Neoteny leads round joined by PayPal founding team member

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - April 23, 2003 - Six Apart Ltd., the creator of the highly acclaimed Movable Type personal publishing system, today announced the close of Series "A" financing with Neoteny Co. Ltd. as lead investor. Joining Neoteny in the investment is Reid Hoffman, a member of the founding team and former executive officer of PayPal. The funding gives Six Apart, a recognized leader in the realm of weblog personal publishing tools, capital to launch its newly announced TypePad™ hosted personal publishing service. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Weblogs, commonly referred to as "blogs" for short, are one of the fastest growing phenomena on the web, with millions of webloggers all over the world participating in the medium by publishing their thoughts on any topic in this simple, richly linked format. Six Apart, founded by the husband and wife team of Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott, has been a technological innovator in the weblog space since its launch of Movable Type in October 2001.

"Neoteny's investment in Six Apart is a strong validation of the personal publishing realm--particularly weblogging--and also special recognition of Six Apart's role in the development of this industry," says Mena G. Trott, CEO of Six Apart. "Neoteny's knowledge of this space, and their interest in innovation, make them an ideal partner for Six Apart and their support will enable our service and product development to stay abreast with our vision."

Neoteny, a Japan based venture capital firm focused on the rapidly expanding realm of the networked consumer, sees that the convergence of metadata, connected devices and web services will invigorate growth on the Internet and empower people to evolve the ways they communicate, commune and conduct commerce.

Joichi Ito, CEO and Founder of Neoteny, is recognized by Business Week as one of "Japan's Net Builders" and by Time Magazine as a member of the Cyber Elite and one of the 50 most influential people in technology. Mr. Ito was also selected by the World Economic Forum as one of its "Global Leaders for Tomorrow" in 2002. Mr. Ito has been involved in the Internet since the early 1980's and has founded and/or developed several Internet businesses, including Infoseek Japan, Digital Garage, Eccosys and PSINet Japan.

"Ben and Mena have helped set the standard for weblogs with Movable Type, the tool of choice for most serious webloggers." says Ito. "We believe that the vision of Six Apart to provide TypePad to make weblogging available to a much wider audience is timely and exciting. In addition to our funding, Neoteny hopes to support Six Apart in a variety of ways to make TypePad a global standard for weblogs."

Augmenting Six Apart's established reputation in the personal publishing market, which includes a Webby Award nomination for Best Practices for Movable Type, Neoteny brings an international focus to the venture, along with a strong background in related industries such as connected devices and social software.

Six Apart Names Board Members
Six Apart also announced today that Reid Hoffman and Barak Berkowitz would join its Board of Directors. Hoffman, a founding member and former EVP of PayPal, joins Six Apart's Board as a co-investor. Hoffman also serves on a number of boards as well as being CEO of his own start-up, LinkedIn. Berkowitz, Neoteny's representative in the United States, has over 20 years of experience marketing technology to consumers. Most recently he was Co-founder and President of OmniSky, the wireless Internet innovator which was acquired by Earthlink. Previously he had served at the Go Network as Executive VP and General Manager and at Logitech as Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Americas. Berkowitz also held key roles at Apple Computer and Macy's.

About Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd., based in San Francisco, CA, is the company behind the Movable Type personal publishing system and the TypePad personal publishing service. Founded by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G. Trott in 2002, Six Apart creates tools that enable tens of thousands of individuals, organizations, and corporations to participate in the web's full potential by publishing their ideas on the Internet with simple, yet powerful software and services. The Six Apart corporate weblog (http://www.sixapart.com) provides more information about Six Apart, TypePad and Movable Type.

About Neoteny
Neoteny Co., Ltd. (http://www.neoteny.com) is a venture capital firm focused on personal communication technologies with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Neoteny's investment team has backgrounds in Goldman Sachs, NTT, Mitsubishi Corp., Digital Garage, Infoseek Japan, PSINet Japan, Eccosys, and Energy Conversion Devices Inc.

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