Jeff Pulver, wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, telecom banker Michael Price and former Apple CEO John Sculley have teamed together in a new VoIP focussed start-up called Tello, based in San Mateo, California. Doug Renert, a former executive at Oracle Corp heads up the start-up.
Tello is the brainchild of Jeff Pulver, and was founded in late 2004. It has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding in second quarter of 2005 from Eagle River (Craig McCaw’s investment arm), Evercore Partners (Michael Price’s investment vehicle), Rho Venture, and Intel Capital.
The company, The Wall Street Journal writes, is going to allow users to “workers see on their computers or mobile devices whether the person they are trying to reach is on an office phone or cellphone or is logged on to instant messaging.” [Read how it works over on Business Week.]
That is an apt description of the hot new buzzword, “presence.” Skype is an early and a rudimentary example of “presence” client, though it is limited in its role - it works only with Skype IM and Skype Voice, along with wireless and wireline PSTN services. Buzzwords, and pedigree of the investors might help ensure headlines, but it is hardly a slam dunk. Tello would need a lot of things to go right before it can be declared a success.
The WSJ report indicates that the company will work with Cisco and Avaya, and ensure that its service works with their IP phone and PBX systems. Still, Cisco’s Call Manager offerings is also headed down the same road Tello seeks to travel. Tello’s biggest competitor is going to Microsoft, which has a surprisingly strong and coherent strategy around its Microsoft Live Communication Server. IBM SameTime, Verizon (MCI) and SBC (AT&T) are also thinking along the same lines.
Tello is essentially composed of three part - a database server which has directory and rules information; a SIP proxy server and an IM Proxy server. In its most audacious form, Tello could allow large corporations to simply bypass PSTN all together, and make SIP-based free calls over the Internet as easy to initiate as the 10-digit calling of today. At some point in the future it could initiate calls to PC-IM clients as well. The key to all this a desktop client, that for now works with Windows XP and Blackberry devices. The client, Tello claims will allow worker bees to collaborate and work on spreadsheets for example.
“What we are trying to be is the bridge between all these services,” says Renert, “making it as simple as email.” Having not seen, or used the client or the service, it is hard to judge Tello’s ease of use. The company has no plans to support Palm OS or Skype, though those two have considerable penetration in the corporate markets. My initial reaction to the service is that it might suffer from feature creep, and will be tough for actual users to adopt. And who really knows how well it will scale.
PS: Business Week had the same headline as what I had originally posted, so had to change it. Actually, great overview of Tello over on the weekly business magazine’s website.
25 comments so far
1:51 AM PT
john scully? as in john scully who killed apple by handing it to bill gates. he should be punshied and send to prison, not have a voip startup. i haven’t tried his services it yet, because i use the OS he tried to kill….so for now i’ll stay with skype….and he should crawl into a cave somewhere in a desert island and disapear. who would invest in a person like him….seriously…..hope he’s gotten smarter than what he used to be.
3:51 AM PT
It is bad enough that people can guess how to find me anywhere. Now they will know how to find me. Don’t think I will sign up.
7:44 AM PT
michael, good point. i think on the flip side, there is the option of people not being able to find you. so i am sure that is an upside of this technology. which by the way, i make full disclosure, i have not used it so don’t know first hand if it works or not.
9:49 AM PT
[...] Om Malik the well known blogger, analyst and VC feels that in spite of the excellent sources of funds and obviously strong team, that Tello “needs a lot of things to go right before it can be called a success”. Citing strong competition from Microsoft, whom he claims has a surprisingly strong and coherent strategy, as well as several telco’s (Verizon/MCI, Sprint/Nextel, and Cingular) and the formidable IBM, I agree that to come out on top, Tello must be easily adopted by the end user and no more difficult to set up and use than a typical IM client. [...]
12:41 PM PT
Tello a near term solution?
Tello was launched today by Pulver with some help from Craig McCaw, telecom banker Michael Price and former Apple CEO John Sculley. What is Tello? Tello enables enterprise users to see the presence of the person they are trying…
2:35 PM PT
Do they have a website? Can we test the software out?
3:15 PM PT
I don’t think they have to worry about competition from Microsoft. The last thing corporate IT people want is another Microsoft application to manage. Now if Microsoft gives the finger to antitrust and bundles this with Outlook, that may be a problem.
3:46 PM PT
Skype has a ton of users. Wouldn’t this be better plugging into that?
What’s the barrier to entry to Skype implementing something similar?
4:18 PM PT
I think the cool thing about Tello is that it does not matter if you use skype or aol messenger, your local pstn, a blackberry (or your land line if you still have one in this new era of communications!) The Tello client allows you to “connect with eachother” through the federated services this company is providing. It enables communication across boarders no matter how you wish to “talk”.
5:59 PM PT
Tello and Iotum do the “presence” thing
7:31 PM PT
[...] Tello, the new VOIP app [...]
7:53 PM PT
[...] Tello could well be an inflection point for the SIP protocol. Om Malik has an excellent summary. [...]
8:08 PM PT
hmmmm, they really coulda used some advice from a designer during this launch. While the technology behind Tello appears to have some merit the casual browser (aks, non-geek) is going to skip over this site before they blink.
I like the concept, now let’s work on the communication.
8:09 PM PT
Verizon has a similar proprietary offering called iobi. It offers presence and other PIM related tools too. It has some cool features but suffers from feature creep. Jeff Pulver should watch out for that. Check it out at http://www.verizon.com/iobi
10:13 PM PT
[...] Tello Outed at Last Tello launched today. This stealthy start-up has remained under the radar for the past 12 months, refining their vision and building a compelling product before bringing it to market. During that time, I’ve been privileged to have several conversations with them and watch how their vision has evolved. The easy way to think about Tello is to imagine what Skype might be like if it were built for a business user. It’s a voice and IM app that can federate across multiple networks, support a heterogeneous universe of endpoints(hardware and software), and reflect presence information throughout the network. It’s a big vision. The Tello team has done a fabulous job of telling that story too. Naturally, the commentary has been diverse: Andy Abramson’s short, but pithy comment: "Is Microsoft the enemy in this new venture launched by Jeff Pulver and a few tech all stars?" He’s right on the money. Tello is trying to play the cross platform card to Microsoft’s Windows-only LCS. Stowe Boyd’s insightful piece wonders if they can deliver on the vision. He writes: "This group is prescient enough to find the battlefield, but way too small to hold it." Erick Schonfeld muses "Sounds like Tello wants to go beyond cheap phone calls and use VoIP and IM as an application platform to connect people across businesses. Voice is the new platform." Wrong Erick. Voice 2.0 is the new platform! Tom Keating is a good deal more skeptical. He writes: Personally, I think this one is a wait and see. Let them role out the beta and we can learn via the end user experience if the “presence” that everyone is talking about is an enabling phenomenon that supports improved work efficiency or rather the realization of a more invasive tech-future in which you can unfortunately say I’ve met big brother and her name is Ma Bell. Om Malik also published a lengthy write-up and wondered how well the company would do if the inevitable feature creep, combined with a "good enough" sentiment from consumers would hold the company back. [...]
12:04 AM PT
[...] Second, they’ve obviously decided that the bloggers don’t matter much. Om Malik took the time to write about them. Even though he commands a very large and very relevant audience, Tello didn’t bother to list him on the news page. Lots of other bloggers wrote about Tello too (including our own MobileCrunch), but were not mentioned. Companies that don’t embrace bloggers tend to become attacked by bloggers. Companies that embrace bloggers, and thank them, get lots and lots of love. [...]
10:47 PM PT
Isn’t this what Microsoft’s LCS is supposed to do?
8:04 AM PT
yup, that’s precisely the point. i wrote that already. anyway follow-up post coming soon.
9:26 AM PT
I’m sorry, but Tello bores me, and the only viable reason for the coverage they’ve received is their pedigree. Presence is not new. Their vision is clever (if a bit Orwellian), but the product doesn’t yet deliver on that vision. There are far too many disconnected pieces to achieve widespread adoption.
A better solution? Provide a framework with an API for integrating everything (IM, VoIP, POTs, etc.). Parter with one or two key players, and provide incentives for others to develop plug-in connectors. This lets everyone take advantage of the concept without forcing them to switch tools (i.e. using Gizmo Project or Google Talk instead of Skype).
10:38 AM PT
[...] Seriously, this is designed really to federate between enterprise networks to make it easier to reach one another. If anything it attacks Groove, Ray Ozzie’s baby that Microsoft is banking on for extended workforce collaboration and access and is as Om points out all based around the idea of presence and identity, the former of which has been a Jeff Pulver driven crusade for many years aside from just VoIP. [...]
11:11 AM PT
[...] There are more applications which are on the horizon. Take Mabber as an example. Or Tello, which could possibly be able to connect large corporations with their partners directly over the Internet and thus bypassing the PSTN. There are so many more experiments waiting to happen. I sincerely hope someone takes a crack at building Mac-VoIP apps. Wouldn’t it be cool if someone wrote a plugin for Apple Address Book, where a click could route the call over say, Gizmo Project soft-phone. [...]
6:54 PM PT
So now when I let a call go to voicemail people will know I am blowing them off? That can’t be good.
5:47 AM PT
[...] En second lieu, ils ont visiblement décidé que les bloggeurs ne sont pas si importants. Om Malik et Alec Saunders ont pris le temps d’écrire à leur propos. Bien qu’ils soient consultés par une large et très pertinente audience, Tello n’a même pas pris le soin d’en faire mention sur la page des nouveautés. Beaucoup d’autres bloggeurs ont écrit (y compris notre MobileCrunch) mais aucun n’a été mentionné. Les sociétés qui ignorent les bloggeurs ont tendance à être attaqués par les bloggeurs. Les sociétés qui leur porte attention et les remercie recevoir en retour beaucoup beaucoup en retour. [...]
2:18 PM PT
From the first look it doesn’t seem to be very simple and convenient in use.
9:59 AM PT
It appears that Tello has bit the dust. The main phone line (650-581-2400) is permanently busied out and the website has not been updated in months. The website confirms that before winding down the company had no real management team left. The CTO, Alan Johnston, the VP Engineering, ?, the VP of Marketing, Kevin Gavin, and all the founders fled in rapid succession with the culmination of the CEO, Doug Renert, being asked to lock the door behind him.
Apparently all Tello accomplished was cash burn and flowery PR.
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