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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA
CONTACT
Betsy
Cragon
CRAGON Communications
703-588-2006
betsy@cragon.com
VENTUREHOUSE
GROUP DEBUTS FUTURE DOWNTOWN HEADQUARTERS
Mayor
Anthony Williams Praises Company For Leading Trend Into
the City
WASHINGTON,
March 31, 2000 - Venturehouse Group, a leading technology
holding company, threw a pre-construction party Thursday
evening to present its future downtown headquarters and
to highlight the beginnings of a trend of technology companies
locating in the city. In a historic building on Seventh
Street near the MCI Center, Mayor Anthony Williams addressed
the crowd of more than 200 people, including local and national
government leaders, area technology entrepreneurs and media.
He praised Venturehouse Group for leading the way in bringing
the digital economy to the District of Columbia. "Venturehouse
has pushed the envelope of electronic commerce, creating
a climate, a platform, a framework for other businesses
to locate downtown," said Mayor Williams. "We
are going to make this city a premier technology, e-commerce
center," he said. "We are in the forefront of
a growing trend," said Mark Ein, Venturehouse Group
founder and CEO. He told the group he wanted to locate the
firm's primary office downtown amid the unique environment
of the city, where you are a short walk from places like
the MCI Center and some of the world's best museums. "The
activity, excitement and culture of the city have great
appeal to young entrepreneurs and technology professionals,"
said Ein, formerly of private equity firm The Carlyle Group.
"I would like to thank Mayor Williams and his administration
for making the city, in just over a year, a better and easier
place to do business," he said. The presence of two
national officials - Lawrence Summers, Secretary of the
Treasury Department, and Joel Klein, Assistant Attorney
General of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division -
demonstrates the importance of Washington, D.C., to the
nation's business community and also the widespread interest
in ensuring the city's important place in the region's new
technology-based economy. Ein thanked technology leaders
who were present, including Mario Marino of the Marino Institute;
Raul Fernandez, CEO of Proxicom; Michael Saylor, CEO of
MicroStrategy; and Jeong Kim, Yurie Systems founder. "There
is a real commitment among the leaders of the region's technology
and entrepreneurial community, many of whom neither live
nor work in the District, to make sure that the city is
an important center of activity. They realize that for the
region to thrive, the District needs to thrive," Ein
said. Reporters from Forbes, Business Week, The Washington
Post and many local publications were in attendance. Also
present were representatives from the region's cultural
institutions, including the National Gallery of Art and
The Phillips Collection, along with Washington Redskins'
star running back Brian Mitchell. Venturehouse Group's headquarters
is located on three floors above the District Chophouse
at 509 Seventh St., N.W. Built in the 1880s, the four-story
building at one time housed a bank. Hickock Warner Fox Architects
is transforming the 10,000-square-foot space into a contemporary
environment conducive to high-intensity work while also
reviving the building's historical interest and integrity.
"Buildings like these are D.C.'s answer to SoHo,"
said Bob Fox, a partner with the architecture firm. "Seventh
Street is becoming a modern technology corridor - but with
interesting, historic architecture. It's unique and it's
great to see the buildings brought back this way."
Venturehouse Group, which currently maintains offices in
Tysons Corner,expects to move into the renovated building
this fall. The company will house several of its Internet,
technology and telecommunications start-ups in their critical
first few months. "Venturehouse was formed to capitalize
on the unprecedented opportunity to build companies of great
value in very short periods of time," Ein told the
crowd. "Our strategy is to focus our team's experience,
capital and other resources on our companies to take the
learning curve out of the entrepreneurial process and to
get our companies to scale fast in an environment when the
opportunities are great, but time is your enemy." Venturehouse
Group's investors and advisers include Jeong Kim, Yurie
Systems founder and now Lucent Technologies executive; Alex
Mandl, CEO of Teligent; Rajendra Singh, founder and CEO
of Telcom Ventures; David Oros, founder and CEO of Aether
Systems; Robert Allbritton of Allbritton Communications;
and Nobel Prize winner Arno Penzias. The firm has an initial
investment pool of over $75 million.
ABOUT
VENTUREHOUSE GROUP: Venturehouse Group (www.venturehousegroup.com)
is a technology holding company that creates, invests in
and builds world-class Internet, technology and telecommunications
companies. Venturehouse is particularly focused on Internet
companies that are building business-to-business e-commerce
companies as well as those that leverage wireless data and
broadband networks. It invests in companies, usually in
their earliest stages, and then focuses considerable resources
to accelerate their development. These resources include
a network of world-class advisers, strategic relationships
at the highest level, physical infrastructure services including
office space and preferred relationships with leading service
providers. The Venturehouse team includes experts with deep
functional skills (strategy, finance, recruiting, technology,
legal, creative and accounting) whose collective experience
of building great businesses is focused on its portfolio
companies, which currently include Admine.com, Equilinx.com,
TS-One.com, MobileSpring, Hifusion, XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:
XMSR), and Varsitybooks.com (NASDAQ: VSTY).
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