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Goodmail Systems Secures $12 Million in Funding and Expands Board of Directors

CertifiedEmail service fuels growth with investment from SoftBank Capital and addition of industry veteran Eric Hippeau

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 5, 2006 -- Goodmail Systems, Inc., creator of the CertifiedEmail service for trusted, assured email delivery, announced that it has secured $12 million in venture funding in a round led by new investor SoftBank Capital. SoftBank managing partner Eric Hippeau will join Goodmail's existing board of directors. SoftBank was joined in the round by previous investors DCM and Emergence Capital Partners.

Goodmail's CertifiedEmail provides a unique means of signaling email legitimacy and safety to recipients while providing accredited volume senders a secure, trusted channel of communications with their existing customers. Known for unique blue-ribbon envelope icon indicating a CertifiedEmail message, the service was launched with the support of major ISPs including AOL and Yahoo!

"SoftBank's investment in Goodmail Systems is based on the increasing dependence on email as a vital communications medium and the critical need for a technology that renews trust, restores email message integrity, and assures delivery of important messages from legitimate senders," said Hippeau. "Over the years, as spam and phishing have proliferated, the reliability and integrity of email communications has suffered. By offering a unique, trusted-class of email, we believe CertifiedEmail provides a compelling and comprehensive solution to the benefits of all of us who rely on email everyday."

Hippeau recognized the growing trend of online media early. Under his leadership of Ziff-Davis, ZDNet became a successful example of how strong online business models could evolve from traditional content businesses. As chairman and CEO of Ziff-Davis, he was instrumental in Softbank, Inc.'s first investment in Yahoo! in 1995 and also involved in most every other investment made by Softbank, Inc. in the U.S.

"We are extremely pleased to add the experience of Eric and SoftBank to the Goodmail team as we fulfill our mission to restore trust in email communications," said Richard Gingras, chairman and CEO of Goodmail Systems. "This investment enables us to expand our market presence, grow our customer base and educate email recipients about the security and safety benefits of CertifiedEmail."

Goodmail supports the delivery of trusted email between businesses and organizations with the best email practices and recipients who today require a greater level of assurance in the legitimacy and safety of email. Each CertifiedEmail message is sent with a unique, cryptographically-secure token that authenticates the email and is presented in the email interface with a special blue-ribbon trust icon. Senders that use the CertifiedEmail service obtain assured delivery to the server-level inbox with all email links and images presented intact as default.

Hippeau joins Goodmail's existing board, which includes Dixon Doll, co-founder and general partner of DCM; Jason Green, a founder and general partner of Emergence Capital Partners; former @Home executive Don Hutchinson; Scott Kurnit, founder and former chairman and CEO of About, Inc.; and Gingras.

About SoftBank Capital

SoftBank Capital is an independent venture capital firm focused on high-growth, technology-based businesses benefiting from the rapid deployment and adoption of broadband and mobile technologies. Through its current fund, SoftBank Capital Technology Fund III L.P., the firm has invested to date in Anystream, Associated Content, Aequus Technologies, Beliefnet, The Huffington Post, Insider Pages, LiteScape Technologies, Nellymoser, The NewsMarket, Perpetual Entertainment, Pivot Solutions, PureVideo, Thumbplay, V-Enable and Voxant. For more about SoftBank Capital visit www.softbank.com.


About DCM

DCM is a top-performing venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs building early-stage technology companies. DCM partners manage more than US$1.5 billion and have funded leading technology companies including 2Wire, 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS), @Motion (Openwave), About.com (The New York Times Co.), All About (JASDAQ: 2454), Dang Dang, Foundry Networks (Nasdaq: FDRY), HireRight, Internap (AMEX: IIP), IPivot (Intel), JCI (Nasdaq Japan - Hercules: 9424), Kabu.com (TSE:8703), nQuire (Siebel), PGP Corporation, Recourse Technologies (Symantec), Sigmatel (Nasdaq: SGTL), SMIC (NYSE: SMI), UUNet (MCI), Vimicro (Nasdaq: VIMC), and Worksoft. DCM offers hands-on operational guidance and access to an extensive network of resources, including close relationships with many of the Pacific Rim's leading companies and investors. For more information, please visit DCM's website at www.dcm.com.


About Emergence Capital Partners

Emergence Capital Partners is a leading venture capital firm serving early and growth-stage companies. Emergence Capital's mission is to build future market leaders who create innovative, high growth technology-enabled service businesses. The Emergence team has a proven track record of founding, investing and actively helping portfolio companies, with over 50 years of combined venture and operating experience at leading venture capital and technology firms such as Venrock Associates, U.S. Venture Partners, St. Paul Venture Capital, IBM and Salesforce.com For more information visit www.emcap.com


About Goodmail Systems

Goodmail Systems makes CertifiedEmail™, the industry standard class of trusted email. CertifiedEmail provides a safe and reliable means for consumers to easily identify authentic email messages from legitimate commercial and nonprofit email senders. Each CertifiedEmail is sent with a cryptographically secure token that assures authenticity, and is marked in the inbox with a unique blue ribbon envelope icon, enabling consumers to visually distinguish email messages which are real and sent from email senders with whom they have a pre-existing relationship. Available to email senders meeting strict standards for best practices and low complaint rates, it is the only class of email available that assures delivery of all opt-in email messages to the inbox, with links and images automatically rendered intact, yielding measurable improvements in email campaign effectiveness. CertifiedEmail has been adopted by seven of the nation's top ten email mailbox providers, and is in use by 500 commercial, government and non-profit senders. It is supported in North America and Europe by a wide network of email platforms and service providers.

Media Contacts

Stephen Gilmore
Manning Selvage & Lee
Telephone: 212-468-4056
Email: stephen.gilmore@mslpr.com