NearMe, a Spin-Off of MapInfo Corporation, Secures Seed Funding And Announces New Management Team Members

Business Wire, Nov 20, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

SEATTLE and ALBANY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 20, 2000

The Company Relocates Headquarters to Seattle

with Research and Development to Remain in Albany, NY

NearMe, Inc., a web and wireless location-based services provider, today announced that it secured seed funding from Arch Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Vault Capital and several individual investors. The financing will help accelerate time to market for NearMe's location-based information products and drive its technology development.

"Today is a significant milestone for NearMe. Securing funding and a top-level management team further validates both our business model and development efforts," says John Haller, president and chief technology officer. "We are confident that based on these developments, NearMe will be able to execute on its location-based service strategy for the wired, web and broadband industries."

In addition to securing funding, NearMe announced the addition of three industry experts to its senior management team. David Bluhm, co-founder of 2WAY Corporation, will assume the role of director and chief executive officer for NearMe. Bluhm began his career at Hewlett Packard and has held the title VP of Sales at Mosaix International and VP of Sales and Marketing at Davox Corporation. Prior to founding 2WAY, Bluhm was a Senior Development Manager for Motorola.

"NearMe's development team has years of experience and a successful heritage in location-based service technology," says David Bluhm, director and CEO of NearMe. "Our goal is to leverage our internal pool of expertise in order to quickly gain traction in the location-based services market and capitalize on the high-growth opportunities domestically and abroad."

Linden Rhoads, a seasoned veteran of several technology successes including co-founding roles with AdRelevance, Nimble Technologies and Xstatic, joins as director and will execute on corporate development and strategy. Linden is responsible for developing NearMe's key relationships with tenant partners and the execution of planned investment and financial activities for the company.

Jim Newkirk, formerly director of finance at Nimble Technologies, takes on the role of director of finance and operations. Prior to Nimble, Newkirk was rooted in the healthcare industry, provided strategic recommendations and consulting efforts for M&A and raising and securing financing for public and private companies.

Bluhm, Rhoads and Newkirk will establish NearMe's headquarters in Seattle. John Haller will assume the role of president and chief technology officer and will head up the company's development efforts in Albany, NY. Prior to founding NearMe, Haller founded MapInfo in 1985 and served as CTO of MapInfo Corporation until November of 1999.

About ARCH Venture Partners

With offices in Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, ARCH Venture Partners is a premier provider of seed and early stage venture capital for the commercialization of innovations in information technology, life sciences, and the physical sciences. ARCH's investments include, Malibu Networks, eCustomers, Teach.com, New Era of Networks (NEON), Apropos Technology, Caliper Technologies and ImproveNet. For more information, visit www.archventure.com.

About Madrona Venture Group LLC

Madrona is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the Internet economy in the Northwest. Based in Seattle, the firm has a $250 million venture fund directed at emerging Internet, wireless, telecom and software businesses. Some of Madrona's early-stage investments include InfoSpace, Amazon.com, HomeGrocer.com, Nordstrom.com and Ignition. For more information, visit www.madrona.com.

About Vault Capital

Vault Capital is a Seattle-based, seed and early-stage investor comprised of seasoned Internet and technology veterans. Vault investments include TeraBeam, Singingfish, Mobi (sold to InfoSpace), Loc8.net, eProject and BidPath. For more information, visit www.vaultcapital.com.

About NearMe

NearMe, a spin-off of MapInfo Corporation, provides location technologies, applications and content to companies looking to enable local marketing, commerce and promotion through web and wireless location-based services. The NearMe Mobile iLS platform is the first localized content engine designed to interface with ad serving and personalization technologies and is optimized for wireless, wired and broadband delivery networks. Using NearMe's Mobile iLS(TM), advertisers, for the first time will be able to develop and implement a targeted pull-advertising strategy across all digital mediums. NearMe is headquartered in Seattle, WA with research and development in Albany, NY. For more information, visit www.nearme.com.