Dr. Charles W. Stryker is the founder and president of a professional advisory firm, The Venture Development Center, Inc. (VDC). This business, formed in 1991, has a focused practice of assisting companies in creating, developing, and commercializing Information Services properties. The practice areas that characterize VDC projects include:

• creating (innovating) new products that exploit market opportunity.
• developing new distribution channels to substantially increase revenue for existing Information Services products.
• identifying and advising Information Services companies on strategic acquisitions.

It is typical that a given assignment may call for efforts in all of these practice areas.

VDC in general, and Dr. Stryker in particular, has created an innovation practice and has developed distribution concepts that allow Information Services companies to create products that are meaningful in their ability to meet a significant market need. In addition, the strategies developed by VDC allow these new and existing products to scale rapidly in the marketplace by utilizing best practices of direct and indirect distribution. The extensive experience contained within VDC and its deep executive contact base within the database industry allow VDC-supported programs to reach revenue levels that are greater than, and are realized more quickly than, clients can achieve without VDC support. This fact represents the business logic of engaging VDC in new product and distribution initiatives.

VDC's clients fall into two categories. The first category contains a world-class list of the most successful Information Services companies in the US and Europe. A partial list of VDC current clients include:

• Acosta -- leader in retail distribution
• Affinion -- world leader in affinity marketing programs
• Affinity Group -- leader in publishing and on-line services for the outdoor recreation marketplace
• Appriss -- leader in information services for law enforcement
• Atrinsic -- leader in pay-for-performance Internet marketing
• Catalina Marketing --leader in marketing services for the retail trade
• Acxiom -- major provider of marketing services and data center outsourcing
• eBureau -- leader in on-line identity verification and scoring
• Harte-Hanks -- major supplier of database marketing services
• Kowabunga -- leader in intelligent ad serving
• LexisNexis -- leading provider of Information Services to law enforcement and the collections industry
• NextAction -- leader in information services for the catalog marketplace
• Quova -- leader in Internet targeting
• Tranzact -- leader in pay-for-performance marketing services

A partial list of past VDC assignments that have been completed includes: AOL, AT&T, Convergys, IAC, R.H. Donnelley, Sprint, Yahoo, VNU (Nielsen), and more than 50 other firms of similar character.

In addition to VDC engagements in these major corporations, the company also takes an active role in the development of small-to- mid-sized firms. Within this segment, VDC often invests in the early-stage development of these firms and performs engagements in return for equity compensation. Some of the more successful engagements where VDC has played this active advisory role include:

• 24/7 RealMedia- Sold to WPP Group for $500 million
• Comdata -- sold to Ceridian for $800 million
• Intelliquest -- sold to WPP Worldwide for $120 million
• Internet Capital Group -- public company with market cap of $350 million
• Naviant -- sold to Equifax for $135 million
• Prio -- sold to InfoSpace for $275 million
• Seisint -- sold to Reed-Elsevier for $775 million
• Traffix -- public company market cap $150 million

For all of these companies, VDC has played an active role with the CEO and the board-level executive team in building these firms. For many of these engagements, Dr. Stryker has served as a board member in addition to his advisory role; in two of these successful transactions (Naviant and Intelliquest), Dr. Stryker assumed an operating role as Chairman and President.

In addition to these firms, VDC has played an active role in more than 60 small- to mid-sized firms since its inception and still holds active advisory and equity positions in more than 20 venture-backed companies in the Information Services space. Some of the more promising businesses in this portfolio include: ARGI, Conclusive Marketing, Geoscape, Glenbrook Networks, Healthcare Data Solutions, Innography, Jigsaw, Mint, netFactor, MyLife, Rapleaf, RDC, ReachForce, Samba, Spiceworks, Triton Technologies, and V12.

Dr. Stryker serves on the board of a number of both public and private companies. His board appointments include: ARGI, Conclusive Marketing, Geoscape, Innography, netFactor, MyLife, RDC, Samba, Triton Technologies, andV12.

Prior to the formation of the Venture Development Center, Dr Stryker founded his first entrepreneurial venture: Trinet, Inc. Trinet was successfully merged with American Business Information. Following the merger, the combined company was called infoUSA. Dr. Stryker was one of the five private shareholders and President of infoUSA when it went public. He left the firm in 1991 to create VDC.

Prior to this entrepreneurial endeavor, Dr. Stryker was an executive at AT&T where he was instrumental in creating the Marketing Information Services Organization. He began his AT&T career as a research engineer at Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Stryker has received the BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University. He has been an active speaker and author on the topic of database product development. In addition to these academic credentials, from 1991 to 1999, Dr. Stryker was a part-time faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he taught a number of courses in the Entrepreneurial Center.