ALUMNUS CITES A ‘FULL UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE’ AS KEY IN HIS SUCCESS
By Pete Rosenbery
Whether he was taking advantage of opportunities while a student at SIU Carbondale or later, joining a Silicon Valley breakfast club to gain further insight into technology and business, Tommy Richardson always focused on learning as much as he can.
Richardson, a 2005 Information Systems Technologies graduate, is a co-founder of SSNAPP which is developed by Social Media Gateways, Inc., a company specializing in cloud-based social commerce solutions for enterprise and small-medium-sized businesses in hospitality, retail, sports and entertainment.
The company, founded in 2012, earned recognition for SSNAPP, a social media intelligence platform -- receiving an Innovative Technology Award at the 2015 Casino Marketing & Technology Conference and being recognized as one of the top 20 most innovative technologies for in the hospitality and gaming industries.
The company is based in Palo Alto, Calif., with other offices including in Las Vegas, Nev. While the company is in its early stages it was successfully built to operate at a multi-million dollar level working with Fortune 500 brands and investor communities, Richardson said.
“It is rare that we have the level of success that we have without taking in major venture capital money,” he said. “The whole key to the great success of the company so far is we are special in that we have one of the most diverse founding teams in Silicon Valley. Our co-founders including CEO Moses Kusasira are very talented visionaries and really good at executing. Moses is one of the most driven individuals I know. I'm fortunate to be part of this team.”
SSNAPP is a technology platform that facilitates social media loyalty, engagement and intelligence for brands and consumers. The automation SSNAPP has, allows brands to leverage their existing and new customers as an organic sales force through engagement, promotions and gamified activities. This opens a new unique way to accurately measure and optimize their return on investment from social media.
“This is where our platform starts to merge the technology gaps and very expensive labor intensive process to take social efforts to the next level. SSNAPP is a brand’s recognition best friend that bridges how brands and consumers connect, communicate and have mutual benefit and privacy,” he said.
While growing up on the south side of Chicago, Richardson said he was fortunate that his family was progressive. A graduate of Marist High School, he acknowledges he had friends and family who “have nearly 100 years of incarceration time, or didn’t make it out of their neighborhoods.”
The decision to continue his education at SIU Carbondale was “extremely impactful,” and complimented his interests and the family’s economic position at the time, he said.
It was at SIU that Richardson said he focused on having a “very full university experience” instead of mainly succeeding in the classroom. Richardson was not only involved in his classes, but also volunteered with programs both on and off campus in addition to working part time jobs at local businesses.
“Some of my professors, counselors, Student Programming Council advisers and Study Abroad advisers understood my thought process and really had an impact on my university experience and confidence building,” Richardson said, also noting that successful alumni encouraged him.
Richardson said he attended SIU Carbondale at a “unique time” as the university was “changing into more of a research institute focus and upgrading its reputation in the higher education world.” His college class “was in the center of this transformation,” and the university went from references of being a “top party school” to being listed 27th among the nation’s 50 most entrepreneurial research universities in the 2015 Forbes magazine list of “America’s Most Entrepreneurial Universities.”
Richardson “was an industrious and accomplished undergraduate student and took advantage of all the opportunities for growth and learning during his time at the college, and is now an active and supportive alumnus,” James Sissom, associate professor in information systems and applied technologies, said.
Richardson completed four different internship programs during his career at SIU including the Walt Disney World’s College Program and the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. Through the Disney program, he was also accepted in Disney’s partner Florida State University’s hospitality business management program -- “one of the most single influential programs of my career.”
“It gave me the most overall exposure at the time and opened my world up to so much more beyond the general university formats,” Richardson said.
With the Grizzlies, he was part of the information technology team to open the FedEx Forum. The Grizzlies extended the internship so Richardson was able to lead a custom IT project to deploy technology to manage the organization’s guest relations employee asset program. It was during that internship he met contacts from a different company that would result in his first job after graduation.
Prior to his work with SSNAPP, Richardson worked with Agilysys as a senior executive technical sales consultant and also worked with other start-up founding teams to manage execution of visionary and operational development.
Richardson tells students to take advantage of alumni and mentors, mentioning Hannibal Buress as a recent success story in entertainment, and references alumnus Peter Gregory in technology as an inspiration to his team.
“The great thing about SIU Carbondale is we have many successful alumni and this boosts confidence during the journey. I encourage everyone to follow their dreams and explore as much as possible without jeopardizing their focuses,” Richardson said. “While doing that, learn from what the market and industry advisers show you.”