TMC was founded by Nadji Tehrani in 1972 in Stamford, Connecticut. Nadji began his careers a chemical engineer at a Fortune 500 chemicals company, where he focused his attention on chemical coatings applications.  Using his expertise in the chemical coatings industry, Nadji launched several industry-related trade magazines.  These original trade magazines relied upon advertising revenue, generated primarily by outside sales representatives.  In order to reduce selling expenses, TMC’s sales staff began to experiment with telemarketing to sell advertising pages in 1980. Mr. Tehrani quickly realized the effectiveness of telephone marketing or telemarketing and its emergence as an industry unto itself and, in 1982, launched Telemarketing® magazine.

In 1986, the Company moved its headquarters to One Technology Plaza, Norwalk, Connecticut.  Also that year, TMC launched Telemarketing and Business Communications (TBT), the first tradeshow focused on the rapidly growing call center industry. The show became an immediate success and the annual meeting space for the fast-growing call center market. Attendance and exhibition space tripled between its first and second show.  In 2000, this show evolved into the Communications Solutions Expo, which served both the call center and data/voice convergence markets, and was one of the fastest-growing and most respected tradeshows in the industry. 

Nadji Tehrani’s son, Rich Tehrani, grew up with the business and joined TMC full-time in 1989. After serving in a number of positions, he became President in 1999. Rich Tehrani brought with him knowledge of computer engineering and recognition of the crucial role that communications and technology would play in the economy.  Rich Tehrani built TMC’s initial technology infrastructure in 1982 and a few years later converted the company to PC-based desktop publishing utilizing Ventura Publisher, Corel Draw and computers he hand assembled and maintained.

As Rich became more involved in the business, he refocused the editorial more broadly on communications technology, and led the company’s visionary introduction of Communications Solutions (in 1996) and INTERNET TELEPHONY (in 1998) magazines, the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo (in 1999), Communications Solutions Expo (in 1998 as CTI Expo) and TMCnet.com (in 1999).