The Lifetime Value Co. Announces $150 Million Investment Led By Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital

The Lifetime Value Co., a creator of leading online consumer and business information brands that helps people discover, understand and use data, announced today a $150 million investment led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

The investment is with participation from investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Credit Partners, Morgan Stanley Tactical Value, and ROCA Partners and will represent the Company’s first institutional fundraise and will accelerate LTV’s efforts to enhance its data capabilities, expand its team and invest in additional marketing and partnership opportunities.

Founded in 2007 by Josh Levy and Ross Cohen and bootstrapped to date, LTV owns and operates a portfolio of online properties that provide rich analytical search capabilities on people, businesses, real estate and automobiles. LTV’s online technology platform helps users answer everyday life questions, big and small, ranging from “What is that potential client’s contact info?” to “Who is calling me?” to “Has the car I am buying been in an accident?” to “What is my house worth?”. Over 30 million monthly visitors and millions of subscribers have utilized the Company’s suite of online products.

LTV integrates rich datasets, user-friendly features and artificial intelligence equipping users to go beyond simple search engine results to get the most actionable information to assist in making more informed decisions. The Lifetime Value Co. portfolio of brands include: professional home value data provider Ownerly.com, car purchasing and ownership reports provider Bumper.com, public information provider BeenVerified.com, buisness developement tool peopleSmart.com, in-depth investor related property data provider NeighborWho.com. 

“Since Ross and I started the company in 2007, we always dreamed of leveraging our platform to build great brands”, said The Lifetime Value Co. co-founder Josh Levy. Levy continued, “Partnering with Morgan Stanley and ROCA will not only help strengthen the capabilities of our existing brands but will also help us to bring greater access to more users, partners, and leverage our technology into exciting new opportunities.”

“Our goal has always been to create a premium information bundle for our customers built by a team of great people”, said co-founder Ross Cohen. “This opportunity allows us to continue to build out our ecosystem of data capabilities, which will be utilized across all our brands and add new team members that fit our hard working and entrepreneurial culture.”

This transaction will empower LTV to continue incubating and marketing new products, enrich its datasets and enhance the user experience across its properties, while continuing to make data available at lower costs to an increasingly growing demand. This will further LTV’s ability to increase the value provided to users over time and provides additional channels and marketing expansion to an increasingly broader customer base through a multitude of data-driven brands.

“Since meeting Josh and Ross nine years ago, we have witnessed the Company’s impressive success and growth that has quietly catapulted LTV to become a leading player in the attractive online information services category. As business and people interactions continue to move online, information on who you are interacting with is becoming critical – whether seeking new sales leads or online dating or just conducting self-research”, said Robert Bassman, Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. “Josh and Ross have bootstrapped the Company to an impressive scale while fostering an entrepreneurial and high performance culture. We are excited to partner with LTV to support its continued growth of brands, leverage its product capabilities to integrate datasets and expand into new categories”, added Bassman.

Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Morgan Stanley Credit Partners and Morgan Stanley Tactical Value are part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s Private Credit & Equity platform.

Source: Forbes

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