Upstart GroupCards Scoops Online Greeting Business with Revolutionary Patent Pending Process

New York-March 27, 2001- Upstart GroupCards, LLC today launched its free service GroupCards.com (http://www.groupcards.com), which allows Web users to send online greeting cards signed by a group of people for a multitude of occasions including birthday, get-well, sympathy and congratulations.

"It's such an obvious idea, I couldn't believe the big players hadn't already thought of it," says Dotan Saguy, inventor and President of GroupCards, commenting on the fact that none of the leading greeting card Websites such as Excite@Home's Blue Mountain Arts (Nasdaq:ATHM), American Greetings (NYSE:AM), eGreetings or Hallmark offer a group card service.

"Not only does GroupCards bring to the Web a habit that people have been practicing offline for decades, but it makes it simple, efficient and fun," says Saguy. "Just think how long it would take you to get a paper card signed by your entire family and friends. A group card can be signed by anyone anywhere as soon as it's sent out."

Only five weeks after its soft launch and with no advertising, GroupCards has already signed up over 4,000 members. "There is a huge demand for our service," says Saguy. "GroupCards is extremely viral: it's not uncommon for someone from a Fortune 500 Company to invite over 50 people from their department to sign a birthday card and each of the 50 people can in turn start cards of their own...". "I've never seen anything like this before. It will spread like wildfire!" says Brenda, an avid GroupCards user.

"It's really, really clever. Nice work," commented online marketing expert Seth Godin, best selling author of Permission Marketing, in an email when he first heard about GroupCards. Saguy credits Godin with giving him inspiration, as the idea for GroupCards came to him while he was reading Godin's latest book, Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Saguy also announced that another patent-pending service will soon be added to the GroupCards.com Website. "It's very exciting," says Saguy. "It will give GroupCards' members the ability to collectively "pitch-in" and buy the GroupCard recipient a gift. We will provide special messaging and tracking tools to facilitate the process and the result is a better experience online for collective gift giving than offline."

GroupCards' members already use the GroupCards shopping area to purchase gifts from a wide range of brand-name Internet merchants, including Amazon.com AMAZON COM (Nasdaq:AMZN); DisneyStore.com, a division of the Walt Disney Internet Group (NYSE: DIG); marthastewart.com (NYSE: MSO); SHARPER IMAGE (Nasdaq:SHRP).