After reviewing all of the responses on the board concerning
the new fees which will be levied in 2002, I must say that
It would love to see Bivio remain free, it is just not
possible. There is no free ride, it costs money to run the
site. When comparing the new cost to other options I think
the $59 fee is reasonable.
What concerns me is what is the long term viability of this
site? Look what happened to sites like e-Toys, and etc.
We've all seen first hand what happened to the stocks of
many dot com companies over the last couple of years. If we
pay these fees, how do we know there will still be a product
online next November? What is the financial condition of the
organization running Bivio? I think we have a vested
interested in the success of the Bivio product, many of the
comments on the board concerning Bivio have illustrated the
fact that we have a good product here. I would like to know
from the Bivio organization how financially viable they are
before our club would pay this fee.

Hey Steve,
 If your club signs in put our club down for referring club
 are ID is DSIG
 We need the Bivio bucks!!
 Thank you Sir!

Have a good one!

Dale


Steve A. Hannemann wrote:
> After reviewing all of the responses on the board concerning
> the new fees which will be levied in 2002, I must say that
> It would love to see Bivio remain free, it is just not
> possible. There is no free ride, it costs money to run the
> site. When comparing the new cost to other options I think
> the $59 fee is reasonable.
> What concerns me is what is the long term viability of this
> site? Look what happened to sites like e-Toys, and etc.
> We've all seen first hand what happened to the stocks of
> many dot com companies over the last couple of years. If we
> pay these fees, how do we know there will still be a product
> online next November? What is the financial condition of the
> organization running Bivio? I think we have a vested
> interested in the success of the Bivio product, many of the
> comments on the board concerning Bivio have illustrated the
> fact that we have a good product here. I would like to know
> from the Bivio organization how financially viable they are
> before our club would pay this fee.

Once again, if something sounds too good to be true, it
usually is.

I was somewhat skeptical and even inquired as to how this
service could be offered for free and received the reply
that it was paid for by advertisers and bivio encouraged the
patronage of same.

As Paul Harvey would say, "Now we know the rest of the
story..."

We at bivio have taken this difficult step to ensure bivio's financial
stability. In the past, we have relied on our partners and our
premium service customers for our revenues. The weak economy has hit
brokers hard. It is also unfair to have our premium service customers
bear the burden for our fee paying customers.

Our management team has focused on cost. Unlike the vast majority of
dot coms, we didn't spend money on fancy offices, big paychecks, and
so on. We focused on hiring the best of the best. Our operations are
very efficient. We need only a few people to service thousands of
investment clubs. We've been doing it for two years now. We are
efficient.

Clearly, if clubs had not signed up for the new fee, we might have
been out of business in just over a year. We made this decision while
we had reserves to whether a storm of protest about the fees. This
didn't happen. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People
were paying the fee within hours of the announcement. We have great
customer relationships.

Some of you may have noticed that our club count dropped below 7900
earlier this week. Clubs left bivio because of the new fees. We will
not deny it. However, we now have 7,910 clubs. 53 clubs joined bivio
since Nov 1. We're still growing.

Type in "investment club accounting" into google.com, the Internet's
largest search engine, and the first entry is "bivio Investment Clubs".
That's us. We're visible.

bivio is successful because of the above four factors: efficiency,
customer relationships, growth, and visibility. bivio is backed by a
solid group of investors and run by a solid team. We'll be here to
serve you long into the future.

Thank you for using bivio,
Rob Nagler
CTO
bivio Inc.