Ancestry CEO Tim Sullivan announced on Tuesday he would leave his post, seizing a window of opportunity as the company decided to delay its forthcoming IPO.

Sullivan, who helmed the company for 12 years, will transition to chairman of the board in October, the company said, while chief financial officer Howard Hochhauser will serve as interim CEO amid an external search for CEO candidates.

The company — which runs online repositories of family trees, historical documents and DNA analysis, including Ancestry.com — said in June that it had filed confidential paperwork to go public.

Although a full prospectus has not yet been released, Sullivan said in a statement that Ancestry achieved 40 percent revenue growth in the second quarter, with a forecast of approximately 30 percent revenue growth, to over $1 billion, this year. He said that with the company’s roadmap in place, it was the right moment to move to the board.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because Ancestry first went public in 2009 on the Nasdaq with the ticker “ACOM” in a $100 million IPO.

The company went private through a $1.6 billion private equity acquisition in 2012, and was valued at $2.6 billion in an investment round last year. Over time, it’s grown considerably. Headcount has more than doubled, from 700 in 2009 to almost 1,600.

But Ancestry also faces competition as genomics has become more mainstream, with upstarts like Color Genomics and 23andMe getting big-time backers. Still, Ancestry says subscriber growth is at a four-year high.

Source: Tech CNBC
Family-tree start-up Ancestry delays IPO, CEO plans to step down