College got me into debt. Twitter got me out.

Shane Mac -

Nothing has opened more doors and opportunities in my life than Twitter.

I didn’t go to an Ivy League school. (Not even close) I do believe that signaling theory exists and there’s a ton to gain by attending a school like Stanford.

But I didn’t. When I first saw Twitter, that’s all I could think about though. It felt like the greatest equalizer. More than that, it was a doorway to new opportunities and people in a network I didn’t have.

My first thought about Twitter was,

Wait, I can literally send a message to any person in the world who also uses Twitter? Like a text? Holy shit…

Sometimes when you look back on life, it’s amazing to see how all of the dots connect. What’s crazier is when all of the dots connect solely because Twitter exists.

Below are the stories behind the Tweets. I didn’t know any of these people before Twitter. It is still kinda surreal to me.

Thank you Twitter for creating the most powerful way in the world to create your own opportunities and bring great people together. #loveTwitter

Andrew is an amazing writer. We’ve still never met IRL but he was the first person to ever @reply me on Twitter and til this day is the reason I started writing.

This Tweet is what started it all. A small joke to Jen turned into a coffee turned into her intro’ing me to T.A. McCann turned into getting to build Gist.com turned into BlackBerry buying Gist for over $40M. Learning from T.A. and now having T.A. as one of our investors has been a true honor. He was my MBA I never got. I always tell people that the single piece of advice I would tell myself 10 years ago is to find the person you want to become and do anything in the world to work with them. Job titles don’t teach you shit, a badass leader can teach you everything. This single Tweet ended up literally changing my path and outlook for life.

Sara introduced me to Big Omaha. Last year I got to speak there. One of my favorite conferences in the world. Where I first met Gary Vee, Jason Fried, Scott Harrison, Scott Belsky, David Hauser, Tony Hsieh, and more. All in Omaha.

David was the first person I interviewed for ask from Twitter. Then we got to work together a few years later. Great friend.

Eric built a product that we ended up buying off of him at Gist. We stayed in touch and when they started thinking about doing Zaarly, he called. And that was that, the Zaarly ride started and I moved to SF.

This Tweet found us one of the best humans and nicest guys on the planet. And he was great at design and a pleasure to work with. I still remember when him and his wife came to SF and we were trying to convince him to join as we sat in a loft in SOMA off 6th street. No idea how it worked.

Chase came to the first ask dinner. Now he’s an investor in Assist and one of my favorite advisors and friends.

Sarah randomly said hello on Twitter. Then she read the manuscript of my book. She is solely responsible for the editing, design and publishing of the book. The entire design and concept is all hers, she’s the best.

Mike ended up doing the cover design for Stop With the BS. He is amazing and actually created a new font for the book.

Holly was the reason I got to play the Zappos corporate party at Tony Hsieh’s house in Vegas. Tony then wrote the forward for my book.

Mike became one of our first investors in Assist and is a great guy all around.

Asked the founder of GeekSquad to do an interview. He said yes. He’s now my co-founder of Assist. Bryan Johnson, Founder of Braintree, wanted to move to SF so he emailed me asking to meet Robert. We had lunch. Bryan has become a good friend. Bryan then group message intro’d me to Jonathan Teo. Jonathan led our Series A round in Assist. Crazy small world.

David has become a friend and learning from a former Navy captain is incredible. He also was one of my favorite interviews since launching the ask interview series.

Onno, TapTalk CEO, loved the article and reached out. We ended up getting to invest $50k in the seed round.

I’m sure there’s so many more but these were catalyst moments that happened because Twitter existed.

Connect dots. Connect people. Give a shit. Be helpful. Things happen.

35,400 Tweets later, happy 10th birthday Twitter and thank you for everything.

#loveTwitter #happy10years