[7][8] The company was founded by Jessica Richman, Zachary Apte, and Will Ludington who were scientists in the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences.

[7] Customers purchase kits to sample one or more parts of their body, including the gut, genitals, mouth, nose, or skin.

[21] The company had proprietary machine learning algorithms that analyzed the sequence data and compared it with the company's proprietary database of microbiomes, built from the samples that partners[clarification needed] and single[clarification needed] customers sent to them, and web-based software that allowed individuals to view their microbiome and make certain comparisons.

[24][25] In October 2015 the company introduced an app on iOS using ResearchKit that allowed customers to view their results on mobile devices.

[27][28] Amy Dockser Marcus noted in a 2014 essay in The Wall Street Journal that when uBiome raised its initial round of crowdfunding in early 2013, many questions were raised by bioethicists about the company's citizen science business model — namely whether it had actually obtained informed consent from its customers, and whether direct to consumer genetic testing initiatives could be ethically conducted at all, and its lack of institutional review board (IRB) approval.

[29][30][31] The Wall Street Journal essay also noted that questions were raised about the quality of data obtained in citizen science initiatives, with regard to self-selection and other issues.

[29][35] As of 2015, uBiome offered a $1 million grant program to researchers and citizen scientists for microbiome sampling and related analysis.