Telleo was launched under the direction of First Aura's founding partners--Mark Harwood, Dean Hiller, Ray Holland, and Jim McCrossin--who obtained venture backing from Brentwood Venture Capital of Menlo Park, R.R. Donnelley and Sons of Chicago, Redpoint Ventures of Menlo Park, and Venture Strategy Group of San Francisco. In its first exciting year, Telleo celebrated "the Buzz," growing to 80 its roster of highly skilled and dedicated hi-tech professionals. 

At this point, the original founders--being more technically savvy than business trained--accepted the advice of their venture partners, passing their "Big Idea" on to a new, "Class A" management team in the Fall of 2000. Together, they celebrated the successful launch of Telleo's Local Wide Web, as scheduled, January 1, 2001. At launch, Day One, Telleo created more than 100 million free Web sites--instantly--one Web site for each listed telephone number in the United States. Each Telleo Web site was prebuilt, ready-to-claim, and included key information regarding people, businesses, and organizations already available through U.S. public telephone listings. Telleo's Big Idea was successfully up and running.

Unfortunately, as the founders soon learned, sometimes even a successful launch does not assure a successful startup. Bad timing, a shaky stock market, and an uncertain dot-com climate all came together, hitting Telleo--as well as many other promising dot-coms--hard; new financing was not located in time, and the existing investors lacked confidence in Telleo's new management team. Without additional money, Telleo regretfully closed its doors, laid off its talented, hardworking staff, and fell into liquidation in April, 2001.

But a magical idea like the Local Wide Web is hard to keep down. Today, Abra's initial founders are technically recharged and ready to go again, enthusiastically up and running with the innovative Telleo technology and a brand new business idea--First Aura. With First Aura,

      . . . The Buzz Goes On!