Goodbye, Tello. Welcome to the DeadPool.
Michael Arrington
27 comments »
Tello, a complicated company with a complicated product around “presence” (letting people find you when you want them to, and not when you don’t), has quietly disintegrated.
The company, which was founded by Jeff Pulver, Craig McCaw, former Apple CEO John Sculley and others, had a media blitz when it launched fourteen months ago. Sappy coverage appeared from a star struck lineup of journalists. See the articles from the WSJ and Business Week, among others. Our launch coverage is here.
Anyway, it’s gone now, a proud entrant into the TechCrunch DeadPool.
That website sure doesn’t look like a 14-month old company, not that that’s totally relevant, but it’s pretty stale stuff.
Is it the same kind of product as SkyQube? Looks like it.
I guess you can delve more into WHY companies end losing out. Tello, is no short of good expertise…In hindsight, it does look conceptually wrong as people will be more interested in a product that lets you know when not to call than when to call; but this would have in all probability been discussed by the starters as well. And if it has ended in the deadpool after a year, we should also know what went behind the scenes in this.
This will help aspiring entrepreneurs much more than only knowing who is starting what…
A few days ago GloPhone closed its doors: http://www.glophone.com/
Welcome to bubble v2.0. More will go in 2007. Much more in 2008. Only the strong will survive. And this doesn’t mean ones with VC funding, but those with a clear focus, usefulness and good revenue model.
I have to admit, Tello never made sense to me, and I’m surprised Pulver hasn’t made mention of this on his blog. Well, here’s another “I’m not surprised” moment. Oh well.
It seems Alec Saunders and Iotum is the company to watch for presence. They have a new “presence tool” for Blackberrys (and soon Windows Mobile devices, etc.) which provides instant status of one’s availability. Iotum’s model is easy to understand and it’s one reason why the will succeed in presence.
It seems even with the best pedigree in investors, and a dream team of managers and executives that great ideas can still flounder.
Does anyone think this is the last of this kind of thing in the valley?
Not only are they in the dreaded DeadPool but it’s eerie how you chastised them for not embracing bloggers and boldly predicted their diminished chance of success for not doing so.
I love TC but when it goes a little too close to calling the fate of a startup it makes me uneasy. My only consolation comes thinking that no great idea properly executed can fail just because TC put a spell on them. Yeah right!!
$10M in series B ! so probably $15M all told, hope they had some left in the coffers after that brilliant 14 month run. They sure saved a bunch on there website.
A lot of the text on there website is in future tense !
Like…
“Tello will be introducing new offers and extending its existing offers continually throughout the year. First will be an offer targeted at small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Tello will then deliver vertical market solutions for specific targeted industries. These solutions will combine the best of communications with context-appropriate content to allow users to resolve exceptions to critical business processes promptly and effectively.”
and the wonderful …
“In a future release, Tello will offer the first instant communication service that enables business users to locate and collaborate with key contacts beyond their enterprise boundaries and across multiple platforms - including phones, mobile devices and PCs. Tello’s service will be available via an OnDemand hosted model which will feature rapid activation and require no hardware, software or IT support.”
youtubesearcher.com may want to try becoming merriam-webstersearcher.com. More books, less video? Just a thought.
at least make the title something like au revoir, tello…i like to see a little variance in my tech blog headlines (http://gigaom.com/)
re: #6
Yes, I agree. It’s great how spot on Michael is when it comes to predicting the future dead.
Vic - you are right on the money. Although, I do think there will be a combination of vc / angel / bootstrapped firms that are able to move forward. Based upon the cost of starting a new company I believe there will be significantly more angel / bootstrapped companies. However, many, many more of them will fail as they won’t have the capital / mktg expertise to succeed. We are currently bootstrapping our own firm, and it is definitely interesting, and I can see how $$MM would come in handy!
More companies going down. Expect social shopping search sites to go next.
Considering I never really understood what their offering was it is no surprise. Can anybody tell me what they offered in less than two sentences?
to #8, my wife recently discovered youtube when a friend sent her some video with kittens, the amount of junk on the screen has always annoyed me, just show me more videos and less junk is what I want, so thats what youtubesearcher tries to do.
on the flip side, are you suggesting another dictionary site, I actually like the new wiki like social dictionary, although I cannot remember the name.
may they rest in peace….:(
I like the idea several others have voiced–more coverage on the WHY startups fail. Simply hearing that they’ve failed is fine…but doesn’t really add any value to the blog.
is utubsearchass a spammer? or a legit commenter? . . . too bad akismet cant figure it out
I like the idea of presence management, it just seems like too much work.
legit commenter…but like many…I put one of my urls in the website box…ok…no?
by the way peter, your domain does not even dns resolve
ouch, it must be so painful to pull up TC and see this kind of post about your company, I would not wish it on anyone, but I guess the exec team and investors are well away of there company crumbling by the time it hits TC.
we all know the start up game is a risky one - but it is always amazing to see such a well funded company bite the dust.
Maybe a small eye opener for investors and entrepreneurs- a team rich in execs from brand name companies, flush with cash from top VC’s needs revenue + profits + growth like all the rest of us.
These guys raised $15.5M and lasted all of 22 months. That’s a burn rate of $700K per month. What a disaster!
What the hell where they building, a rocket ship?
WOW!!!!!
The word “bespoke” does not mean what you think it does.http://www.audiocdburner.net
to no.13
they have an IM aggregator.
at least I think they do, I just read their web site and have very little clue as to what they do……
2 Questions:
What happens to all the technology created in the last almost 2 years?
How is this different from the earlier in the food-chain examples of Spinvox, GrandCentral or more similarly to the develpment path re: recent aquisitions of Microsoft’s telme and Cisco’s Webex & social networking platforms?
Ubiquity and Unified communications are the future.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
Wow - this company was founded by some business rockstars. McCaw started Cellular 1 the first real cellphone company, later bought by AT&T for over 10 billion.
Ive never heard of this product. Perhaps if the company was started by young, enthusiastic inventors with limitless energy, no fear and fanatical obsession with product quality Tello may have succeeded.
I agree, that story about the reasons of why this start up died would be really useful to know.
Spending $700K/month producing nothing is very impressive, and probably is the major reason for Tello.com failure