The Ancestry of Ancestry.com: It's Not a VC-Backed IPO
Online genealogy company Ancestry.com yesterday filed for a $75 million IPO, and some people instinctively began buzzing about the prospects for yet another VC-backed IPO (following hits like OpenTable and LogMeIn). Only problem is that Ancestry.com isn't really VC-backed. At least not anymore. The Provo-Utah-based company was founded in 1998, and that October raised $10 million in Series A funding from CMGI @Ventures, Epic Ventures and Intel Capital. Less than one year later, it would raise $38 million in Series B funding at a $163 million post-money valuation. The existing shareholders were joined by newbies like Amerindo Investment Advisors, Compaq Computer Corp., L Capital Management, Pivotal Asset Management and Tango Partners. It was all perfectly bubblicious. Beginning in 2003 and 2004, however, some of those investors began quietly selling shares in Ancestry.com to Spectrum Equity Investors, one of the very few private equity shops to dabble
