UstreamIt Business Plan Selected by Prestigious Judging Panel From Hundreds At NYU MBA Program Shootout

Business Wire, May 16, 2000

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2000

UstreamIt.com, the leading innovator in creating and delivering the easiest streaming video messaging system on the Web today, was recently chosen for one of top two monetary awards from scores of business plans selected by a prestigious panel of judges, many from the nation's leading private equity firms, at the New York University Stern $50K PLUS Business Competition shootout.

UstreamIt, developers of the entirely web-based UcaptureIt(TM) in-browser software (patent pending) and the GoStreamIt instant video messaging site, (http://www.GoStreamIt.com) was selected from dozens of business models developed by students in NYU's prestigious Stern MBA program. UstreamIt was selected for the depth and quality of its business model, which focuses on delivering the next wave of private labeled and co-branded video messaging solutions to the more than 5,000,000 current web camera users worldwide.

The NYU competition included many prestigious judges from many of the nation's leading venture capital firms, including Hummer Winblad, IdeaLab!, eVentures, Iron Street Labs, and Vault.com, as well as Ernst & Young. Judging UstreamIt, for instance, were Jonathan Costello of Safeguard Scientifics, Charles Millard, formerly with the Giuliani Administration and now an investment banker with Prudential Securities, and Peter Sachs of Goldman Sachs.

"We are honored to be recognized by such a distinguished panel. The panel confirmed that we have effectively planned and we are moving forward on executing our corporate strategy -- which focuses entirely on providing the easiest video messaging system on the Web," commented Roger Hollander, CEO and co-founder of UstreamIt. "We look forward to becoming the B2B, B2C and C2C standard in the fast emerging video messaging industry."

UstreamIt's UcaptureIt(TM) tool is designed to be compatible with the installed base of more than 50 million ready-to-stream Windows Media Player users worldwide. Real Media and QuickTime version are due to be released later this year.

UstreamIt's UcaptureIt(TM) tool and video messaging site (www.GoStreamIt.com) are based on patent-pending technology developed by the UstreamIt team. UstreamIt's goal from its inception has been to create the easiest instant video messaging system on the web -- one that is compatible with narrow band users yet scales to meet the demands of broadband and wireless applications.

According to Ben Willman, UstreamIt's President and CTO, "Our goal from the very beginning has been to take a complicated process designed for technical people, and simplify it for the end-user." "By making the process both simple, web-based, and cross-platform compatible, we are able to appeal to the widest possible base of users."

Founded by Silicon Alley veterans Roger Stuart Hollander and Ben Willman in 1999, UstreamIt is headquartered in New York and has approximately $2.0 million in early round private equity.