yet2.com is a close-knit company, but widely diversified geographically—we have offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Periodically, we get together to review trends, best practices, and to see who’s better at baseball. Ultimately, technology transfer is driven by personal relationships.

In April, yet2.com management gathered for the fifth time at our home-away-from-home on Casco Bay in Maine. We thought we should share some of the scenes from the retreat with you.

As a registered user of yet2.com, you are a member of an incredibly diverse global technology exchange. We are thankful for your participation, your comments, and most of all, your interest in commercializing technology through the yet2.com marketplace. We would like to give you a brief update on our business and share some of our insights....

Highlights

• Deal closure rate doubling 2 years in a row. Time to closure also decreasing.
• Closed seven deals in the first quarter of 2005.
• Over 1000 deals now in negotiation.
• High-interest areas identified.
• 7th yet2.com executive briefing conference slated for November.

The rate of deal closures through yet2.com has doubled over last year. In fact, in the first three months of 2005, we’ve closed seven deals (see examples below), varying in value to our clients between $30 thousand and $30 million NPV. They are diverse in geography, subject matter, and type of transaction, but all were initiated online. The time to closure has also dropped dramatically, lowering the transaction costs.

1. European University / US Co. -- electronics technology
2. Agfa (Europe) / US Co. -- electronics technology
3. Kimberly Clark / US Co. -- materials technology
4. DuPont / European Company -- process technology
5. MDI / Humatec -- medical device technology
6. Small US Co. / Large Asian Co. -- LCD technology
7. Small Int'l Co. / Large US Co. -- manufacturing technology

We have made two major changes in our service offering over the past year. First, we are much more engaged in the dealmaking process. As we have over 1,000 deals in negotiation involving most of the Fortune 500 and many of our leading-edge smaller companies, this is not a trivial endeavor. Second, we have become very active assisting clients in technology acquisition. Since we now have a good understanding of who’s selling and who’s buying, we are well equipped to be a market maker.

A few examples of areas in which we are seeing high levels of interest -- drug delivery, image display/capture, water purification/filtration, and heat transfer (mostly for electronics). While we can offer a more detailed analysis to our clients, if you have high value technologies or technology needs in these areas, please let us know.

Our annual conference will be held on November 6th-8th, 2005 in Cambridge, MA. The topic this year is “Bridging the ‘size’ divide: Technology transfer between large and small organizations.” Last year executives from over 100 companies attended this important networking and idea-sharing event. Invitations are going out shortly -- please contact Nancy Harris at 781-972-0616 for details.

Thanks for being a supporter.
Ben, Tim, and Phil

Phil Stern, CEO
Ben duPont, President
Tim Bernstein, EVP

When you request an introduction to a technology provider, or when you request an chance to present your technnology to a technology seeker, yet2.com now asks a few more questions about who you are than we have previously. Our members have asked for this extra information to help them focus their attention on their most promising introductions. This information becomes part of the email notification process that’s part of the yet2.com site. Once you’ve entered information about your company, it enters our database for the next introduction.

Introductions prior to 2 June 2004 may not display all the new introduction information because it was not collected previously.

yet2.com now offers Premium Introduction Qualification Services that are designed to give you even more information about the solutions or needs at hand. These services provide in-depth screening of requestors via phone interviews and a rating of introductions. Interviews explore market opportunity, market share, required features, alternatives, and other critical information that allow you to more accurately assess the opportunity. For more information, contact us at 1-781-972-0600 or at introductions at yet2.com.

You’ve probably seen it already: There’s a search box on almost every page of the yet2.com site.

It’s now much easier to find a variety of needs or technologies using different search terms each time. Just search, read about the need or technology, and search again -- no need to return to a special "search" page to do so.

You can also reach the browse pages for TechNeeds and TechPaks by clicking the appropriate link next to the search box. Did something you read remind you of something else you remember seeing? Browse for it.

You’ll find a subtle change when you search yet2.com: The yet2.com search box now conforms to the same search syntax that you’ll find in public search engines such as Google. yet2.com search now interprets what you type as individual words (rather than as a phrase) and finds TechPaks and TechNeeds that contain all the words in your search. Of course, you can still search for a phrase by putting it between double quotation marks. For example, you can find "My TechPak Title" -- but if you search for My TechPak Title without the quotes, yet2com tries to find a listing that contains all three of those words in any order. Of course, you can search for chemical OR process, chemical AND NOT process, and use a variety of highly complex search terms, all documented in yet2.com Help.

You can search for listings from a given month in the past through to the current month. For example: date:3 finds all listings published during the three months prior to the current date. date:6 finds listings published during the six months prior to the current date. For example, process AND chemical AND date:3 finds all TechPaks containing "process" and "chemical" and which were published during the past three months.

You can search for listings by specific ID number. Each listing has a unique ID. For example: id:12345 finds the listing with that specific ID.

The yet2.com marketplace sends out automated messages when an introduction takes place, when an introduction moves from one stage to another, and at other times when we need to notify members of activity involving their technologies and needs. We’ve rewritten many of these emails (and will continue refining them) to be more helpful. For example, what should you do next to move your introduction forward? What other actions can you (or we) take at this time? We think that these new emails will help our members get the most from the yet2.com marketplace. Please let us know what you think.

yet2.com users can now log in once and click the "Remember Me" checkbox. On subsequent visits from the same computer, yet2.com will recognize you and allow you to view listing information without having to log in again.

If you request an introduction, post a TechPak^TM or a TechNeed^TM listing, or wish to administer your account, yet2.com will require you to log in formally.

In response to user feedback, yet2.com has greatly simplified the registration process.

We’ve reduced the amount of information required up front, and we now auto-affiliate new members from organizations that have a group account on yet2.com, making it even easier to add new users to your account.

For users not associated with a group account, yet2.com has simplified the authorization process and eliminated the credit card fee for authorization.

yet2.com has partnered with Delphion to offer access to the Delphion patent database to yet2.com users. Delphion Research is the premier website for researching and analyzing patents and related information on a worldwide basis.

On the Delphion website, when a patent in the database corresponds to a patent associated with a yet2.com TechPak, that patent appears with a Y in a blue dot. Delphion users now also have access to yet2.com.

Those who upload TechPaks to the yet2.com site can now specify provisional classifications for their TechPaks.

Good classification of the technology in a TechPak is important to effective marketing. Classifications help searchers find your technology -- even when searchers don’t know precisely what they are looking for, and they help yet2.com promote your technology appropriately. Think about categories outside the normal application of the technology: radar for machine tool alignment or color-changing paint to measure airflow.