Brad Feld

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Gist Acquires Startup Weekend Project Learn that Name

Mar 18, 2010
Category Investments

Gist just announced that they have acquired Learn that Name and incorporated it in the Gist iPhone app. 

There are a lot of fun connections here for me.  For starters, as many of you know, I’m an investor in Gist.  If you haven’t tried it – or haven’t played with it for a while – give it a shot.  The evolution of the product over the last six months has been remarkable as it gets better every two weeks (the Gist teams’ release cycle).

The iPhone app has been out for a while and is a killer.  I’ve seen the Android app – it’s equally cool and useful.  Each of them connect up to the Gist service that lives in the cloud and connects together all of your contact information, builds an implicit social network based on your email traffic and friends lists, and surfaces a variety of content (including news as well as real-time stuff) for your contacts.

Learn that Name was a Startup Weekend Seattle project from a few months ago.  Andrew Hyde, who is the community manager for TechStars, created Startup Weekend and I attended the first one in Boulder.  It has become an amazing worldwide phenomenon that is now run by Clint Nelsen and Marc Nager.  So – that’s linkage two for me.

The idea for Learn that Name came from Eric Koester, a lawyer in Cooley’s Seattle office.  Eric has been super helpful on the Startup Visa initiative as well, working on an ABA brief for us that will hopefully be officially approved soon.  Who said that lawyers weren’t a force for good in the world?  So – that’s linkage number three.

TechCrunch’s article gives a little more history on the deal and how the proceeds (yes – there are proceeds) are being split up among the team members that participated in the Startup Weekend project.  I know that at the very first Startup Weekend that I attended in Boulder there was a hope that some of these projects would spin out and either get commercialized or acquired.  I’m proud to be involved in one of the first ones to have this happen.  Oh – and Learn that Name when played within Gist’s iPhone app is a lot of fun.