Jean-Bernard Tellio

"Last to enter was the ever-active Jean-Bernard Tellio from Arnault. I was a little surprised Tellio had even managed to turn up. For months now, he had been buying up stakes in internet companies all over Europe and the US. It can’t have been easy to juggle all these commitments. After agreeing to invest $1.6 million in our last funding round, funds had accidentally been sent to us twice. Tellio had seemed unruffled when we told him. ‘Oh, really,’ he said, laughing. “You'd better send one of them back.’"

"first reactions soon arrived. At around 10 a.m., I gota call from Jean- Bernard Tellio of LVMH. He was in New York and wanted to meet for lunch. _ Kajsa and I found him in the downstairs restaurant at Barneys. ‘Did you see the article?’ I asked. He nodded cautiously. “Yes. There’s a bit of a problem.’ “What kind of problem?’ ‘Our PR people don’t like the headline,’ he said. He paused for a moment before continuing. “What I should probably have made clear to you is that LVMH isn’t technically an investor in boo.’ I grinned, assuming this was a joke. But his expression didn’t change. ‘The investment in boo was made with Bernard Arnault’s personal money, he went on. ‘It was his private company — Markas Holdings.’ ; This was news to us. We thought we had been dealing with LVMH from the start. Even Tellio’s business card had LVMH written on it. ‘It’s not that we don’t like the article,’ Tellio went on. ‘It’s great. But just try to play down the LVMH bit next time.’"