Gist Gets $6.75M From Vulcan, Foundry Group

Gist, a Seattle startup developing an online service intended to help people organize information from disparate sources on the Web in a single location, has raised $6.75 million in a Series A round of financing, according to a statement. Foundry Group, a Boulder, CO-based venture firm, led the new round of financing, which included contributions from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, a founding investor in the company.

Gist, which was started in mid-2008 and is in closed beta, says its online service integrates Microsoft Outlook and Gmail to intelligently organize e-mails, news, and information from Twitter and other online sources in a single location such as an e-mail inbox.

The company is led by entrepreneur T.A. McCann, a former Microsoftie, who gave Greg the story on the company’s early days back in September. The basic idea was that people spend so much time managing new e-mails, searching for old e-mails, learning about new people, and trying to keep up with blogs of people we know, that it might be useful to put all the information in one place that’s easily searchable. The goal is so “we can get the gist of our communications rapidly,” McCann said at the time.

Author: Ryan McBride

Ryan is an award-winning business journalist who contributes to our life sciences and technology coverage. He was previously a staff writer for Mass High Tech, a Boston business and technology newspaper, where he and his colleagues won a national business journalism award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2008. In recent years, he has made regular TV appearances on New England Cable News. Prior to MHT, Ryan covered the life sciences, technology, and energy sectors for Providence Business News. He graduated with honors from the University of Rhode Island in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. When he’s not chasing down news, Ryan enjoys mountain biking and skiing in his home state of Vermont.