Who owns the genealogy companies? Part Two

It is very difficult to rank the size of genealogy companies because there is no real category in the business world for genealogy. In a real sense, the genealogy companies are all information and service companies. They either sell a service, such as printing charts, or information, like databases of source documents and indexes. Although Ancestry.com is clearly the leader, second place is a little more problematical since Ancestry.com has several large sub-brand names such as genealogy.com, their software program Family Tree Maker, and Rootsweb.

Without any regard to which is the next largest, here is a list of some of the larger companies:
http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/
http://www.footnote.com/
http://www.genealogybank.com/
http://www.findmypast.com/
http://www.genealogytoday.com/
http://www.genline.com/
http://www.myheritage.com/

WorldVitalRecords, Inc.
This large database indicates that it is a service of Familylink. Familylink describes itself as follows: 

By the Numbers

60 million users 500 million family connections 20 million monthly active users Top Family Facebook application 1.2 billion indexed names 33 million answers 200k poll responses daily  What We Do FamilyLink provides the platform for the family social experience. Family members can create family generated content, preserve interactions, add historical content and communicate across a number of mediums. FamilyLink's flagship application We're Related launched in 2007 and today has more than 60 million users making it a top family Facebook application. More than 20 million users use the product on a monthly basis. FamilyLink also leverages its content relationships to provide valuable historical family content. Families can search over 1.2 billion names to find, tag and integrate ancestors. FamilyLink's investors are vSpring Capital and several angel investors.

vSpring Capital is a traditional early-stage venture capital firm with over $400 million of committed capital under management. It has in its portfolio both Ancestry.com and Familylink.

Familylink was founded by Paul Allen and is the Chairman of the Board. From the Familylink website:

Paul Allen has founded several companies in the consumer content and social space. He was the Founder and CEO of Ancestry.com in 1997. He also launched MyFamily.com in 1998, which became the fastest growing community site of its time. After an initial stint as CEO, Allen focused on internet marketing and strategy for several years, helping Ancestry.com become one of the leading content subscription sites in the world. In 2002, Allen founded 10x Marketing, an internet marketing agency that was sold to Innuity in 2005. In 2004, he started FundingUniverse.com, a fast-growing company that helps entrepreneurs through venture consulting. Since 2007, he has been 100% focused on his new company, FamilyLink.com. He graduated from BYU with a degree in Russian in 1990. He is suffering from a serious addiction to his Blackberry, iPhone and Amazon Kindle.

I find it interesting that the Familylink Board of Directors includes Scott Petty of vSpring Capital. He is described by the Familylink site as follows:

Scott is a founding Managing Director of vSpring Capital, an early stage venture capital fund. Scott has led vSpring's investments in Alianza, Alpha Bay, Cerberian (acquired by Blue Coat Systems, NASDAQ:BCSI), comScore Networks (NASDAQ:SCOR), Control4, CrimeReports, FamilyLink, Infusionsoft, LignUp, SwarmBuilder, and Zonder. Prior to vSpring, Scott was COO and a Board Director of Zuka Juice. Under Scott's leadership, Zuka Juice grew from its first store to over 100 retail units and over 400 employees. Zuka Juice was acquired by Jamba Juice (NASDAQ:JMBA), a venture backed competitor. Before Zuka Juice Scott was a consultant with Bain & Company for seven years. At Bain he worked with many IT and non-IT companies, re-engineering their strategies for optimum results. Scott received a BS in Economics from Brigham Young University and a MBA from the Harvard Business School.

It is evident that both Ancestry.com and WorldVitalRecords.com have a common background and even share investors. By the way, GenealogyWise.com is also part of Familylink.

Next, I will be moving on down the list.