Clear Genetics

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.

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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]