NOTE from DearMYRTLE: Just received a phone call from Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage.com about this welcome news. Please address all inquiries to support@myHeritage.com.
MyHeritage acquires Geni.com and raises $25m in new funding round
Family history network buys rival and advances international expansion with new funds
LOS ANGELES, California, PROVO, Utah & TEL AVIV, Israel – November 28, 2012 – MyHeritage,
the popular online family history network, announced today it has
acquired long-time rival Geni.com and closed a new USD$25M funding round
led by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), with existing investors Index
Ventures and Accel Partners also participating. Geni.com Founder David Sacks and BVP Partner Adam Fisher are joining the MyHeritage Board of Directors.
The
acquisition reinforces MyHeritage’s position as a global power player
in the family history industry and accelerates its vision of helping
families everywhere build and share their legacy online. The purchase of
Geni.com is the eighth and largest acquisition made by MyHeritage since
the launch of its online family history network in 2005. It extends
MyHeritage’s network to 72 million registered users, 1.5 billion
profiles and 27 million family trees, containing the most
internationally diverse family history content in the world.
The
new investment round will be used by MyHeritage to boost growth of its
historical content services and expand commercial operations worldwide.
In addition to acquiring significant record collections from Europe and
rolling out global crowd-sourcing projects, the funds will enable
MyHeritage to explore additional M&A opportunities and ramp up its
international marketing operations. The latest funding round brings the
total funds raised so far by MyHeritage to USD$49 million.
“Exploring
and curating one's family past is both a timeless and universal hobby
pursued by hundreds of millions of people around the world; I personally
grew my own family tree to include more than 2,500 people,” said BVP
Partner Adam Fisher. “The freemium model of MyHeritage/Geni not only
makes online family history accessible to the casual user, but
underscores the importance of user generated data to the product
offering itself, which grows every day. As the international market
leader with an aggressive expansion plan, we see tremendous value in
their subscription business and are excited to work closely with Gilad
and his team as they build on their success.”
“Today’s
news is a major turning-point for the family history industry, giving
us significant new resources to extend our market leadership and deliver
new value to families worldwide,” said Founder and CEO of MyHeritage,
Gilad Japhet. “Well established as an innovative and social brand,
Geni.com is a natural addition to MyHeritage and together we look
forward to taking collaborative family history to new heights. Over
the past few years our dedicated workforce has transformed MyHeritage
from a garage start-up into a successful, dynamic and global company.
With new funds, impressive new talent from Geni.com and new world-class
leaders on our Board, we look forward to fulfilling our potential and
accomplishing our mission to bring family history to the masses.”
Founded
in 2007, Geni.com is well known as a pioneer in collaborative family
tree building with its focus on creating the World Family Tree, and
enjoys a large following in the US. Geni.com will continue to operate as
a separate brand based out of its California office, which will also
serve as the main engineering hub for MyHeritage in the US, alongside
its main content offices in Utah. The entire staff at Geni.com will join
the MyHeritage team.
The
services of MyHeritage and Geni.com will initially run independently.
MyHeritage plans to give respective users the option to collaborate on
family history research by enabling two-way information flows between
the sites that will facilitate new family discoveries and provide
greater value to the users of both services.
Users
from both sites will be able to discover long-lost relatives and new
ancestral connections through MyHeritage’s Smart Matching
technology,
which finds common matches between family trees. To add new color to
the ancestries of Geni.com users, MyHeritage will apply its recently
launched Record Matching™ technology that matches historical records,
such as birth, death, census and immigration records, to individuals in
Geni.com family trees. Geni.com users will be able to enjoy extended
offerings provided by MyHeritage including DNA kits for genetic
genealogy.
Geni.com Founder, David Sacks, a renowned entrepreneur, and most recently the Founder and CEO of Yammer
(sold to Microsoft in June 2012 for $1.2 billion), will take a seat on
the Board of Directors. David’s contributions as a visionary in the
family history field, combined with his sharp eye for product, make him a
strategic addition to MyHeritage management.
“What
we've learned over the years building Geni is that there are three key
assets that customers want in the genealogy space: records, private
trees, and the world family tree. This deal brings together all of these
pieces to form the most complete offering in the genealogy space.
Together with MyHeritage, we look forward to continuing Geni's mission
of connecting humanity through a single family tree”, said Founder of
Geni.com David Sacks.
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