PayPal, Pulp Fiction and Geni
Michael Arrington
37 comments »
David Sacks apparently has something left to prove. He was an executive at PayPal. After their $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay in 2002, he then went on to create Room 9 Entertainment, a production company that produced and financed the (really excellent) movie Thank You For Smoking. He purchased the Uma Thurman overdose house from the movie Pulp Fiction a while back. And now he has a new startup called Geni, with the audacious goal of “creating a family tree of the whole world.”
From his LinkedIn profile:
David O. Sacks’s Experience
Founder/CEOGeni, Inc.
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
June 2006 – Present (8 months)
This is a new internet company I’ve founded. Our mission is to solve the problem of genealogy (the question of how everyone is related) by creating a family tree of the whole world. My CTO/co-founder is Alan Braverman, an outstanding technologist who most recently co-founded Xoom. We are always looking to hire rockstar programmers. This represents a great opportunity to get a meaningful founding stake in a startup with significant VC backing and a strong founder track record building consumer internet products.
The site itself is just a standard landing page asking for email addresses. We have no other details yet.
Social networking site for the world family — in web2.0 terms?
Caught my attention as the name “gen-i” is used by a technology division of Telecom New Zealand, lol.
This is an idea that can really harness the power of the net and could be very useful in the medical field.
I’ve recently been reading The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins that has some very interesting mathematics on tracing back our linage by Yan Wong.
One thing I got from the book is that a family tree is really more like a family mesh once you go back a few generations.
You only have to go back a short while (in evolutionary time) to find individuals who are ancestors of most people alive. In a closed population this could be only a few generations.
tell me he didn’t just say ‘rockstar’. ugh. can’t these rich CEOs at least be original when they’re being unoriginal.
on a side note, maybe misspelling runs in his family tree.
Sounds like a very cool project, and I agree, it’s a good use of the web. What’s the revenue model going to be though? Subscription to access the data, or plain advertising?
Yes — cool — in theory. In practice, the potential for abuse is incredible.
I’m sure the insurance companies would love to find out that one of your family died of a medical condition.
And of course, most governments in the world wouldn’t mind having access to a database of the entire world population.
I’m not sure how he can do this and protect personal privacy, but I’ll be interested to watch this unfold.
privacy aside what a brilliant idea, can find out who really does have blue blood…
Brilliant Idea. This concept has the potential to become the second-MySpace if executed well.
I’ve been a fan of David Sacks for some time now. He really knocked it out of the park with Thank You For Smoking. This new Geni startup really excites me. I had a similar idea years ago and would love to see it come to life.
My only concern is that it needs to be easy to you. I mean _really easy_. While I’ll be able to add some data, my grandma would be able to add much much more. Time will tell, but because David is behind this, it has a lot of potential.
Ben
Sure one can see the negative possibilities in the world we live in today ; however, one can see, if one looks with hope to how this may help.
As a genealogist and Web 2.0 enthusiast, I think it’s a great idea! Genealogy caters to the fifty plus crowd and at thirty-four I am often one of the youngest people in room. David’s experience, presence and connections in the Internet industry will raise the awareness of genealogy. Today, the market is dominated by The Generations Network (formerly, MyFamily, Inc.) which owns Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com and The World Family Tree.
OneGreatFamily.com which aims to be the world’s largest family tree online offers a service very similar to Geni. Users upload their family data and OneGreatFamily’s automated search engine continually looks for relatives and notifies you via email when new information is available. Like most genealogy sites, The Generations Network and OneGreatFamily.com generate revenue through subscription access to data. Most sites do not have an advertising revenue model.
I am currently working on a few web 2.0 projects focused on genealogy and family health history. Given David’s success in raising money for Geni, I am hopeful this will open the door for other genealogy projects.
Kenyatta
Kenyattaberry.com
I dont know about this…I just will wait and see how it all unfolds.
Very strange, I was thinking about this the other night before I fell asleep. I was thinking how an Amazon tribe could be related to modern North Americans? The implications for this are huge. Imagine people finding out they are jewish or muslim or both?
The British have an interesting project where they can tell you what the last name (surname) maybe from a genetic sample. They are using this to fight crime.
Amazingly ambitious project, and if I were a rockstar programmer, I am just a .NET programmer, I would love to be part of this!
I hope they pitched the idea to arrington like this
“The Zillow; but for People”
Zillow has almost every house in america and gives detailed information like bedrooms, sq feet - “zestimate” - I just think it would have been a good pitch.
- also I bet this company swings it - it a way we haven’t seen yet almost a “loop” hole to where - a Family tree of the whole world - still makes sense but its a cheap generic - idea/ version of it
Wonder if they’ll provide a searchable DNA database.
The start-up I’ll be joining [Story of My Life] will be better than this. Answering many of the concerns above. Stay tuned….
I don’t see this being any different than Ancestry.com except it’s publicly linking the records together, which Ancestry users notoriously don’t want (they tried! spent millions of dollars in advertising on it). They now have surpassed the Mormon Church in the size of their scanned records (if you didn’t know the Mormon Church has always has the biggest genealogical db in the world, now you do. You just had to go to one of of their “centers” to access it).
David Sacks is a pretty brilliant guy. Along with Peter & Max & others, he was one of the most important driving forces behind PayPal’s success. After PayPal and Thank You for Smoking, i’m not sure he needs to prove anything at this point, but i certainly wouldn’t bet against him.
Altho Peter Thiel was pretty much the undisputed top chess player at PayPal, one of David’s minor claims to fame was being the only one person to beat Peter when he simultaneously played 10 games of speed chess with everybody in the parking lot on the day of our IPO — and Peter *hates* losing. (btw, that IPO party had to be one of the most fun & memorable days in my entire Silicon Valley existence
for those interested, here’s a podcast interview with David Sacks done by Greg Galant at Venture Voice.
ps - Sacks bought the pulp fiction house a long time ago. and it *is* totally awesome…
Having worked around David at PayPal (like Mr. McClure above), I would also say that you shouldn’t bet against David. He’s a very, very sharp guy & he wouldn’t get involved with something that wouldn’t be a success.
“Our mission is to solve the problem of genealogy”
I didn’t realize there was a problem…
isnt it similar to this http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/genealogy.php
mike - i think you alreay made a post on them …
You must be kidding. This already exists on Ancestry.com. Their Tree is absolutely huge and what used to be a cranky genealogy company has gotten pretty web 2.0 lately. I know some of the developers there and think that no one understands the technology of family tree wikis like they do. Maybe Ancestry.com doesn’t get the 2.0 buzz because it’s buried deep in Utah (and no, they are not owned by the Mormon church), but I would not bet against them continuing to dominate the genealogy space.
so where is the Pulp Fiction overdose house?
Another site based int he UK doing something similar for a few years now: http://www.genesreunited.com/
Hardly web2.0 style though. But it works, and keeps searching for matches between other users and emails me to alert of new possible matches.
Sounds interesting. I’m guessing they will attempt to garner income from advertising mixed with a premium subscription model.
For the last 12 years, from a isolated location on the Big Island of Hawaii, Bruce and Kristine Harrison have been quietly developing the Family Forest Project (www.familyforest.com). They have created the world’s most complete, academically sourced, family history database that can chart human migrations over 3,000 years, trace deep ancestral history all the way back to biblical times, and have done it in a format that is identified as 3rd wave digital content. That means data has been inputed intelligently so that kinship reports, the world’s most complete family pedigree charts, as well as be datamined by software to produce entire ebooks that accurately link and chart with full notations a wealth of previously published lineages that trace back to the dawn of recorded history.
I am sure that David Sack’s (and the backers of Geni) could benefit immediately from making a business alliance with Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc. (the corporation that has been quietly growing the Family Forest. (Those interested can also see: http://www.prnewsmakers.com for background.)
Great to hear about Geni.
I would be interested in becoming a beta tester.
Best regards,
Georgeann Malowney
Director of Training
http://WorldVitalRecords.com
Kinjunction.com is a project worth considering for those looking to map their genealogy online. They take a more bottom-up approach.
A lot of comments from a lot of people who have not used the service.
They have to do a lot to overcome Ancestry.com and the Mormon Church’s vast archives…
By far the best family netwroking site on the web!!! Only a genius could launch something like this. Congrats!!! Go Geni.com!!!
I started using it yesterday and invited family to join in. Three generations of family members already up on it. Just the basic info of who their parents are/were. No personal details like cause of death. Finding relations I didn’t know I had.
The power of email and a site like this shows what can be achieved with one simple idea. Brought me in contact with family in continents I didn’t know I had. Just aswell I started now before the knowledgeable older generations head for the graves.
As a non-myspace/non-blogger person (way too personal) I fing this idea brillant. First time I’ve throw myself into a website like this.