Jempstep Newsletter - January 2010

Jemstep Newsletter - July 2010

Introduction

The Soccer World Cup in South Africa may have given US investors some distraction from the turbulent markets of late. But with the US team now out of the tournament, it’s all eyes back to the markets which seem to be having even more twists and turns than the World Cup tournament itself!

Jemstep continues to work persistently towards its open beta launch and we are excited to announce some major new developments that took place this month.

Account aggregation deal signed!

We are very excited to announce that we have reached agreement with CashEdge for the implementation of account aggregation services on the Jemstep website. CashEdge is the leading provider of aggregation services to the brokerage and wealth management industry. With this service, users are able to automatically and securely import all their investment accounts to Jemstep and view their entire portfolio in one place. Some key benefits to our users are –

It also means that our asset allocation tools, to be launched later this year, will be seamlessly integrated with your portfolio – a massive value-add for all our users! Jemstep's asset allocation tools essentially help you establish a target allocation then provide a roadmap to help you achieve your target allocation. Unlike most of the market competitors, Jemstep actually guides you in deciding what specific investments to sell in your portfolio and what specific investments to purchase in order to meet the target allocation. By integrating your accounts into Jemstep, you’ll be able to manage your asset allocation in a snap, ensuring you have the best available funds per asset class in your portfolio at all times.

Update from Finovate

Following from our exposure at the Finovate Spring 2010 conference, we have had some exciting discussions with key industry players. We are currently in communication with one of the world’s largest media conglomerates who have shown interest in our application. In addition, we are in very encouraging discussions regarding a revenue deal, which was initiated by one of the top five online brokerages in the USA. We hope to strike a deal that is not only beneficial in the short term – but that lays the foundation for a fruitful relationship that benefits both parties, as well as our users, over the longer term.

Of course, it’s still early days insofar as all of this is concerned but these are very encouraging signs at this early stage of our product lifecycle.

Staying with revenue, we are also implementing several affiliate programs through the two leading affiliate networks in the country.

Update on Beta release

We are currently in private beta, and are continuing to add users in stages to manage the feedback more effectively. Many thanks to those who have taken the time and effort to send us feedback so far - your comments are invaluable and we are iterating our designs to take account of your ideas. Given the high volumes of people that have applied for beta access, we foresee the private beta rollout continuing for a while longer before we are open to the public but this has been a very worthwhile process.

New features and products

At this stage, our private beta website is focused on Jemstep’s core functionality of ranking mutual funds, and we have scaled down its functionality so that users give us feedback on this initial cornerstone of the application. However, we are pushing forward on our exciting asset allocation and portfolio features (mentioned above), and once these are completed they will be available for testing and feedback. These features will truly round out the current offering and we are eager to introduce them to our current set of beta testers.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) are also in the process of being completed and will be available for testing soon. The ETF industry is growing rapidly and the addition of ETF’s to Jemstep’s product line-up is eagerly anticipated.

July will also see the introduction of some new navigation and beefed up content for our site, as well as some added enhancements that we’ll describe in more detail to our beta testers with the new release. I’m glad to see us making progress on these fronts which will all add to a richer experience for our users.

Our blog

As always, I encourage our readers to visit our blog because of the great content that is being posted there. Each blog post is designed to give you an insight into mutual fund investing that may help you the next time you need to make an important investment decision. And one of these days, you may even see a blog post from me, so be on the lookout for that!

Also visit our home page at www.jemstep.com for updates and news on our progress.

Thanks for your continued interest and support.

Kind regards

Michael Blumenthal
President and CEO
Jemstep, Inc.

Palo Alto, California
July 2010


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