Institutional Venture Partners Invests in Business.com; IVP Sees Potential in Business-Focused Vertical Search Market

Business Wire, Feb 23, 2005

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), one of the nation's premier venture capital firms, announced the investment of $6.5 million in Business.com (www.business.com), the search engine designed and organized for business. This investment represents the second major Silicon Valley investment firm in recent months to back the Santa Monica-based search company.

"At IVP, our objective is to invest in innovative companies that show signs of long-term sustainable growth and profitability," says Steve Harrick, a managing partner of IVP. "We see real opportunity in the pay-per-click revenue model and Business.com has proven it works. Business.com fills a unique segment of the market, has an extremely talented management team, and is entering an important phase in its growth and development." Mr. Harrick will represent IVP on the company's Board of Directors.

IVP is a leading venture capital firm committed to building successful technology companies. Its portfolio of investments includes cutting-edge companies such as Tivo, Netflix, Juniper Networks, AskJeeves, Excite, and Vonage.

Business.com caters to the specific search needs of business professionals and offers a markedly different search experience than that of general search engines. The combination of a proprietary taxonomy, the business interpretation of search terms, and a comprehensive directory structure gives users the ability to easily locate business information online. Business.com reaches 3 million business professionals each month and another 28 million through a highly targeted network of business sites, making it the leading B2B entity online today.

"We are fortunate to have IVP on our board and the opportunity to tap into their insight and expertise from working with other innovative businesses in the internet arena," says Jake Winebaum, CEO and founder of Business.com.

About Institutional Venture Partners

With more than $1.6 billion of cumulative committed capital, IVP is one of the nation's premier venture capital firms. Founded in 1980, IVP has invested in more than 200 privately-held companies, of which more than 80 have gone public. IVP has invested in such notable companies as Altera (ALTR), Aspect Communications (ASPT), Atmel (ATML), Borland (BORL), Cirrus Logic (CRUS), Clarify (CLFY), Concur Technologies (CNQR), FormFactor (FORM), Foundry Networks (FDRY), Juniper Networks (JNPR), LSI Logic (LSI), MMC Networks (MMCN), Netflix (NFLX), Polycom (PLCM), Seagate (SGAT), Sequent (SQNT) and Tivo (TIVO).

IVP has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, California. IVP's website is www.ivp.com.

About Business.com

Business.com is the search engine designed and organized for business. It provides professionals easy access to business products, services, companies, news and other business information to help them get their jobs done more efficiently.

Founded in 1999 by eCompanies and based in Santa Monica, CA, Business.com was originally funded by major strategic investors including Reed Business Information and McGraw Hill. Still privately-held, Business.com added Benchmark Capital as a preferred stockholder in 2004.

Today, Business.com serves the needs of more than three million business searchers each month across a wide array of industries and job functions. Business.com reaches another 28 million through its distribution network which includes partners such as Forbes.com, Inc.com, BusinessWeek, and Internet.com.

With a proprietary taxonomy and classification system consisting of over 65,000 business categories, the company is a leader in the next generation of search. By categorizing business results in an intuitive order and filtering out unrelated consumer content, Business.com is able to anticipate the needs of professionals and allows them to easily locate relevant business information. For more information, please visit www.business.com.