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How Ancestry discovered 13 million Americans spending $538 each on genealogy

Paul Allen on The Venture Capital Podcast · AI, Democracy, and the Future of Government (Ancestry...

“So then we did a survey in early ninety six when we started building websites, and we knew there were 13,000,000 Americans doing genealogy.”

5:41 / 6:09

And we knew from that data that 7% of adult Americans were super interested in in genealogy, willing to spend time and money on it. Mhmm. So then we did a survey in early ninety six when we started building websites, and we knew there were 13,000,000 Americans doing genealogy. We quantified how much money they spent. There's, like, 21 or 25 categories that they would spend money on. We asked through surveys. We got thousands of respondents. We knew the average genealogist was spending $538

About this clip

Ancestry founder Paul Allen reveals the market research that validated their business idea in 1996. He shares specific data points about the genealogy market size, including that 7% of Americans were willing to spend significant money on genealogy, with the average genealogist spending $538 across 25 different categories.

Why this clip

This clip provides concrete, quantifiable market validation data that entrepreneurs can learn from about how to size and validate a niche market opportunity.

5:41 - 6:0928smarket insight

market-research genealogy-market customer-validation

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Paul Allen

1 appearance · 6 clips

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