Hadi Partovi, formerly the group program
manager for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, as
part of Tellme’s founding management team,
which consisted of several other Netscapees.
(See Exhibit 1 for details on Tellme’s 2000
management team.) In July, former Netscape
CEO Jim Barksdale and former Microsoft
Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg, along
with Tellme’s roughly 20 employees, con-
tributed $6 million as seed money for
Tellme.^7
Thanks to the pedigree of its founders and
management team, Tellme raised an ad-
ditional $47 million in December 1999 from
leading venture capital firms, Benchmark
Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers. (See Exhibit 2 for details on Tellme’s
advisers.) In May 2000, AT&T invested $60
million in Tellme as part of a strategic re-
lationship in which Tellme would use AT&T
networking services and collaborate with
AT&T to develop business and consumer
applications. In October, Tellme raised an
additional $125 million in financing from a
group of well-known technology institu-
tional investors. (See Exhibit 3 for a com-
pany timeline.) With its more than 250
employees, the company expected that the
latest round of financing would carry it
through to profitability.^8
“TELLME MORE”
Tellme offers Web content via a toll-free
number (1-800-555-TELL). Users can call
Tellme and access news, weather forecasts,
sports scores, stock quotes, traffic reports,
horoscopes, and movie and restaurant list-
ings using simple voice commands, such as
“Tellme news” or “Tellme more.” Users can
also set “Tellme Favorites,” including specific
cities for weather forecasts and different
types of news through Tellme’s Web site. In
addition, Tellme can connect users to major
airlines and a local taxi service anywhere in
the country. Within the industry, this type of
service is known as the “directory business.”
“Simple, everyday tasks for simple, every-
day people on simple, everyday devices—
telephones,” explains, McCue, who wanted
to create something as attractive to con-
sumers as the Web without a technology bar-
rier.^9 “Everyone from my grandmother to my
baby brother can understand this,” he says.
“Nothing to buy, download, install, or set
up—just pick up the phone and dial.” There
are only a couple of hundred million Web-
enabled devices in the world today, but there
are 1.5 billion telephones.
10
With Tellme,
anyone with access to a phone can access
Web-based content without any additional
hardware.
Industry experts are calling this interplay
of Web-based content and the telephone a
voice portal, much like a Yahoo! except via
phone. Tellme began a nationwide three-
month trial of its free voice portal service in
April 2000 and officially launched its service
in July after completing 1.6 million calls dur-
ing the test period. Through the trial, the
company increased its voice-recognition ac-
curacy to an average of 95 percent. This is
considered the minimum acceptable level for
effective communication.DEVELOPMENT OF TELLMEAlthough its service relies heavily on ad-
vanced voice-recognition software, Tellme
actually outsources the technology, and li-
censes it from companies such as Nuance and
Lernout & Hauspie. Tellme combines the
voice-recognition technology with pro-
prietary user interface tools and a new pro-
gramming standard called VoiceXML
(VXML) to encode Web content in such a
way that a voice browser can automatically
recognize and retrieve information.^11 McCue
equates Tellme to “radio on demand,” a com-
bination of a speech-recognition portal and
search engine designed to save time and
money.
Tellme sells advertising and charges an
undisclosed fee to list companies on its 1-800
directory. The company also makes money as
an application service provider (ASP) by
hosting applications for existing Internet
sites.Tellme Networks: Dial Tone 2.0? (Revised) 493