This is a picture of me, from 12 years ago, explaining to my Independent Studies Program advisor how my friend (Jasper Speicher) and I were going to build a robot that could automatically navigate it’s environment using infrared sensors. And if we were lucky, even climb stairs. The brains of this device were going to be a programmable microcontroller called the BASIC Stamp.

Fast-forward 12 years. I’m working on my new social media startup, Untitled Startup and we want to integrate a billing solution. We hash out a number of recurring billing solutions, including one by the name of Chargify.

Imagine my surprise when one of the co-founders of Chargify reaches out to me via Twitter and points me in the direction of his useful post, 9 startup steps, learned over 22 years. I’m still new to this whole startup biz, so this is a pretty helpful post. If you’re in a similar place, you should read it.

But I started reading his bio on the site. And then it hit me. This guy co-founded Parallax. The company that made the BASIC Stamp. The same microcontroller that really captured my love of automation 12 years ago. The same microcontroller that, had I not fried it, might just have pushed my entire life in a different direction (robotics). And here we were chatting on Twitter.

I could probably write a post a month on similar situations, but this one really hit home tonight given the time-span and common characters. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be able to interact with the people that make what I do possible on a regular basis. And I really want to thank Lance for not only building products that I’ve been using for more than the past decade, but also for reaching out and saying hi to some random guy on Twitter.