American Century Ventures Makes Strategic Investment in StarMine, an Online Analyst Rating Company.

Business Editors

KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 2, 2000

American Century Ventures, the strategic investment group for American Century Investments, today announced an investment in StarMine Corporation, an Internet-based company that evaluates and rates Wall Street securities analysts.

"StarMine shines a bright light on the best of Wall Street thinkers," said Harold Bradley, president of American Century Ventures. "StarMine ratings are completely objective and independent and show that the best analysts don't always work for the biggest firms."

StarMine -- whose clients include many of the world's largest money managers, as well as individual investors -- provides independent, objective ratings of Wall Street securities analysts by measuring analysts on their stock-picking performance and the accuracy of their earnings predictions.

"StarMine allows you to see the track record of all these analysts," said John Hummer, co-founding partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, another StarMine investor. "You can forget about all the anecdotal stuff you've heard about them, now you can actually see for yourself."

StarMine started out with the objective of identifying the best analysts for each stock and in each industry, according to the company. StarMine combed through 18 years of detailed analyst data, tracking every earnings estimate, revision and recommendation recorded by I/B/E/S, a source of analyst estimates and research. The company developed sophisticated metrics to measure the accuracy of earnings estimates and the profitability of recommendations, taking into account the performance and consistency of each analyst both in absolute terms and in comparison to their peers.

"The Internet means that if analyst recommendations and advice can be compared, valued and graded -- it will be," said Diane Mulcahy, vice president of American Century Ventures.

"StarMine analyst ratings and SmartEstimates(a) are rapidly being adopted by America's leading money managers," said Joe Gatto, StarMine founder and CEO. "American Century has an outstanding reputation among institutional and individual investors. American Century Ventures investment and partnership with StarMine is a major endorsement of our products and will help us further develop both our institutional and retail markets."

American Century Ventures' mission is to make investments in companies that complement the strategic direction of American Century and whose technology or products American Century can use to improve its business and help its investors. To date, American Century Ventures has invested more than $55 million in 12 portfolio companies. Additional information about American Century Ventures can be found at its Web site, www.americancenturyventures.com.

American Century Ventures is a subsidiary of American Century, a mutual fund, brokerage and investment services company serving nearly two million individual and institutional investors. Through its broad selection of more than 70 mutual funds, the Kansas City, Missouri-based company manages more than $115 billion in assets.

StarMine provides quantitative ratings of Wall Street securities analysts. The company provides institutional investors with sophisticated research tools to analyze, visualize and mine analyst data and to generate profitable stock market predictors. StarMine measures each analyst based on stock-picking performance and the accuracy of earnings predictions. Founded in 1998, StarMine is based in San Francisco with offices in New York, Boston, and Denver. To learn more about StarMine, visit www.starmine.com.

(a)StarMine and SmartEstimates are trademarks of StarMine.