(1888PressRelease)
May 18, 2009 - NEW YORK, NY – Wee Web (http://wee-web.com), the private sharing service for families, and Freshman Fund (http://freshmanfund.com), the college savings gift registry, announced today an agreement to merge the two companies. Together, continuing under the name Wee Web, these services create a single destination for families to stay connected and facilitate education savings. The combined company will broaden its service offerings for users, creating the ultimate site for families who want to share special moments with their invited network, privately and securely.
“We are excited to help families save for their children’s college education,” said Matt Meeker, the Chief Executive Officer of Wee Web. “With private 4-year college tuition costs expected to exceed $350,000 for a child born today, saving for education has never been more important. Given the nature of our family user base, integrating Freshman Fund will benefit every family using Wee Web by making it easier for them to save collaboratively. We remain focused on continuing to lead the family networking market by providing new services and features that are important to the needs of today’s parents.”
According to Jason Olim, the Chief Executive Officer of Freshman Fund who joins Wee Web as Chief Operating Officer, “The combination of these two companies creates an executive team with unparalleled consumer product and marketing experience, as well as a dedication to creating the market-leading service for family networking.”
Customer Benefits of The Merger
The merger, expected to close in Q3, will result in a service that will allow Wee Web parents to set up a college fund for their children. It will enable grandparents, aunts, uncles and close family friends to contribute directly to the college fund. The fund will be tightly integrated into the child’s page, and will allow parents to keep track of the gifts that they have received. Parents can use any qualified college savings plan that they already have, or they can sign up for one using Freshman Fund’s directory of thousands of highly qualified financial advisors.
Management Team
Matt Meeker, CEO — Prior to starting Wee Web, Matt was co-founder of Meetup.com, a site that serves as an aggregator to 5 million people in finding others with similar interests. The most successful and prevalent of the Meetup groups are Moms Groups, and their need for community inspired Matt to start Wee Web in order to help families stay connected to one another and share the special moments in their kids’ lives.
Peter Kamali, CTO — Peter was the founding CTO of Meetup.com before joining Matt in launching Wee Web. As a father of two young daughters, Peter appreciates the value that Wee Web provides parents because he uses it himself to keep family and friends current on his daughters’ lives. Peter is a 14-year veteran of online media and holds an MS in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Jason Olim, COO – Jason was the founder and CEO of CDNOW, one of the first and most successful e-commerce companies. He took CDNOW public in 1998 (NASDAQ: CDNW) and subsequently sold to Bertelsmann in 2000. Jason launched Freshman Fund in 2008 as an avenue for families to help provide the gift of education to the children in their lives.
ABOUT WEE WEB
Wee Web helps families share moments and stay connected – no matter where everyone lives. As a simple, secure and private service, Wee Web makes it easy for parents to keep family and friends involved in their kids' rapidly changing lives so no one misses the special moments that happen only once.
ABOUT FRESHMAN FUND
FreshmanFund.com is the first and only online college savings registry. The free service allows anyone to give and receive the gift of college savings. The secure site sends money directly to the tax-free 529 College Savings Plan that the recipient chooses. FreshmanFund.com does not provide financial advice or manage funds.
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