When one genealogy company purchases another one, it always makes the news. The same happens when the purchase is of an app that can help genealogists in some way, or if two genealogy companies merge together. This time, the news is that Mocavo has purchased ReadyMicro.
Mocavo is a start up company that is based in Boulder, Colorado. It was founded by Cliff Shaw, who also founded four other companies. (Those companies have since been acquired by Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com). Genealogists can use Mocavo for free without having to sign up for a membership. It is the first genealogy website to incorporate a large scale search engine.
In May of 2012, Mocavo raised $4 million. The money came from The Foundry Group, which is an investment firm that is also located in Boulder, Colorado. The money is intended to be used to bulk up Mocavo’s engineering and development team. Other fundraising brought the total raised to around $5.2 million.
ReadyMicro is a company that specializes in digitizing records. It is based on Orem, Utah. ReadyMicro was established in 2009. It is a digitization solution provider that caters to the family history, library, and archival industries. The company developed its own proprietary line of of high-resolution microfilm digitization hardware and software.
It has been announced that Mocavo has acquired ReadyMicro. This is going to allow Mocavo to expand its reach beyond searches. Part of the announcement that is on Mocavo’s blog reads:
“From the day the company was founded, our mission has been clear: To bring all of the world’s genealogical information online for free and give everyone the ability to discover their family history”. The blog goes on to say: “Over the past several months, we have been working tirelessly to gather genealogical records and connect with other genealogical websites. In the next few weeks, we will make several exciting announcements about these additions that are sure to please family historians”.
To me, this implies that we will hear more from Mocavo, about whatever these yet to be revealed additions are, in the near future. Sometimes, when one company acquires another, the result is the acquired company gets absorbed, or that it has to relocate. In this case, Mocavo is going to stay in Boulder, Colorado, while ReadyMicro will remain in Orem, Utah. It appears that both offices are currently open to the idea of hiring new workers.
Image by 401(K) 2012 on Flickr