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North Hill Portfolio News

6.27.2007
SimpleTuition Partners with Geezeo to Help Students Make Informed Financial Decisions

Collaboration Brings Independent Student Loan Resource to Student Online Community Designed to Help Young Adults Better Manage Their Finances

Newton, MA and Framingham, MA, June 27, 2007 -- SimpleTuition, Inc., a company dedicated to helping students and parents make sense of education financing choices, today announced a strategic partnership with Geezeo (www.geezeo.com), a web site which helps 18 to 35 year olds better manage their finances.

Among young adult households, two-thirds have incomes below $50,000. Credit card debt is prevalent among this group and nearly one in five is in financial debt hardship (defined as spending 40 percent of their income or more servicing debt, including mortgages and student loans) (1) . Bringing students together into an online community to discuss challenges and benefits of the student loan process can help them better prepare for and manage their student loan debt burden upon graduation.

"Our partnership with Geezeo further demonstrates SimpleTuition's dedication to the student community by allowing us to reach even more students via media they are more comfortable with. Students need easy-to-understand information that helps them make important financial decisions," said Kevin Walker, CEO, SimpleTuition, Inc. "We look forward to working with Geezeo to help young adults manage their budget."

With connections to over 6,000 financial institutions, Geezeo currently offers free web-based financial tools that help students easily track how they spend their money. Geezeo users can securely aggregate all their bank accounts, making it simple to check balances on all bank accounts including checking, savings, loans and credit cards. Additionally, users can join and create discussion groups online to talk about student loans and other financial topics with their peers. Within the next few months, Geezeo will offer features to help users select the best banking and credit products given their individual financial situation.

By partnering with SimpleTuition, students who visit Geezeo.com will be able to research and compare information for many student loan types including Private, PLUS, GradPLUS, Stafford and Federal Consolidation loans. Results can be sorted by monthly payment, total cost of the loan, number of payments, first payment due date and APR, and results contain detailed information about loan pricing, borrower benefits and other attributes. Additionally, Geezeo will feature the SimpleTuition resource area (http://www.simpletuition.com/resource) in order to provide users with a great amount of loan and financial aid information.

"SimpleTuition's student loan comparison solution is an ideal resource for our users," said Peter Glyman, co-founder, Geezeo. "In addition to our web-based personal finance tools we can now offer an independent resource to search and compare student loan options."
(1) Generation Broke: The Growth of Debt Among Young Americans (October 13, 2004 By Tamara Draut and Javier Silva)

About SimpleTuition, Inc.

Founded in 2005, SimpleTuition is dedicated to helping students and parents make sense of education financing options. Recently featured as one of Fast Company's Top 12 Web 2.0 sites, SimpleTuition offers the leading independent and interactive solution for researching and comparing over 100 private, PLUS, Stafford, GradPLUS and Federal Consolidation loans from more than 45 lenders. SimpleTuition is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts and is funded by Atlas Venture, IDG Ventures Boston and North Hill Ventures. For more information, visit http://www.simpletuition.com/.

About Geezeo

Geezeo is a free online personal finance manager that helps you make "Educated Financial Decisions." Revolutionizing the way people manage their finances, Geezeo leverages the latest Web 2.0 technologies to help consumers quickly and easily track their finances; set financial goals; and create money saving strategies to meet those goals. Geezeo offers a strong social networking community where people share success stories, making sound personal finance a reality. Geezeo is privately funded and based in Framingham, Massachusetts. For more information, visit http://www.geezeo.com/.

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