Every deal has a back story you can learn from. In the case of Gist—the Seattle software startup that announced yesterday it raised $6.75 million in Series A funding from Foundry Group and Vulcan Capital—the key connection came about because of a timely combination of blogs and social networks. Which is fitting because Gist is all about managing those kinds of information streams, which we’re all increasingly being bombarded with, so as to help people build better business relationships.
Gist released its product in beta trials last September. It’s basically a way to put all your information about your business contacts—e-mails, blogs, tweets, articles in the media, and so forth—in one place, with an efficient, user-friendly dashboard interface. Founder T.A. McCann says his target customers fall into three camps: executives and salespeople who spend a lot of time building relationships; “super networkers” who need to keep track of many different contacts; and the “Twitterati” who are the earliest adopters of social software.
An investor like Brad Feld of Boulder, CO-based Foundry Group fits in all three categories. Last fall, managing director Chris Wand from Foundry reached out to Gist about its product and set up a call with McCann. “Our plan was to put our product out there, get feedback, and raise money in the early part of [2009]. Foundry cares a lot about the ‘Implicit Web,'” McCann says, referring to websites and services that aggregate and synthesize personal information from the Internet. “They blog about a lot of their themes. These guys are switched on, they’ve thought about it.”
In November, the Defrag 2008 conference took McCann to Denver. “I went on Twitter and read more about Foundry,” says McCann. “I found out Brad’s a big runner. I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to Denver, I like running, can you recommend a place to run?'” Feld suggested they meet up at the hotel for a run. They put out a general invite on Twitter, but they were the only ones who showed up. Over the next couple of days, McCann and Feld spent three hours running together on local trails, shooting the breeze about running, Gist, Foundry Group, and other topics. “That only happened because Brad published that he likes to run. And because of Twitter,” McCann says. “That afternoon, we showed [Gist] to Foundry. He and the other guys started using it.”
By January, McCann was well into the fundraising process. (Vulcan Capital previously had seeded Gist.) “I was raising money, and I’d use Gist all the time,” he says, adding that the software allowed him to prepare for meetings quickly, keep track of what info he’d sent to whom, and generally be better informed about each person he met. McCann talked with many venture firms around Seattle and elsewhere.
But one thing in particular stood out about Feld and the Foundry team: they really
