T.A. McCann

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• How did you approach hiring? What are the most important skills/characteristics to look for in early hires?

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    I look for 5X passion, 3X intelligence , 1X experience for my best hires.

• Should entrepreneurs spend time on Twitter and other social media?

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    Absolutely. You need to build your own brand, understand the users and influencers. This is critical.

• What's next for you?

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    I am at RIM for at least 2 years, so bringing the value of Gist to all Blackberry users and continuing on our initial mission at faster, broader scale.

• What are the interesting opportunities that you see in the email space that entrepreneurs should be paying attention to?

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    probably hard to answer in < 1000 words, but; Unified inbox, priority inbox, smarter sorting, smarter calendars and scheduling (e.g. www.tungle.com)… just adding more intelligence to the information flow.

• Did Gist generate revenue or was it funded then sold?

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    We never chose to turn on our subscription services, though we had them ready and I hope we will at some point in the future.

• Any advice for someone who is currently trying to raise money to build their company?

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    Most of my advice is on this blog post http://tamccann.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-i-should-have-said-about-raising.html

• Do you think a web startup like Gist could really effectively grow without initial investment?

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    It would have been hard as we had to build lots of the pieces then tie them together, so pretty hard, but companies like www.rapportive.com have done well to focus on a smaller subset and do it with limited capital

• What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?

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    I am not sure I have followed it so well, but “be the best in the world at one thing” (generally meant toward a product/value) and once you have achieved this, you can go on to other things.

• How hard was it to nail the messaging for Gist? How did you describe it in a sentence? We're having trouble explaining our app in a way that instantly makes sense for people.

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    Very hard, and I am sure we still don’t have it right. Check Gist.com for our best attempts to date. Very hard problem for anyone.

    Ask your best users to describe it back to you and see what they say.

    Also read this post I did http://tamccann.blogspot.com/2008/11/nwen-presentation-0-25mph-for-startups.html

• Should I offer equity to my first employees?

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    Absolutely. Everyone should have a piece of the action. More for early people!