4 ms·
I’m a former investor in the company. Many comments here focus on the DNA business, but the company treats it as more as lead gen, a “cheap” way to get new cust
by iav 6y ago
I’m a former investor in the company. Many comments here focus on the DNA business, but the company treats it as more as lead gen, a “cheap” way to get new customers in and later to subscribe to their family tree product that prints cash. The DNA business is breakeven but that’s a lot cheaper than funding TV shows like Who Do You Think You Are - which was their old marketing tool.
Funny anecdotes:
- they own findagrave.com which is exactly what it sounds like
- they paid $50mm at one point to the Mormon church to effectively shut down their only competitor (family search.org). They also offered ancestry.com membership for free to every Mormon as well. The agreement handed over Mormon church’s records making Ancestry’s database broader.
- they sometimes call themselves a “Social Network for dead people” because you can opt to make your family tree public, allowing you to see connections/overlaps between your ancestors and others.
- ensignavenger 6y agoAs far as I am aware, familysearch.org is still quite operational?
- iav 6y agoThey are definitely still operational but they no longer compete with Ancestry for content like they used to. In fact they rely on Ancestry to digitize their own archives
- freeopinion 6y agoThis deserves some clarification. FamilySearch has a massive crowd-sourcing organization for volunteer indexing. Anybody can participate in their free time.
- zwily 6y agoFamilySearch is alive and well. What are you talking about there?
- iav 6y agoHere is the [link to the investment](https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/ancestry-com-joins-forces-with-lds-owned-familysearch/article_4ce0e3fc-067a-5546-8f00-a0d0e111033a.html https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/ancestr...). The way they justified it to investors is that this removed the threat of FS ever competing with then in their core business. Back when Ancestry was public, they listed FS as their [#1 competitor](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1469433/000095012309028902/d68252orsv1.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1469433/000095012309...). Here is a [story](http://www.ancestryinsider.org/2012/07/ancestrycom-laps-familysearch-in.html http://www.ancestryinsider.org/2012/07/ancestrycom-laps-fami...) from 2012 showing how the two companies were measured against each other for key content digitizations