Woven Strands:

My Recollections From The

Early Days Of DNA Friend
By Dr. Franz Kenner
 Dedication

To anyone who has ever looked

at saliva and dreamed

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 Foreward

Contained within this volume are just a few of my memories from the founding of
DNA Friend in 1997, to when we acquired the frozen yogurt franchise Yogurt Palace in 2008
and assumed ownership of its valuable archive of used spoons.

— Dr. Franz Kenner, 2019

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 Chapter 1
Humble Beginnings

I could go on for pages and pages about the heady first years of DNA Friend. In those
days we were a tiny operation, just me and a single DNA sequencer in a rented office flanked
by a dental practice on one side and a medical waste recycling firm on the other. I was working
120-hour weeks back then, a grueling schedule with only short breaks for catnaps and intra-
venous glucose. My task was twofold: to analyze our initial 3 ounces of human saliva and con-
template how to turn the insights I would gain into a viable enterprise. Yet something didn’t
quite click. I had designed the business around getting my hands on as much highly valuable
DNA from as many sources as I could. But how could I amass such a genetic treasure trove?

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 Chapter 2
Growing Pains

Then I had a eureka moment. I would turn DNA Friend into a novelty, a brightly col-
ored carnival that would dazzle users—and a free one at that—drawing them in like a hypnotic
magnet and offering them a simple snapshot of their heredity and individual traits in exchange
for all three billion base pairs of their personal DNA sequence, a glimmering prize from which
I could extract endless value. I was labeled a “parasite” by For-Profit DNA Testing Magazine. Oth-
er leading publications like Adenine Weekly and The Plasmid were less charitable. But I knew we
were on the right track. The missing piece of the puzzle was quantity. In order to scale up the
company and entice new users to share their saliva with us, we somehow needed to compile a
database of genetic information from which to cross-reference their DNA and make ourselves
an even more alluring depository for their most private and personal genetic information.

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 Chapter 3
Deliverance

In 2007, on the advice of my physicians, I had begun taking short strolls around the
office park to aid in my veins’ acceptance of glucose. Gradually these walks grew to encom-
pass the surrounding area, a quaint downtown district crisscrossed by quiet alleys and garbage
collection docks where I could shed the pressures of running a company and let my thoughts
wander. By good fortune, one of these jaunts took me to the rear entrance of a frozen yogurt
establishment, Yogurt Palace, where to my astonishment, they had disposed of hundreds if not
thousands of used plastic spoons—a staggering and bewitching bounty! Hardly able to contain
my excitement, I tore through the translucent trash bags like a man possessed, rifling through
the masses of encrusted utensils, my imagination stirred to reverie at what genetic secrets this
discarded tableware might contain. A short time later, after the company’s owner was made
aware of 20 previously unknown offspring about whom he seemed quite shifty and tense, Yo-
gurt Palace was acquired by DNA Friend for a very reasonable sum and a new era in commer-
cial genetic testing had begun.

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 Epilogue

I often reflect on how much DNA Friend has grown as an organization in the inter-
vening years. We’ve bolstered our sales team by 4000%, purged all non-human DNA from
the company’s databases, and traveled the country collecting millions of gallons of saliva with
our mobile Spit Truck. Since 2017, I’ve gradually scaled back my daily presence at DNA Friend
headquarters. My time is better spent as a communicator advocating on behalf of for-profit
genetic testing services worldwide. My colleagues like to joke they never know where I’ll be
next. And because my ongoing work is conducted by 8 exact genetic copies of myself, I never
know where I’ll be either.

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 Woven Strands: My Recollections From The
Early Days Of DNA Friend

About the Author:

Dr. Kenner has pushed the

boundaries of genetic sci-
ence with his pioneering
work in the fields of genetic
engineering, recombina-
torial DNA hybridization,
splice-dependent human
trait enhancement, and
cloning. Following a cele-
brated early career, Dr. Ken-
ner disappeared from public
life for nearly a decade,
resurfacing simultaneously
in Paris, Geneva, San Fran-
cisco, Riyadh, Beijing, Cape
Town, Halifax, and Buenos
Aires in 1997. In addition
to being CEO, he serves as
the company’s lead science
officer, head of finance,
executive lab coordinator, senior genetic engineer, research technician, biomedical supervisor,
and director of oral photography.