Provo Labs
Paul Allen
Paul Allen, CEO, Provo Labs
Paul Allen is a serial/parallel entrepreneur who seeks to improve the world through business enterprises. Two companies he founded have been listed on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S.: Infobases (1996) and MyFamily.com (2003).
Paul served as CEO of Infobases (a religious and educational CD-ROM publisher) from 1990-1997. At its peak the company had 150,000 households using its religious and educational CD ROM products.
Paul served as the founder and CEO of Ancestry.com from 1997-1998, creating one of the few successful content subscription business models and using hundreds of internet marketing tactics to grow the company's customer base. In 1998, he conceived of and helped launch the MyFamily.com service to provide free private web sites for families. MyFamily.com attracted 1 million users in just 140 days, making it one of the fastest growing community web sites of all time.
He spent an exciting 19 months in Silicon Valley during the height of the internet boom. In 1999 Paul opened MyFamily.com's San Francisco office and worked there in various roles until 2001. He championed the acquisitions of Rootsweb and Ah-ha, a pay-per-click search engine, while VP of Corporate Development. After returning to Utah in 2001 to help the company raise its final round of venture capital, Paul served as Vice President Marketing, managing all internet subscription efforts for Ancestry.com. In 2004, MyFamily.com's revenue reached $123 million. The company has been profitable since late 2001.
The efforts of the MyFamily.com founding team were recognized in the Ernst & Young 2000 Entrepreneur of the Year awards and by Technology Marketing Magazine who named MyFamily.com the Viral Marketing company of the year.
Since leaving MyFamily.com in 2002, Paul has started several ventures under his Infobase Ventures umbrella company. They include 10x Marketing (a search engine and affiliate marketing company), WebEvident (a search engine optimization technology company), Worldhistory.com, Infobase Media Corporation (parent of LDSAudio.com and LDSLibrary.com), iCount, and FundingUtah.com.
Paul writes a monthly column for Utah's Connect Magazine and is one of the leading bloggers in the state of Utah. He lectures frequently on entrepreneurship and internet marketing and has taught business formation classes at Utah Valley State College. He serves on the board of the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum.
His 3,000 volume library grows by several volumes per week as he is an avid Amazon.com and Alibris customer. He listens to Audible.com and LDSAudio.com audio books when he's in the car and not talking on his Blackberry 7230 cell phone.
He loves innovation and the world of ideas, and he is listed on several patent applications.
His favorite business book is "Love is the Killer App" by Tim Sanders. This book taught him to (1) gain all the knowledge he can and share it freely; (2) gain the best social network he can, and share his connections freely; and (3) love and serve everyone he meets.
Paul believes that one of the best ways to change the world and make it a better place is through entrepreneurship. Inspired by business and inventor heroes such as Alexander Graham Bell, Pierre Omidyar, Bill Gross and many others, Paul hopes to make the world a better place through his entrepreneurial ventures.