Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Yammer Dwarfs Parent Geni In Fundraising Round

In the case of the kid getting much (much) larger than its parent, Yammer, the one time spinout of Los Angeles-based genealogy and family tree website Geni, has now squarely out-raised venture capital than its parent firm, saying Wednesday that it has raised an $85M funding round. The round--rumored to be valued at $500M to $600M--brings Yammer's total raised to $142M. The corporate micro-messaging service, which started in Los Angeles as a side project of Geni engineers looking for a better way to collaborate with co-workers--was later moved to San Francisco by founder David Sacks. Yammer has far exceeded Geni in fundraising, with Geni only announcing somewhere around $16.5M in funding. Geni is, however, an original investor in Yammer. It's unclear what ownership Geni has in Yammer nowadays, but it's conceivable that Geni's stake in Yammer might be worth (on paper) at least as much as Geni has taken in funding. More information »

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