SnapMonkey.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Online financial information services

* DENVER

* WWW.SNAPMONKEY.COM

* FOUNDED: JANUARY 2003

QUOTE OF NOTE:

It's additional exhibitor value, having this all-in-one place on a CD or online. Attendees at a show only go home with about 10 percent of the stuff they collect at a show. Now there's just one CD, and that CD has all of the information about all of the exhibitors on it. --SnapMonkey CEO Rita Wilhelm INITIAL LIGHTBULB

Rita Wilhelm and Lori Osterberg, who met in the 1990s through their respective careers in gift baskets and wedding photography, were both innovators within those industries when it came to e-commerce. Their new venture. SnapMonkey, is a response to what they saw as an emerging market for easy-to-modify Web sites for annual tradeshows and other regular events. After developing a product to fill that vacuum, Wilhelm and Osterberg had another big idea: multimedia directories for tradeshows and membership organizations that can be delivered online or on a CD, with the brand name of DexMonkey.

"All these exhibitors are coming to these trade shows ... and they don't even have a way to follow up these people after the show," said Wilhelm. "We were just shocked by this revelation."

On a mnemonic note, the SnapMonkey moniker came from the head of Rita's husband Doug Wilhelm, a schoolteacher by trade. "He plays the name game with kids," Rita says, "and people remember things best when you have two unrelated objects."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

IN A NUTSHELL

SnapMonkey's Web-building tool is a page builder that's easy to use. "If you can create a (Microsoft) Word document, you can create your own Web site online," said Wilhelm. For a $29.95 monthly fee (and one-time setup cost of $49), SnapMonkey users can build their own Web site with up to 500 multimedia-rich pages.

But the current focus is squarely on DexMonkey. "Our unique selling position is a directory service with infomercials that is a profit center for the organization behind the directory," said Wilhelm.

The CD-based directory is also converted to a Web site to post online...