#3 Ancestry.com

   It seems money does grow on trees. Family trees, that is. With nearly $400 million in revenue, more than 1.8 million paying subscribers and a three-year revenue growth of 78 percent, Ancestry.com is proving what’s old is new again. But this money is the root of all good. In fact, when you ask the Provo company about its tremendous success, the sentiment is one of honor — not greed. “I can’t tell you how rewarding it is to work at this company,” says CEO Tim Sullivan. “Everyone at Ancestry.com knows our mission, which is to preserve the chain of family history. And when we capture somebody who wasn’t previously interested in family history, and they get hooked and have that aha moment? There’s nothing better.” Now that’s a company to root for. 

Family history is of universal interest. Everywhere we go — across the U.S. or internationally — people want to know who they are and where they come from. 

The story of our company has essentially been a steady improvement in the quality of the user experience. We’ve made family history easier and more accessible and we’ve been able to grow our business continually by providing our users with a regular flow of new content. We don’t try to go after every person in every family. We want that chief historian who will passionately carry the torch. 

People don’t think of us as a tech company. They think of us as a family history company. But we have more technology employees than any other part of the company. One stat that sums it up: 3.5 million searches are conducted every day on Ancestry.com. It’s a high scale operation, even though some think of us as a small niche category. 

We have invested tens of hundreds of millions in a technology platform that has revolutionized the way people do family history. Fifteen years ago, the ability to do family history involved a massive commitment of time, expense and travel. Today, it’s not push button genealogy — and it never will be. But it is easier and more accessible with the Internet. And it’s more enjoyable than ever. 

It’s fun to grow this fast. The interesting thing is, at heart we’re a rather conservative company in the investments we make. We like to exceed our expectations rather than miss lofty goals. 

It’s a fantastic business to be in because it’s not only rewarding to our customers, it offers incredibly exciting technology problems to solve. This is not a simple business to manage. There is a lot of cutting edge technology when it comes to digitizing materials, getting it online and incorporating social networking technologies. Connecting distant family members is quite a challenge, but it’s one we enjoy tackling. 

We think of ourselves as a global company based in Utah. We love being in Utah Valley. We were founded here and we grew up here. It’s a wonderful place to operate a company. We have employees who have been with us for 10 years, and we’re always attracting new people to the company. It’s a high quality of life, and the quality of engineers and people here are superb.  

We have had a lot of milestone moments. The most recent one was at 1:30 a.m. eastern time this morning. We were the first company to post images for the 1940 census online. Literally this day happens once every 10 years. And the best part? It will inspire new people into doing their family history. 

We’ve been a huge fan of “Who Do You Think You Are?” over in the U.K. 

A couple years ago, NBC decided to import the format to the U.S.. They needed a sponsor and someone who could help do the research for the show. In my wildest dreams I never imagined it would be as good as it’s been. There’s been so much emotion in these beautiful shows, and it’s done as well as anything to show the amazing discoveries that come from family history. 

We will never be Facebook size. We will never have a billion users. But with our continued investment in content, technology and marketing, we ought to be able to serve at least one person in every family. That’s our vision. We don’t need to be the fastest-growing company. We’ll grow one subscriber at a time.