Notes from T.A. McCann’s Startup Riot Keynote

The first keynote at Startup Riot was by T.A. McCann, founder of Gist and head of social product strategy at Blackberry. T.A. did a great job going through his background, lessons learned, and the Gist experience from starting to selling a pre-revenue business in 2.5 years for a large sum of money to RIM/Blackberry.

Here are notes from his keynote:

• On 7th company currently
• Gist was 6th startup
• Professional sailor for 10 years
• Gotta keep practicing
• Practicing by helping others and paying it forward
• On Vizify – TechStars co similar to Gist or About.me
• On board of Startup Weekend
• Involved in TechStars Seattle
• Collegiate swimmer
• In charge of everything social for BlackBerry
• Been at BlackBerry for two years
• Core message: How are you making people’s live better?
• Find the confluence — people, investors, trends, customers
• Why me and why now?
• Sell the first version of the product with a PowerPoint before you’ve built it
• Seemingly unachievable vision
• Discover like-minded people
• Gist acquired without monetization (pre-revenue)
• Create moments of delight and amplify
• 80% of success is about showing up
• Make peoples lives better: Connect and solve; Listen, learn, share; Experiment; Iterate and persist
• Look for work/life harmony instead of work/life balance

T.A. did a great job and I’m glad he came to Atlanta.