Do you think it’s worth $100 Million?
First off I want to say that I didn’t spend more than a minute at the site. Just long enough to sign-up and notice that during sign-up and right afterwards the site doesn’t tell you what it’s about.
The site I’m talking about is Geni.com and was recently talked about over at Tech Crunch. I guess when you have the likes of Tech Crunch and Jason Calacanis talking about your site you are going to get a lot of people to sign up and that could bring you some money.
But a valuation of $100 million with $10 mil in second round VC funding is a bit high for a site that currently makes no money. Seems a little bubblish if you ask me.
I guess there are a few roads that the company could take to monetize and it’s an interesting idea. Getting your family members involved and showing where they are in the world. Sounds something right up Googles alley and a drop in their bucket in terms of buying it. Google did buy dodgeball.com.
Social networks are great for kids; Myspace, Friendster, FaceBook, etc, and even good for entrepreneurs LinkedIN (ish). But trying to get the baby boomers of the world to come around to a social network based on their family tree? I have a hard time getting some of my relatives to use email correctly.
I think it’s gonna be a hard road is my opinion. I’d really like to see where they take it. I guess with $10 million you might be able to send out a few fliers with the monthly AARP membership papers. 
Comments
Comment from Erik
Time: April 9, 2007, 6:12 pm
Josh-
I would consider myself one of the most optimistic people out there. I’m always thinking things can be done. (trust me, ask some of the people I work with
However, $100 mil valuation and $10 mil already invested in round two! I obviously don’t know the right people, either that or I don’t think big enough (read around here to realize that the ladder is probably not the case.) It was just a little interesting to see this site get valued at what I think would be a little rediculous. I for one don’t want to see a dot com bustola again.
But, yes, I was a bit pessimistic looking at this news. 
sad to say.
Maybe this was just a ploy to get people interested. Look at me, caused me to write about it, link to it and get a discussion going (but with $10 mil I think they could buy a few top dugg articles. )
Comment from Josh
Time: April 10, 2007, 1:25 am
Writing about it isn’t anything wrong, you’re probably thinking the old “no publicity is bad”, and you don’t need me to tell you that’s BS.
But when I think of small projects who’ve scammed people into big capital, I think of bubbles and jokes like “Pajamas Media” or “Million Dollar Homepage”, a fad and hype by all definitions. They raised $3M, so what? Sad enough people are scammers, even worse people are stupid enough to throw their money in the drain, so what can we say? Just sit back and laugh! Thank G-d for people dumb enough to waste their money, one day we’ll collect some of it too!
Comment from Erik
Time: April 10, 2007, 1:33 am
Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it.
I think most people wouldn’t have the balls to ask for $10 mil for something like that, but on the other hand, what competition do they have except for every single social network out there.
It would be that hard for myspace to say, hey, you’ve got a bazillion friends why not tag people by there geneologic association to you, perhaps write mother next to your mothers myspace page. Oh wait, my mom doesn’t have one cause what baby boomer besides the skeevy old man across the street has one.
Yeah, it’ll be a tough road, but if they make it simple enough and promote the crap out of it, people will go out of sheer boredom to try something new. Until pet geni comes out and you can track the geneolgy of your dog back to some dude in england watching poodle and beagle go at it. Fun!
Comment from Life Agent
Time: April 11, 2007, 9:32 am
I agree that 100 mil is too much .. and this from a guy who knows how popular genealogy and people search is .. and how profitable it can be .. but there is a lot of competition in this space and again .. from a guy who has been there and done that .. the barriers to entry are fairly low .. this deal reminds me of the nutty money back in the dot com early days .. but what do I know ..
Comment from Josh
Time: April 9, 2007, 6:04 pm
It’s really good to have people that are pessimistic and realistic like you!