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Gold/Mining/Energy : Net Shepherd Inc. (WEB) on ASE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Barry K who wrote (1039)	5/5/2000 1:41:00 PM
From: Denise D	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1252

News Out On Ktopia (and Revenue Contracts) Net Shepherd Inc. - Ktopia(SM), Announces Formation, First Round Funding And Customers Bridgewater, New Jersey & Calgary, Alberta - Friday, May 5, 2000, 1:00 PM EDT Ktopia launched as Net Shepherd's business intelligence company Net Shepherd (CDNX: WEB) and ktopia(SM) announced today that the now company is funded, in business and on track as a core component of the Net Shepherd go-to-market strategy. Leveraging Net Shepherd's Internet Community Management System, along with newly developed ktopia tools and processes, ktopia is attacking the multi-billion dollar business intelligence market. Vanenburg Group, as part of its recent US $18 million dollar strategic investment through Net Shepherd, has committed a considerable portion of money and resources to ktopia. "The Vanenburg Group recognises the importance of the market spaces in which ktopia is working: both in Knowledge Management as well as the immense commercial potential for community-based application service providers in the business intelligence space. This is one of the major reasons why we recently entered into the Enhanced Business Transactions with Net Shepherd," said Vanenburg's J D van do Geer. "The Vanenburg Group is committed to making ktopia a success through the provision of both funding and management expertise, exercised through Board membership." ktopia is currently executing on two revenue-generating engagements, data gathering for Webb Interactive and product record coding for a global business information provider. Webb Interactive is using ktopia's virtual workforce to gather varied data, scattered deep within corporate web sites. "ktopia is filling a gap that has tremendous opportunity," commented Perry Evans, President & CEO of Webb Interactive Services Inc. "Providing business intelligence solutions more efficiently will position them well in the market." The leadership team and Board of Directors is being finalised, Account Executives are on the street and developers and support staff are on board. "ktopia is in scale mode," says David Herman, President and CEO. "We are now deploying our sales, marketing and technology strategies to build an infrastructure that will support near-term revenue generation, as well as build a long-term, high-growth business. We have identified key customer and alliance targets and will continually increase our capabilities and number of engagements over the course of this year." "In the Roadmap that we issued last August, we wrote of our intention to set up US-based companies that use different applications of our unique combination of technology, an Internet-connected Community and an Internet-derived database of commercial information", said Don Sandford, President & CEO of Net Shepherd. "ktopia is a key part of this strategy. The parts of the Community that will be working with ktopia will be known as PeopleForce(SM). The leading US Internet analyst company Forrester has estimated that the on-line business intelligence market will be worth US $11 billion within four years. We will be extremely competitive in this market. With ktopia, we have the technology, people and processes that will transform the economics of the business intelligence industry." ktopia's virtual workforce members - PeopleForce(SM) - are teams of free agents that collaborate on work of commercial value. ktopia's PeopleForce(SM) allows businesses to scale their operations massively without the complexity of co-ordinating the work. PeopleForce(SM) gets real people to work on real problems for worldwide corporations. Some examples of PeopleForce(SM) nitiatives are: * Organizing business information catalogues * World Wide Web sites content characterization and classification * Market research * Photo and image classification "We chose the name 'ktopia' because we will be offering our customers a place of knowledge; flows of information from markets to their businesses", explains Herman. "ktopia enables companies to tap into the knowledge, diversity and expertise of virtual workforces." About ktopia ktopia offers research tools, project and workflow management, community involvement and reporting results in a managed Application Service Provider model. ktopia services are provided through a unique combination of Not Shepherd's proprietary technologies and its own business content and knowledge management tools. ktopia has the exclusive right to use Net Shepherd's ICMS in business intelligence and knowledge management applications. ktopia business clients can translate physical world projects into online activities. They receive quality work completed quickly at lower costs. ktopia focuses its sales efforts on companies using the Internet to conduct commerce, enhance their supply or demand chains, and expand the reach and power of their brands. Potential ktopia customers include global business information providers, such as Dun & Bradstreet government agencies, market research firms and Internet commerce sites. www.ktopia.com About Net Shepherd Net Shepherd Inc (NSI) has proprietary technology and know-how that enables businesses to collect information and perform work by using communities of people connected to the Internet. NSI commercializes its technology and know-how primarily through subsidiary application companies (AppCos). The AppCos serve business customers with information services that have paradigm-breaking speed and cost advantages over competitive solutions. NSI's business plan is to acquire and develop AppCos that leverage its technology platform and then spin-off the AppCos through public financial markets. NSI currently supports three AppCos: Answers.com, ktopia and ClickChoice.com. www.netshepherd.com About Vanenburg Group The Vanenburg Group is a private, limited liability Netherlands Company that was formed in 1996. Vanenburg Group's main activities include providing venture capital funding for technology companies worldwide (Vanenburg Capital Management); support for high quality software development as a service for portfolio companies (Vanenburg Factory); a channel for high-return investments in IT solutions in the "Beyond ERP" world, operating in 20 countries (Vanenburg Business Systems). www.vanenburg.com. enewsservices.com ___________________________________________________________________________________ Denise.