The Steinhorn Stare

Just to clarify for everyone who has asked, Tellme was not purchased by Microsoft last week.

On Monday, TechCrunch writer Michael Arrington published a blog post titled, “Microsoft Has Acquired Tellme,” laying out the details of a Microsoft purchase of the company I recently started working for. After getting picked up by Om Malik on his blog, the rumors started flying, and even the Tellme staff was wondering what was going on.

But, a few minutes later, both TechCrunch and Om revised their “information,” clarifying that “Microsoft Has (Not) Acquired Tellme.” The next day, the headline was again revised, this time as “Tellme For Sale.”

Anyone who has followed the Tellme saga the past eight years knows that the company has some amazing people and products and has successfully reinvented itself multiple times (from consumer-focused products to carrier-class directory assistance to Enterprise business solutions and now coming full circle back to consumer-based); as is common with successful startup companies, rumors of forthcoming liquidity events are quite common. And Tellme is not immune to the rumors.

So, to set the record straight…while Tellme’s strong revenue and growth could likely allow it a successful IPO, and it’s tremendous people and products certainly make it attractive to a number of large players in the telco and Internet spaces, as of this writing, Tellme is still privately owned. And more importantly, it’s still fully focused on building some of the best consumer and business-class voice-based applications on the planet.

If you’re not familiar with Tellme’s voice-enabled consumer search products, take a look…

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 12:25 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.