"This investment from CountryRoad Capital will allow iFamily to accelerate its product and business development and sustain its leadership position as the first and foremost genealogy application on Facebook," said Ilya Nikolayev, CEO of iFamily. Mr. Nikolayev continued, "CountryRoad has a distinguished track record of identifying and catalyzing unique emerging technology opportunities and we are pleased to partner with CountryRoad's Managing Partner Andrew Merkatz and his team. Rather than take an existing genealogy application and try to bend it to work within Facebook, and rather than develop a competing family oriented social network, we have chosen to build this application from the bottom up to fully leverage and integrate the power of Facebook. I believe this market positioning is unique and will allow us to drive significant value for our shareholders."
Andrew Merkatz, Founder and Managing Partner of CountryRoad Capital, added, "I am very excited by the vision for Family Tree on Facebook and the progress that Ilya has demonstrated in a short period of time at iFamily. I will be working closely with the team at iFamily to cement and extend the company's early leadership position within the genealogy category on Facebook. We believe that investing in Facebook Platorm application developers is a historic opportunity and we are devoting more of our firm's resources to this area. iFamily represents the second Facebook application investment for CountryRoad Capital, which in February 2007 completed a small investment in SocialMedia.com, a Silicon Valley based company that has built one of the leading Facebook Application Networks including such leading properties such as Happy Hour, Trakzor and Foodfight."
