Shane Mac

Everyone's Job Has Changed. Forever.

I sent a note to our team earlier today about how, in an AI-native world, your job is not to do the work—it’s to ensure the work is great. Team, I’ve been thinking a lot about Tobi’s note that @Thierry shared in #tool-ai — I tweeted about

The Road to $40 Million at Squared Away

Michelle recently shared how we passed $40m in all-time revenue at Squared Away. Check out her post on X. I wanted to share a few thoughts on how we got here, lessons learned, all of our financials, and my personal journey to get here. To think we started this company

We Paid 20% Of Our Employees $25,000 To Quit

Last month, I made an offer to everyone at our company: $25,000 to quit.  6 people took it. But, why? Because I fucked up. I'm sharing the story to be open about what happened, why I did it, and maybe it can be helpful to others going

The One Question That Almost Killed Our Biggest Launch With Apple

The following post is an excerpt from David Marquet's book "Leadership is Language." David was the captain of a nuclear submarine and one of my favorite leaders in the world. David asked me to share when we were launching our biggest project with Apple and how

Stop Giving Advice

7 years ago, I called my best friend Robert Stephens and asked him for advice. His response was not what I was looking for. He said, Do you want my Advice or do you want my Validation? I just sat there for a second. Doubting my actual intentions. Thinking. What

No More Questions

Reply and say hi, it's always great to hear from you. Every once in a while, someone tells me something that completely changes the entire way I see the world. That's what happened to me after a conversation with Ted Klontz, one of the best psychologists

A Priceless Pause

David Marquet, author of Turn the Ship Around, which is one of my favorite books on leadership, is writing a new book coming out soon called “Coach.” It’s about how to coach yourself and the questions, tools, and playbooks that can help us all see what is hard to

The Best Way To Kill Your Startup & What I Learned Doing Just That

A year ago, I wrote this internal memo to our team at XMTP Labs. It's something I think about a lot, and even as we've grown and come a long way since a year ago, I still think about this almost every day. Here's

A New Era for Communication: Coinbase Wallet Launches with the XMTP Network

Anyone in the world can now send free global payments with a private and secure text message. This is just the beginning of individuals having more control, privacy, and ownership over their assets, identity, and now communication. I'm thrilled to announce that Coinbase Wallet is now part of

How Am I Lying To Myself?

Richard Feynman once said that “you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” I shared this post recently as a screenshot on Twitter and I had 100s of people reach out and say it was something they were struggling with and the post really resonated

Logos Fund LP Letter VI: 5 New Investments, a New Yorker Profile, a16z Leads Series-A Round In Our First-Ever Investment, Tiger Global Leads Another A Round, Our First Crypto Investment, and more...

Hey friends, You're receiving this email because you signed up on my personal website or LogosLabs.com. I'm excited to share our latest investments with you, I've removed sensitive information. To get all the information, simply become an LP in our fund. Here'

XMTP raises $20m led by a16z crypto fund to build the standard communication protocol for web3 together

Below is a copy of the post [https://blog.xmtp.com/series-a/] we shared about our Series A over on the XMTP blog. I personally couldn't be more excited to be building this company with my co-founder Matt Galligan [twitter.com/mg]. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- XMTP has raised a $20M

Logos Fund LP Letter V: Our first 🦄 🦄 Led By Accel, 2 New Investments in Microacquire & Clay, and Logos Fund General Partner Chris Herd Speaks Out Against Jamie Dimon’s Return To The Office

> This was an internal memo we sent to our LPs in The Logos Fund [logoslabs.com]. To receive the full version and invest with us, join our fund as an LP here [angel.co/v/l/jw1pO]. Share this email with friends and tell them to subscribe here: blog.

Logos Fund LP Update Special Report: 🦄🦄🦄 Remote raises $150m from Accel and becomes The Logos Fund's first unicorn 🦄🦄🦄

This is the email update that was sent to all Logos Fund LPs about our first unicorn, Remote.com. To become an LP & learn more about our fund, click here. [http://angel.co/v/l/Mg6Z9] Hi all, This update is a special report for a special day. We

The Logos Fund’s Future of Remote Tools Report 2021

The Logos Fund [http://logoslabs.com/fund] invest in founders building startups defining remote work globally. We invest $50k-$100k in the earliest stages of your company. The rolling fund is managed by Shane Mac [http://twitter.com/shanemac] & Chris Herd [http://twitter.com/chris_herd]. This report was

Everything you need to look (and sound) like a badass sitting on Zoom at home

Yesterday, I posted this Tweet [https://twitter.com/ShaneMac/status/1344335095470174209?s=20] about my new camera + lighting + audio setup at home. Everyone started asking what to buy to make this setup happen so here you go. Everything you need to know is below. Matt Galligan helping me set up

Introducing the Logos Fund: A Rolling Fund Investing In Founders Building Startups Defining Remote Work Globally

I went from "remote work will happen over the next 10 years" to "it's already here, now what?" in under 6 months. To me, the shift was always inevitable but the timeline I could have never imagined happening this quickly. Remote work is here

Podcast Review: The Future of The World After Apps - An Interview with Amdocs President of Technology Avishai Sharlin & Shane Mac

Sometimes you get an email that you want to share with everyone. That's the email I got from Grace Meyer [https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-meyer-25b048164/], student at the University of Auckland. She decided to review our interview for her college course requirement. > "One of my

Believe In Yourself (a collection of 72 photos at 72 hotels)

Being CEO can be the loneliest and hardest job sometimes. Hell, any job can be lonely and hard. When it gets hard, it's easy to start doubting yourself. So, I started writing a simple message. I'm not sure when I started doing this. One day, before

Introducing Sodawater: A Product To Help People Drink a Little Less

This idea went from a text message "We should build this platform" to a full featured product in less than 4 months. It all started when Justin Kan, founder of Twitch & Investor, decided to quit drinking and start a community on Telegram. I called the best engineer

How Zoom made me like dating apps again

I went from hating dating apps to kinda enjoying them again by changing one thing. It was so simple. I forgot how fun it is to let friends play your Bumble [https://bumble.com/]. Flip through your Hinge [https://hinge.co/]. See your top 5 on The League [https://www.

Chase Jarvis with Shane Mac

ask. celebrates 10 years with a blockbuster interview with Chase Jarvis. Next, David Marquet and others in a series specifically designed to go deep on the questions that define our lives and our work. 1. ask. is back with a new podcast episode and a calling to let anyone host

How to not pitch a VC? w/ Brad Feld

Brad always tells it like it is.

Assist partners with Datawords to take chatbots international

We are excited to announce an official partnership with Datawords. [https://datawords.com/] This newly signed partnership will allow Datawords to help current and future clients integrate messaging and voice marketing tools to their digital marketing strategies. It will enable Assist to benefit from Datawords’ tech and multicultural expertise to

Machine Yearning goes to Cannes Lions

Machine Yearning [https://medium.com/assist/dreaming-about-the-machine-3d778494e848] posts its fourth episode this week, and already we’re breaking our format. We approach the podcast like everything in life: stay rigid, get stuck, nothing but problems follow… We’ve used this podcast to jump start conversations about how much we don’

Dreaming About the Machine

Introducing Machine Yearning, our new podcast In a world where no one is the expert and where everyone, even if they don’t want to let on, is scrambling to figure it out — why not come clean and get real? That’s the point behind Machine Yearning, our new podcast.

Time Becomes Money with Assist/TimeTrade Partnership

We’re excited to announce an official partnership with TimeTrade [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/timetrade-partners-with-assist-to-give-customers-new-ways-to-engage-with-brands-300638959.html] . TimeTrade is the leading intelligent scheduling platform for the enterprise. Below is an interview with Cimarron Buser and Assist co-founder Robert Stephens. Cimarron Buser is SVP Business Development at TimeTrade. Since the day

A Bottle of Pellegrino and the One Lesson I’ll Never Forget That Seth Godin Taught Me

8 years ago I made a video. I was young, excited, and starting to share things via video online. I have no idea why I felt the need to send the video to Seth Godin. But I did. I don’t even remember what I said in the video I

Google Assistant + Assist Platform

The Assist platform [http://assi.st] now supports the Google Assistant and their launch of transactions. We are excited to launch some of the first commerce experiences on the Google Assistant and chart new territory on this new hybrid space that is both messaging and voice. Just ask your Assistant

A statement from the team at Assist about Binary Capital:

We at Assist couldn’t say it better than Lee Mayer at Havenly [https://twitter.com/thehavenly/status/879336022668083200] & Nadia & Lydia at Dia [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/diaco-update-binary-capital-nadia-boujarwah?published=t] , but we do want to voice our absolute support to Niniane Wang, Susan Ho, Leiti Hsu, and

Welcome to Assist, Liat Bycel

Today is one of those days where I’m reminded that building companies is simply about bringing together the right group of people. I’m excited to share that Liat [https://twitter.com/LiatBycel] is joining Assist as our Chief Revenue Officer. She brings experience and leadership from more than

Welcome Laura, our new VP of Partnerships

When I met Laura, I instantly knew she was someone we needed on our team. I couldn’t be more excited to work alongside Laura and learn from her past experience working with IBM and Apple. Laura Meyer joins Assist from IBM where she managed sales to Apple, Inc. and

How do you change the sports industry and follow your dream? w/ Ashley Wellington-Fahey

The CEO of Relish stops by the studio to talk about sports, feminism, diversity and her new company. Ashley is the CEO of The Relish, a new media sports company for female fans. She has an inspiring story and shares her love for sports, women in business and serving an

Let’s Get Real About Company Perks

Taken right from the Assist handbook for new team members I wanted to share why we believe giving everyone a personal assistant is the greatest perk you can offer. And a few other thoughts. Productivity Perks > Posh Perks There’s a lot of talk, especially in technology, about cute

ask. dinner in San Francisco 2015

It is a simple idea: What if everything started with a question? What if a moderator helped everyone share their best stories? There’s something magical about turning off your phone, bringing together great people and having a moderator who brings out personal stories over dinner. It’s an intense

ask. dinner in San Francisco

This was our first dinner in San Francisco. It is a simple idea: What if everything started with a question? What if a moderator helped everyone share their best stories? There’s something magical about turning off your phone, bringing together great people and having a moderator who brings out

ask. dinner in Seattle 2013

It all started 4 years ago. It was a simple idea then and it’s a simple idea now. I set out to ask 1 question to a wide range of leaders all over the world. the idea In a short time, I’ve been lucky and humbled by this

How do you love your work, be happy, and take care of yourself first? w/ Tammy McSimov

This interview was truly special to me. I sat down with my mother and had an open conversation about work, love, taking care of yourself, and caring for others. It was one of my favorite memories with my mom. She’s incredible. I hope you enjoy. https://soundcloud.com/startbyasking/

Why drink tea? w/ Jason Fried

Jason Fried [https://twitter.com/jasonfried] has always preached the simple way. This interview is a fun little interview on why he likes tea so much. Enjoy. https://soundcloud.com/ask-interviews-14429595/why-drink-tea-w-jason-fried Subscribe to everything ask. [http://startbyasking.com] iTunes Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-interviews/id1057357810?mt=

Where’s offline going? w/ Robert Stephens

I believe Robert Stephens [http://twitter.com/rstephens] (co-founder @ Assist [http://assi.st]), Founder of GeekSquad and CTO of BestBuy, sees the future of technology like very few in the world. I never imagined at the time of this interview that one day he would be my co-founder. Hope you

Why’s culture matter? w/ Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson [http://ryancarson.com/] is a pioneer in the internet world. Now CEO of Treehouse [https://teamtreehouse.com/], his views on culture are some of the best in the world. https://soundcloud.com/ask-interviews-14429595/whys-culture-matter-w-ryan-carson Subscribe to everything ask. [http://startbyasking.com] iTunes Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/

What experiences led to your success? w/ T.A. McCann

T.A. McCann [https://twitter.com/tamccann] is both a friend, our investor and the reason I got into startups. This story reminds me of how much it really is about the process and the persistence to achieve anything you want. I hope you enjoy this interview. Subscribe to everything

Why start with the why? w/ Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek has changed the way to think about building companies and innovation. He shares why great companies and leaders always focus on the why. I hope you enjoy this interview. https://soundcloud.com/ask-interviews-14429595/why-start-with-the-why-w-simon-sinek Subscribe to everything ask. [http://startbyasking.com] iTunes Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/

Should you lead by giving orders? w/ David Marquet

This interview has changed everything I think about in leadership. It truly is one of my favorite stories. David Marquet took over the largest nuclear submarine in the Navy and turned the worst performing ship in the navy into the best. He did it by changing from the leader who

There are a dozen ways to order a coffee. Why do dumb bots only allow one?

If bots are going to live up to their hype, we have to move beyond the fixed decision trees and pre-defined scripts. Last week, Mikhail Larionov [https://www.facebook.com/mikhail99] from Facebook, wrote a post [https://medium.com/@vernon99/messenger-bots-decision-trees-vs-webviews-64b36eb0905e#.v3tnihj53] about decision trees vs web views. He argues

What if there was a single question that could tell you NOT to hire someone?

I’m fascinated by this thought. Is there a specific question that can help you understand who not to hire if you are focused on building the highest performing team in the world? Recently, I had a conversation with former Navy Captain David Marquet [http://www.davidmarquet.com/]. He told

Talk to Lonely Planet on Google Home

We are excited to announce that the Assist platform is powering one of the first brands on Google Home, Lonely Planet [http://lonelyplanet.com]. Lonely Planet has always been one of our favorite brands and now we can learn about the best places in the world by simply asking Google

A Christmas Miracle: Now $5.5 million in, here's how we barely closed our first round in 5 days during the holidays

This story is about having no fucking clue what will happen, one lucky email, and the ignorant road to raising part of our $1.5m seed round in 5 days before New Year’s. July 5th, 2013. Sitting in Spanish Bay, CA with my girlfriend browsing Instagram. This is the

Introducing donations on Messenger. First up: charity: water

We are excited to share the first ever charity accepting donations on Messenger. We believe it is one of the simplest ways people can donate on mobile. charity: water [http://charitywater.org] has become one of the best brands when it comes to using social media to engage and inspire

Snapchat Commerce: Swipe to Buy & Adverbs

This is an excerpt from a much more in depth post about business messaging. [https://medium.com/assist/money-from-messaging-the-impact-of-brands-in-the-messaging-ecosystem-192e99481919#.obvqkowqv] The post was designed and written in collaboration with Jonathan Lieberman [https://twitter.com/jonnyliebs]. “Swipe to Buy” (On Snapchat) Snapchat is dominating the advertising and content world on social.

The Pendulum. My attempt at building a diverse company from the start

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Assist is currently 98% white males. It’s time to change that. 1. Update 1: As of August 29th, 2016 we are now 86% white males. 2. Update 2: As of September 15th, 2016 we are now 75% white males. 3. Update 3: As of April 17th, 2017

Money from Messaging: The Impact of Brands In the Messaging Ecosystem

This post is the combination of ideas that can happen today and those that we would love to see happen tomorrow. We have developed a handful of foundational concepts that we believe can help any individual or business understand the potential of messaging. We hope you enjoy and please send

“Sometimes it’s just easier to say it.” (aka new app release today!)

More context, better UI, voice. This post is a repost from the Remember blog [https://medium.com/@GetRemember/sometimes-its-just-easier-to-say-it-b9af73cb0070#.51d56q15r] . This is my favorite new app. It’s no secret that voice is one of the best ways to connect with people. Being able to add a voice note to

10 years later, one single strategy has always worked…

Go where no one is doing business, people are just having fun. Don’t sell shit, don’t ask for anything. If they follow and listen to you, they’ll hear about your next thing… I met my current co-founder on Twitter back when people were saying Twitter was silly.

College got me into debt. Twitter got me out.

Nothing has opened more doors and opportunities in my life than Twitter. I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. (Not even close [http://www.wiu.edu/]) I do believe that signaling theory exists and there’s a ton to gain by attending a school like Stanford. But I

Discover and book the best hotels with just a text

We are on a mission to bring the best local services to every messaging platform. We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Olset [https://www.olset.com/], the world’s leading personalization engine for booking hotels. They power some of the largest travel sites in the world and

Introducing Resy on Assist

We are on a mission to bring the best services to every messaging platform. That’s why today we are excited to announce that we are featuring Resy reservations on Assist. Discover and book reservations without leaving your favorite messaging app. Resy has made one of the best reservation experiences

Introducing MessageRank

> We believe that messaging is the new browser and the way results are displayed will drastically change in this new world. If this is true, I’ll always remember what Greg Isenberg [https://twitter.com/gregisenberg] once told me: > In real estate, it’s all about location, location,

Introducing StubHub + Assist: Your best 3 tickets

We strive to make using services as simple as sending a text. A major piece of this is simplifying results to feel manageable and great inside messaging. We call this the “Top 3.” It’s our best search result for messaging. If Google thought the right amount of results was

Postmates + Assist = ❤

We are excited to announce that you can now hire a courier and get anything delivered in 100+ U.S. cities. The Postmates [http://postmates.com] API makes it possible to get anything delivered from point A to point B. Assist makes it as easy as sending a message on

Why bots and why now?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 years ago businesses were told to get a website. 10 years ago a Facebook page. 5 years ago an app (but apps are too expensive). The next phase of the Internet will be bots. Every business in the world will have a bot. It will allow any customer

Do we really need an entire app for that?

The reality of app overload. Apps dominated the last 5 years. “There’s an app for that” became a real thing. At some point though, downloading another app and re-entering the same preferences, became a nuisance and app discovery is a real problem. Apps are amazing for some things but

The Truth About Raising Seed Money

I hear this question all the time: > “How should I go about raising money?” To start, raising money is actually really hard and there are lots of nuances but maybe a different perspective can help some people trying to raise a round. Also, the single best way to raise

Stop working 20 hours a day

I was having a coffee this morning with a friend who was telling me about his last startup job. The one line I remember was this: > “…he [the CEO] required us to be in the office til 7pm. Anyone who left early just felt guilty. I got fired.” Listen,

What are you the worst at?

This is one of my favorite questions. The answer shows one of the most powerful traits needed in early stage companies: Self-awareness. For founders and early employees (really any person), I believe that self-awareness is one of the most critical traits needed to be able to succeed through the unknown

Should you invest in tech companies or pizza?

It’s pretty amazing that if you would have invested in Dominos Pizza circa 2010 then you would have made 874% returns. It dwarfs the returns of Apple, Google, FB, Twitter, pretty much every public technology company. The top line is Dominos. Dominos pizza compared to top performing tech companies.

Fiddler. An idea I think someone should build.

I love looking at behaviors I see everyone do but they hack another product to do it. Meet Fiddler. Every single dinner party I’ve been at over the past year has had this happen: Someone in a relationship wants to play their single friend’s Tinder. They love the

Fucking advice

My favorite advice is this: > Determine how to ignore most advice. Advice is cheap. In business, opinions are even cheaper. A bunch of people with no context and different experiences telling you the answer. They don’t know what you know. Believe that. My skin crawls every time I

How We Start

Handmade paper letter with handwritten welcome note to you. Photo credit: @rstephens In yesterday’s news we talked about how to quit [https://medium.com/assist/how-to-quit-11a2d89bfff2], in today’s news lets talk about how we start.☺Here is what we do at Assist (and the purpose) for every new

How To Quit

When a new team member joins our company, we have them start by reading a handbook to help understand our culture, mission and team. One piece of this document which you read on the first day shares thoughts on how to quit. I want to share our insights because honestly

The Search for Simplicity: How Assist Runs on Quip

The Assist founding team at Fort Mason in San Francisco. This post was originally written by the Quip team and posted on their blog [https://quip.com/blog/]. Assist [http://joinassist.com] is a startup focused on building simple and useful products to connect people. This philosophy is apparent in

Curiosity & Thank You

9 months ago I was speaking at a conference in Chicago and a lady in the front row asked me a question. > She asked, “what drives you?” I think I said “People.” Or something that is as generic as boxed wine and the same regurgitated answer I would expect

Taptalk

There’s something happening here that’s different… There’s something happening that’s different with Taptalk. I’ve been using it for about 2 months and yesterday I told my mom to download it. Today was the most I’ve shared with my mom since moving away from home

Secret: A Safe Haven

This morning I opened Secret [http://secret.ly/]. A new app which let’s you anonymously share thoughts amongst friends but you can’t see which friend is the author of the post, just that you are a “friend” or “friend of friend” with that person. There’s been many

What’s something you wish someone told you in high school which you didn’t believe at the time? 

Next week, I’m heading back to speak at my high school. Looking for inspiration, I posted this question on Facebook today and the amount of responses blew me away. I wanted to share what everyone said in a single post. I hope you enjoy. > Passionate > cool. Nick

Rebound. A lesson from my Grandpa.

My grandpa always told me that basketball is won by rebounds. The stats show that people miss more shots than they make so whoever is there to rebound where the ball is going will win games. Whether it’s your team or your competitors, knowing where to be after someone

Frontback

What we really need to do here is use technology to remind people that we are human, that civilization is meant to connect people. @jack This morning was the first time my dad ever sent me a photo of himself. As trivial as it sounds, it made my day. He

Saying No More

It’s so easy to say you’ll do it tomorrow. Then it never happens. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Six months ago, I made the best life change that I’ve ever made. I started swimming. I wanted to be healthier. To make sure I would make it a habit, I forced myself

Building A Medium Marketplace

Medium is interesting. It’s a new publishing platform but it also has the same dynamics of a marketplace. Supply and Demand. Chicken and Egg. Writers and Readers. What I find really interesting is their approach to building the platform. They seem solely focused on the writer. Better tools, better

How To Build Shitty Products

People are hired to do work. Doing work can be seen as what you produce. I’ve seen so many people, including myself, show off all the things that they’ve built. In the past, I’ve found myself thinking about how much work we did by how much was

Managing My Network

Last week, a co-worker asked me how to manage all the people in their network. I guess since my last company was a Social CRM, people seem to think I actually have a clue about managing my network. Let’s just start by saying there is no magic solution or

Yooo, I Love Snapchat

After I packed my car and moved from the small town of Bartonville, IL to Seattle (almost six years ago), I started feeling like I was missing the special moments with my family back home. Especially watching my only niece grow up. Taylor was eight years old then. Obviously, we