David this is my Kitchen Table and also my filing system. Over much of the past three decades i have been an investor. The highest calling of mankind ive often thought was private equity. Then i started interviewing. I watch her interview so i know how to do interviews. Ive learned from doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. I asked how much he wanted, he said 250, i did not negotiate and did no due diligence. David i have something id like to sell. And how they stay there. You dont feel inadequate being the second wealthiest man in the world, is that right . In recent years people all over the world seem fascinated to learn more about their Family History. One of the Companies Helping people do that is ancestry, a company now led by a Technology Expert previously working at paypal and facebook. I had a chance to sit down with her to learn why it is that people are so interested about their ancestry. What is ancestry do for its customers . Deborah ancestry has over 3 million active subscribers who come to learn about their history. Building their family tree, discovering new content, building their family story every day on our platform. We also have a business and consumer genomics. 23 Million People have taken in their dna test and we could show you more about your Family History through genetics. Where you are from, your communities, and we can show matches, such as distant covers cousins you may have never discovered. David lets suppose i go to your website and i want to learn about my ancestors, do i send an email saying i want to subscribe and do you do the searching or do they do the searching based on records you make available to them . Deborah lets say you go to ancestry that ancestry. Com and sign up. You put in a little about yourself. Put your name, birthday, where you are from and we help you build the family tree. A little bit about your parents, grandparents. As you go further into your history, we might suggest ancestors you did not know about. Maybe you did not know the names of your great grandparents, but you might know where they are from. You might not know much about your great aunt. We would say, this might be a potential ancestor of yours. We enfold their history as well. Maybe its your ancestors her grandfathers draft card or your grandmothers immigration papers. We help you put together the story of their lives. David if somebody calls or sends an email and they want to pay a fee, you have somebody that works with them or you give them the records and they can dig through it, but if they need help they can maybe pay a bigger fee or something . If you come, its the automation and technology that we built. We have over 130 million family trees that have been built. Using that we can help derive a little bit about your cousins, second cousins, third cousins, grandparents, greatgrandparents. Using Technology Allows us to help you build out your tree for yourself. If you need additional help, we have some pro genealogists that can do Research Projects specifically for you. David why do people want to know so much about their genealogy . In my case im afraid i might have worse things in my background and i wouldnt want to know that. Tell me why do people want to know so much about their background . Deborah three quarters of americans want to know more about their Family History. We call it journey as a personal discovery. What brought you here, what brings your children here . Its a history of lots of people migrating throughout the world. So many people want to go back and understand where they came from so they can understand who they are today. David people can go back a hundred years, 200 years. Sometimes in europe people say i can go back 1000 years. Is that realistic to trace their ancestry back 1000 years . Deborah definitely, especially of european heritage. We have worked with archives and governments throughout europe to gather those documents and you can trace yourself. So many people say, i traced myself to a 1600 royalty and whats really amazing about that is that journey is actually helping unfold so many stories, not just the most famous royal you have, but all the people in between. David ive heard of people, friends of mine who have heard ancestry and they found their parent isnt really their parent or their biological parent. Does that happen a lot . Deborah when people take a dna tests you will find some relatives that you knew about who have already done the test but sometimes we do find folks who get new information about their family. We have a dedicated team who experience that so that they can talk them through that experience. David how many people year go to your website and say i want to learn my genealogy . Deborah millions of people come every month, every year to learn about the genealogy. We have 3. 6 million active subscribers but we have millions of people, we have 23 Million People who have done their dna as well and millions of people discover something new about themselves. David if somebody wants to use your service, they become a subscriber. That means you pay a onetime fee or an ongoing monthly fee . Deborah you pay an ongoing monthly fee has to access your tree in your records. We have new records coming in all the time. There are new records coming to help you on your journey. We have over 40 billion records already on our platform this year we are adding 15 billion. There are more discoveries to be had all the time. David the average person who is a subscriber is a subscriber for how long . Deborah people come for various reasons, there are different tenures. Some people do it for a different project where they want to discover one thing for her 50th anniversary party. We have subscribers who have been here 10, 20 years. Its important to think about what it is they are trying to do. David when did the Company Start . Deborah this year we celebrate our 40th anniversary. David who helped start it . Deborah there was a group of people in utah that started as a publishing company. Is not always a technology or subscription company. Publishing records and genealogy to help people discover their past. David you have risen up to run a publicly traded company, whats the market value . Deborah we are privately owned by blackstone in the transaction was at close to 5 billion. David it was public . Deborah about 10 years ago. David now its privately owned by blackstone. Presumably, blackstone would probably try to sell it at some point or take it public but not in the immediate future . Deborah they are the owners and our partnership with them is very close. David how will you grow the company . Its the biggest in the United States, the biggest in the world. Everybody wants growth, how will you grow the company, do you have new lines of activity you will get into or Something Like that . Deborah 75 of the United States has said that they are interested in Family History. You look at that globally in many Key Countries we are in, its very interesting. So many more people are interested in the category. Part is pretty intimidating. Come to our site. You try to figure out how to make it work. On top of ancestry we have something called me to we. How do we take genealogy from the solo activity where one person does it for the family and bring your family together . With my cousins we add photos together. We are collecting Family History one piece at a time. David what about your dna, have you checked that out . Deborah i have done my dna. No surprise i am southern chinese. David lets talk about your background for a moment. You groupware . Deborah i was born in new york and when i was six i moved to a small town near charleston, south carolina. David why did you do that . Deborah my dad was discriminated against at work and my parents felt like there was no future for them in new york. His friend, an Indian American families that come down to charleston, i work at the naval shipyard, and the government does not discriminate. My dad, i have no idea what he was thinking, picked up our whole family, we drove to a place he had never been and we moved into south carolina. David we are parents immigrants from china or where they burnt born here . Deborah my parents are both immigrants from hong kong and they met and married here. David so you grew up in charleston, right . Where did you go to high school . Deborah its a place called hanahan high school. A small town 30 minutes from charleston. David then you went to duke university, where you and engineer student . Deborah i was. I studied civil and Environmental Engineering at duke. David where there are a lot of women in engineering at that time . Deborah not at that time and probably still not as much as it could be today. I graduated and went to boston consulting group. After that after a couple of years of being in the Atlanta Office i went to stanford for business school. David you graduated from stanford and where did you go . Deborah we thought we wanted to move back to the south, we were looking for jobs with the economy was terrible. I stumbled on this startup called paypal, its fairly large today, but when i was there there was about 300 people in Mountain View working with the company and i joined. David you join paypal and what was your responsibility at paypal . Deborah i joined as a product manager, back then there were a lot of product managers so i wasnt sure with the job was. When i showed up they told me to tell them what i thought they should build. As an avid ebay seller, i was a power seller, i had all these things to make the selling experience better, i let the seller experience for a time and eventually lead the integration between paypal and ebay. David after paypal, where did you go . Deborah i finished up at paypal, i was working part time having my son. I was really struggling and feeling like i wasnt making a difference. I got a call to lead the buyer experience in ebay. David after that, did you join facebook . Deborah i got a call on Maternity Leave up my daughter. My friend had joined facebook and said, i have the perfect job for you, you need to come interview. I thought, im nursing a newborn with a toddler. This is not the time to do another startup period at the Time Facebook was a start up but i had to see where it was going to go. I joined facebook when it was about 900 employees. I was in product marketing. I was there to build consumer modernization. The alternative to ads. Is there a different product we can do monetization with outside of ads. David how many years were europe were you at facebook . Deborah 11 years. David over a decade and a headhunter because you and says how about ancestry . Deborah yes, i got an email saying theres a tech Company Looking for a ceo, do you want to talk to us. I deleted a lot of the emails over the years but i was interesting. Interested. David when was that . Deborah that was 2020 during the lockdown, lots of things going on. Just really interested in learning more. David you have been the seo for three years now . Deborah about two and a half years. David what is your biggest challenge that ancestor, what are you trying to do that wasnt done before . Deborah what has been amazing its in it its a Resilient Company over so many generations and theyre so much more to do. One of the things i really wanted us to do was really make ancestry for all. How do we make the product not just amazing if you have european heritage, but across any heritage. Part of the work we have been doing is diversifying our product, making sure we bring in new communities, new content to make it possible from people from different backgrounds to have a great experience. David to have competitors . I assume they are competitors. Deborah the biggest competitors time. This is a hobby where you spend time on discovering your Family History. Things that compete for your time and attention is our biggest competitor. The other thing is people learning about their Family History use pencil and paper and research. A lot of what we are trying to do is digitize all of that and make it easier. David in the business of genealogy research, are you the Biggest Company in the United States . Deborah we are the Biggest Company. I believe in the world. David in china, there is a lot of interest in genealogy historically and i think its a case that you can trace your genealogy back many hundreds of years, not a typically the case there, is there a equivalent in china of ancestry . Deborah we partner with a Company Called my china roots that does expat genealogy in china and ive used them for my own family. David when you did your own genealogy, what was the most surprising thing you learned about your own genealogy . Deborah beyond a certain point, the records are from china, so i dont have access to those records. Whats fascinating is really seeing my cousins all come together and pull together photos from our family. Each of us have sections of the family photos from our parents childhoods and we realize that each of us only had a portion of them and we have all been scanning them and putting them together onto ancestry. David do the do do ancestries of president s of the United States or do they call you up and asked its trace your ancestry . Deborah we have wellknown people and ancestries, public trees we have put out on something we have done for folks. David do people ever call you if they get their research on and say im not happy with what ive learned . Deborah its really a journey. Sometimes what they learned the first time, how they feel the first call versus the second, versus the third, people are processing new information about themselves they might never have known. Part of what we do is try to help them along in that journey. David where do you think the future of technology is going in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the next five or 10 years . Deborah technology is an underpinning, its a part of every industry and its actually going to increase productivity and make our lives better. David youve written a book about how women can maybe get ahead in their careers. What prompted you to write that book, when did you have time to write it, and one of the main lessons that somebody who hasnt read the book yet might learn from you right now about the book . Deborah i started this book journey several years ago. It was a for your process. And when i was working on it was because i was coaching a lot of women. At that point i had coached maybe a thousand women over the years. I would do 15 minute calls to help them through their careers. And i realize a lot of the themes were similar. So i pulled them together and a lot of the advice i put in the book was based on those conversations that i had over that eight eight year timeframe. I was able to pull it together for 10 new rules for women at work and those rules are really to help women take back their power, which is, every day there are so many circumstances where you dont have a lot of power. But when you do, taking advantage of those opportunities and really leaning in and making things happen is really what the book is about. David lets suppose i dont want to spend the money to buy the book but im thinking about buying the book and im a woman, can you give me one tip for something or one thing that you would say somebody should do if they want to rise up as a woman in a business environment. Deborah dont give yourself a free pass. How many times before you turn on then sue meeting or show up to a meeting do you tell yourself, im just going to show up and not say anything. I wont have any impact, i will sit in the back. My friend, whos a leadership coach calls it unintentional ridiculous strategies that we employ. How many times you actually leave a meeting when you just did that, where you didnt have an impact . What if you walked in every meeting with intention. What do i want to encompass today, how do i want to show up, and make their choices. The things that dont matter, cut them away. No longer giving yourself a free pass and saying, i wont get that done, thats critical. David did you write this while you are at facebook . Deborah i wrote it over for years, partly while at facebook. David somebody else at facebook wrote a book about women. Did she say this is my territory . Deborah the definitive answer is she wrote the forward to my book. You can read her thoughts on it. David any more books in the works . Deborah i think im good for book writing, i write in weekly newsletter where i share thoughts that i have top of mine. David you have been in the Technology World for most of your professional career, where do you think the tech world is going . Will Artificial Intelligence eat up the rest of the tech world and where is the future of Technology Going in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the next five or 10 years . Deborah one thing we talk about when talking about technology is this monolithic idea of what it is. But technology is changing industries and so many different ways. If you think about the things, what was Technology Like 20 years ago before the iphone and where it is today, the ability to have answers in your pocket. Genai makes it easier to access more information faster. How do we think about those things and where will it go beyond this . Im very bullish on technology because technology is an underpinning. Its not its own industry, its a part of every industry and it will increase productivity and make our lives better. David so do you think technology is still going to be centered in United States largely around the Silicon Valley area or is it going to change . Deborah whats amazing about what technology has done, now you can start an app anywhere in the world, you can live anywhere, you can have aws and set up and not have to have a System Administrator or a server that you have to build. Now it has made it so much easier with these tools to actually look at a problem that you have an solvay anywhere. I actually think that distributes the ability for us to Bring Technology together any place. David Artificial Intelligence, ai has changed the world and has change it dramatically, what is ai going to be able to do for you or not do for you . Deborah the most incredible thing about ais genai is coming and changing the way we do things. So much of what we do every day is already involving ai. Last year in 1950s a 1950s census came. You have millions of these records that are handwritten, just people going door to door and writing it down. And we had done the 1940 census 10 years before that, it took us nine months to digitize it. People typing things, indexing it manually. This time in the 1950s it took us nine days to do the same thing because we built ai around handwriting recognition and allowed us to accelerate. Thats why we can go from 40 billion records to another 15 billion in just one year because of the technology that we have built over the years. Genai is the type of ai thats coming thats helping people discover things in a different way. Ai is a very fast field and jenna ai is offset of that. Genai helps understand storytelling. For example, my parents immigrated in the 1960s, what was it like and why were Asian Americans coming out large rates in the 19 60s . A lot of that has to do with a history around the chinese exclusion act on those types of things. With genai in mind we can answer the question. We can answer questions of the experience your grandparents mightve had with the spanish flu in chicago. We think that that is going to engage people to really learn more about how their parents came to america, how their grandparents lived through various world events, and its going to be really powerful for people. David most of what you do or a lot is based on Public Records that exist, but sometimes Public Records dont always have the full story. Do you have people sometimes, if you have a service where you say, the Public Record shows a, b and c but if you want to know about d, e and f you have to go and talk to people or you dont do that . Deborah if you think about our record collection, 70 of our 40 billion records are actually proprietary. So just what Public Records are available is available on our site, but we have more records we have gotten from archives and partnerships over the years. Beyond that we have people who are every day organizing those records, augmenting them, they can comment on them and makes it richer. They attach it to peoples of the record might not look like its related to your great uncle, but somebody put it on their tree and you can explore it as well. Its really both the what is available in our archive but then the work that humans have put in as subscribers to really make their experience great that has put that together that allows us to make that experience good. David i made a speech not long ago at a Genealogical Society in new england and as a gift to me they gave me my genealogy. They had some things in there i would prefer not to know, but they were based on Public Records. But if i went to your service and became a subscriber, what i learned a lot more . Deborah yes, there might be records you dont see. One thing we have is the archives of newspapers. Com where you might have all the newspaper mentions or trees that people have built, so it goes deeper than what one individual can do. We actually have the power of the community that helps build better and deeper experiences. David somebody doesnt know much about ancestry and they are watching this, what would be the best reason why they should go on to your website and become subscriber, what is it that you have that is unique and why somebody should know more about their background . Deborah so much of our lives are shaped by decisions made by our ancestors. The choice of my parents. I talked to my parents about when they came to america. They picked up and went to a country with two suitcases and a few hundred dollars and said i will start a new life, not knowing if they would make enough money to return home. That journey is so incredible and yet that journey is something i know about is because it was proximately so close to what happened because it happened in 1960. That happened in 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, it makes you who you are today. That journey is so important to understand because it makes you who you are. David very interesting business and you expect to say running this for quite some time, i assume . Deborah absolutely, i love it. Its interesting to know we are helping people discover things about themselves. Hey you, with the small business. Whoa. Youve got all kinds of bright ideas, that your customers need to know about. Constant contact makes it easy. With everything from managing your social posts, and events, to email and sms marketing. Constant contact delivers all the tools you need to help your business grow. Get started today at constantcontact. Com constant contact. Helping the small stand tall. After military service, you bring a lot back to civilian life. Leadership skills. Technical ability. And a drive to serve in new ways. Syracuse universitys Daniello Institute for veterans and military families has empowered more than 200,000 veterans to serve their communities and their careers. From professional certifications, to job training, to help navigating programs and services, we give veterans access to support from anywhere in the world. And theyre all coming . Wthose who are still accewith us, yes. Grandpa whats this . Your wings. Light em up gentlemen, its a beautiful. Day to fly