficiency, a relatively short runway between seed and acquisition, or both.

Traction

By August 2017—approximately five months after closing its seed round—Clear Genetics was already in beta with several large US health systems.^[28] This is an unusually fast enterprise sales cycle for a seed-stage healthcare software company, where procurement processes typically take 12–24 months.

By the time of the November 2019 acquisition announcement, named enterprise deployments included Geisinger and Huntsman Cancer Institute.^[29] Geisinger was particularly significant—it was one of the most genomics-forward health systems in the country, having sequenced 250,000 patients through its MyCode program. A deployment there carried substantial clinical credibility.

Gia was also already deployed in Invitae's own direct channel prior to the acquisition announcement,^[30] meaning the acquirer had validated the product as a paying customer before deciding to purchase the company. This is a strong signal of product-market fit: the eventual acquirer chose to pay for the product before paying for the company.

A popular science article reported that more than 67,000 patients had used Gia, with 92% reporting overall satisfaction. If accurate, these figures represent meaningful real-world adoption for a seed-stage healthcare software company operating for approximately three years.

A peer-reviewed study in PMC documented Gia's clinical deployment at Johns Hopkins Hospital for pancreatic cancer patients—a high-stakes oncology use case that demonstrated the product's clinical credibility beyond the prenatal and carrier screening contexts where genetic chatbots faced less scrutiny.

Post-Mortem

Clear Genetics did not fail. It was acquired for approximately $50M in November 2019 after raising $2.52M in total capital—a return multiple of roughly 20x on invested capital, achieved in approximately three years with a team of fewer than 50 people.^[31][32] This section examines what the company got right, why the acquisition was the logical outcome, and what the post-acquisition trajectory reveals about the limits of the original thesis.

Why the Acquisition Happened: Strategic Fit, Not Distress

The acquisition was not a rescue. Invitae's CEO Sean George was explicit about the strategic rationale: "For genetics to truly go mainstream, patients and clinicians need automated workflow solutions like those Clear Genetics has created."^[33] Invitae was in an aggressive expansion phase in 2019, scaling its lab testing volumes and needing patient-facing infrastructure to match. Clear Genetics had already built and deployed that infrastructure.

The fact that Gia was already running in Invitae's direct channel before the acquisition announcement is the clearest evidence of strategic rather than distress-driven motivation.^[34] Invitae had evaluated the product as a customer, validated it in production, and then decided the capability was important enough to own outright rather than license.

The Founding Team's Prior Work Was the Unfair Advantage

The single most important factor in Clear Genetics' success was the founding team's prior experience with Genometer. The founders did not theorize that software could automate genetic workflows at population scale—they had already built a system that screened 90% of Israeli pregnancies since 2005.^[35] This gave them a concrete template for what the product needed to do, a credibility signal that opened doors with clinical buyers, and the domain knowledge to build a chatbot that genetic counselors would endorse rather than resist.

Geisinger's CSO David Ledbetter's public endorsement in August 2017—within months of the seed close—was not accidental. It reflected a founding team that could speak the language of clinical genetics fluently enough to earn the trust of one of the most sophisticated genomics programs in the country.^[36]

The Framing Decision That Prevented Clinical Resistance

Healthcare automation products frequently fail because they are perceived as threatening existing professional roles. Clear Genetics avoided this failure mode through deliberate product framing. Gia was positioned not as a replacement for genetic counselors but as a tool that handled routine informational tasks so counselors could focus on complex cases. Moran Snir's public statement—"Having to talk to a genetic counselor every time we want information is not an effective use of these experts"^[37]—framed automation as a benefit to counselors, not a threat.

This framing was validated by the product's development process: Gia was built in direct collaboration with genetic counselors.^[38] The counselors who might have resisted the product were instead co-authors of it.

The Acquisition as the Ceiling of the Independent Path

The $50M exit, while strong on a capital-efficiency basis, also reflects a ceiling that the company likely recognized. Selling enterprise software to health systems is a slow, relationship-intensive process. Clear Genetics had achieved named deployments at Geisinger and Huntsman Cancer Institute and had been deployed in Invitae's channel—but scaling beyond a handful of marquee customers to broad market penetration would have required either a much larger sales organization or a distribution partnership with a company that already had health system relationships at scale.

Invitae provided exactly that distribution. By joining Invitae, Gia gained access to every health system and lab that Invitae served—a distribution channel that would have taken years and significant capital to replicate independently. The acquisition was, in effect, a distribution deal with a $50M upfront payment.

Post-Acquisition Integration and the Invitae Trajectory

The founders integrated deeply into Invitae post-acquisition. Moran Snir became Head of Emerging Platforms, Data & SaaS and Product; Guy Snir led SaaS teams; Motti Shohat led Software and Data.^[39][40][41] This was a talent-and-technology-retentive acquisition, not a product shutdown.

However, Invitae itself filed for bankruptcy in 2023—a development that ultimately disrupted whatever trajectory the Clear Genetics technology had within the larger organization. The founders had already departed to found Nest Genomics (YC W22) by January 2022,^[42] suggesting they recognized before Invitae's collapse that the infrastructure problem they had originally identified remained unsolved at the level they wanted to address it.

The Thesis Validated, Then Reset

The founders' decision to return to YC in 2022 with Nest Genomics is the most revealing data point about the Clear Genetics story. It signals that the acquisition, while financially successful, did not fully resolve the problem the founders had set out to solve. The genetic counselor shortage has intensified since 2016 as genomic testing volumes have continued to grow. The founders' return to the problem—with more experience, more credibility, and a clearer view of where the infrastructure gaps remain—suggests that Clear Genetics was a successful first chapter rather than a complete solution.

Key Lessons

• Prior proof-of-concept in an adjacent market is a durable founding advantage. The founders had already built Genometer, which screened 90% of Israeli pregnancies for carrier status since 2005.^[43] This gave them a working template for the US product, clinical credibility with enterprise buyers, and the domain knowledge to build a chatbot that genetic counselors would endorse. Founders entering regulated markets with direct prior experience in analogous deployments compress the time needed to achieve clinical validation and enterprise sales.

• Positioning automation as a tool for professionals—not a replacement—removes the primary adoption barrier in clinical markets. Clear Genetics built Gia in collaboration with genetic counselors and framed it explicitly as a tool that freed counselors for complex cases.^[44] Healthcare automation products that threaten existing professional roles face organized resistance from the same clinical staff whose adoption is required for the product to work. Co-development with the target professional group converts potential resisters into advocates.

• Becoming a paying customer's vendor before becoming their acquisition target is a powerful exit strategy. Gia was already deployed in Invitae's direct channel before the acquisition announcement.^[45] This meant Invitae had validated the product in production, understood its value, and had already integrated it into their workflows—reducing acquisition risk and strengthening the seller's negotiating position. For B2B healthcare software companies, selling to potential acquirers as customers is a deliberate path to exit.

• Capital efficiency in enterprise healthcare software is achievable when the founding team eliminates the need for extensive clinical validation cycles. Clear Genetics raised $2.52M and exited for ~$50M.^[46][47] This ratio is unusual in healthcare software, where regulatory navigation and clinical validation typically require substantial capital. The founders' clinical genetics credentials and prior deployment experience allowed them to compress validation timelines that would have cost a less credentialed team years and millions of dollars.

• A successful acquisition does not necessarily resolve the underlying market problem. The founders returned to YC in 2022 with Nest Genomics, indicating that the genetic counselor shortage and clinical genomics infrastructure gap remained unsolved even after Clear Genetics' integration into Invitae.^[48] For founders working on structural healthcare problems, acquisition by a single company may distribute the solution to that company's customer base without addressing the broader market—leaving the original problem intact for a second attempt.

Sources

1. Y Combinator – Clear Genetics company page
2. Crunchbase – Clear Genetics seed funding round
3. LinkedIn – Clear Genetics company page
4. Calcalist Tech – Invitae acquires Clear Genetics for $50M (November 11, 2019)
5. CNBC – Clear Genetics using chatbots to offer genetic counseling (August 7, 2017)
6. Invitae IR – Press release: Invitae to Acquire Clear Genetics (November 11, 2019)
7. PR Newswire – Invitae to Acquire Clear Genetics (November 11, 2019)
8. Pillsbury Law – Invitae acquires Clear Genetics for $50 million
9. CBInsights – Clear Genetics company profile
10. Inside Precision Medicine – Invitae to Acquire Clear Genetics for $50M (November 11, 2019)
11. iAngels – Clear Genetics portfolio page
12. Dealroom – Clear Genetics company profile
13. PitchBook – Clear Genetics company profile
14. The Org – Moran Snir profile (Nest Genomics)
15. Y Combinator – Nest Genomics company page
16. PMC / NIH – Peer-reviewed study on Gia chatbot at Johns Hopkins
17. GenomeWeb – Geisinger deploys Gia chatbot for MyCode program
18. Freethink – Genetic counseling chatbots feature (67,000 patients, 92% satisfaction)
19. TechCrunch – YC W17 Demo Day coverage (March 20, 2017)
20. Wayback Machine – cleargenetics.com archive