Our vision is to change the way people do genealogy. We want to change the way it’s done on a peer-to-peer level, make it easy and expose anyone who has interest to a huge community of people who can help them at a very small cost.
What would you do for a Klondike bar? You know the question, you’ve heard it uttered a million different times on a million different commercials. The original concept was based on the premise that people would do all types of strange things for a Klondike bar, ignoring the fact that you can just buy one at any grocery store and avoid any extreme challenges.
For all you genealogy fans, there is a similar question: what would you do to find out information about your ancestors? What would you pay for a certain document, photo, or tidbit of knowledge that would help shed light on your heritage? With genealogy blossoming into a major pastime for many individuals, AncestorCloud is putting this question to the test.
“Genealogy is very unique, every single family tree, every single ancestor has a different story,” said founder Wesley Eames. “You can’t put it all in one bucket. We allow users to create requests for anything, from local photographs to translations of documents to picking up records from the courthouse. Even full-on custom research problems, something like taking back a full family line four generations.”
Eames founded AncestorCloud under a marketplace-type premise — users post requests, specify how much they are willing to pay for said request, and then anyone (known on the website as helpers) can assist them on their ancestral journey. Once an agreement is reached, the money is paid to AncestorCloud who holds it until the transaction has been approved by the requester.
“Every genealogist has a dozen or so current problems with their family tree,” Eames said. “Every genealogist has 2,000 or so ancestors in their family tree, there are so many places you can get stuck. That’s the problem we solve, that one person can’t be an expert on the 200 locations where all their ancestors are from, so they can post a request and say what they’re willing to reward the helper for. Our helpers can browse those requests, search by location, timeframe, money, and then they can decide if they want to help with it.”
Here’s another question for you: what’s easier, buying a $2,000 plane ticket to Australia and trying to find old documents/photos on your own, or paying somebody already in the area $50 to do that work for you? Even the worst mathematician understands the correct answer.
AncestorCloud currently sports users in 53 different countries, with helpers existing in every state in America. Need documents discovered in New York or Utah or California? That’s what AncestorCloud was designed for. You just have to ask one simple question: What would you do for ancestral information?
“Our vision is to change the way people do genealogy,” Eames said. “We want to change the way it’s done on a peer-to-peer level, make it easy and expose anyone who has interest to a huge community of people who can help them at a very small cost.”
Published 9/29/2015
