VentureBeat

Many vxml vendors such as Tellme, Voxeo etc. all offer powerful ways to integrate web with voice. Bit expensive but you can integrate almost everything. The nearest and the cheapest I could see was 800pbx.com which integrates the office business telephony with automation - they claim to integrate with appointments, provide store directions, sell products etc.

The next best I could see was Ribbit which is now part of BT. The latest IM integration with Force was contradictory to what happens after big acquisitions.

This is great news. I hope they raise enough money to develop the product that will be most beneficial to the public. I have been eagerly awaiting their next development - it can't come soon enough!

There is a great deal of turmoil behind this story that is being masked by the hype.

I was Intelepeer's Chief Architect between July 2006 and Nov 2007. I was recruited after they received their Series B funding of $12M in 2006 when they were already revenue generating with a positive margin. So during the 15 months I was there the company was floundering on the vision front and while my team executed the specifications we were given in exactly matching manner and significantly under budget (well under $500,000 total for salaries for my team, including myself) all the output we gave them, which was identical to the specification we were given, was tossed away (never used) and the $12M went up in smoke on marketing and PR activity, network upgrades that were not well thought out, hiring a CEO who was well recommended by IPO underwriters and a COO from Level 3 that was an execution oriented guy, who were later fired at whim because the founder and Frank could not take the blame for zero-results, nor could the VCs. I was specifically told not to act independently, which meant that my team had to execute the specification from product management but we waited 10 months for product management to put out the spec for one of the VC's own pet vision, after which we executed with speed and quality (and got that VC's praise during the board meeting) but we were purged out of the company together with the COO and CEO because the $12M was nearly gone and the company had not yet found a viable vision and they had to place the blame on others.

Things were different when I worked for Frank back at CommTech-ADC where I took charge of designing and building his core product (the Business Process Editor, a workflow infrastructure on top of which the company built a service deliver solution.) I was able to act independently and propose the design of the workflow engine to Commtech's IPO partner at the time who opted to go with it and we spent close to $2M overall and sold the company for $178M.

I do admit that when we were waiting for the specifications from product management and we got impatient we produced very rough prototypes out of boredom, which weren't up to release standard but we were not given any specification or targets during those times so we could have just sat around and did nothing, which would have been better in retrospect. But like I said when the specifications were finally produced after almost a year of waiting we produced software that exactly matched the specifications but were tossed out anyway and after removing the CEO, COO, myself and a few others because they had to lay the blame on someone else other than the founder, Frank or the former lead VC.

Frank works by promoting his own version of reality and acting brutally even (or especially) against those who served him. The truth gets demolished in his drive for power at any expense.

I doubt very much Intelepeer has anything worth it but I am sure they'll manage to sell the company to some greedy and easily fooled executive at Verizon or Microsoft who will be promised a lot and let down a lot. That's Frank's signature patten. They have no chance with Google because Google is known for walking out of deals if they smell anything funny.

So, while this is very sour, and understandably so, I can only wish best of luck to the buyer that will end up bailing them out.

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