A San Diego State grad with no VC connections posted a viral tweet in April 2020: "MasterClass is the ad budget of Shen Yun." It got massive engagement, a follow from John Cena, and a call from the New York Times, turning Twitter into their networking shortcut.
I grew up in San Diego. I went to SDSU. We don't have a huge venture alumni network, so I had no connections in venture. My dad's an engineer, my mom's an artist. It was not a world I grew up in, and so I had to build my own network. And then I realized that everyone was hanging out on Twitter, like all these VCs, and they would reply to like random people. You ask them a question and they'll like reply pretty much instantly. And so I still remember the first time that I felt like Twitter was magic. A tweet of mine went viral. I was in my parents' house. It's like April 2020, deep COVID, and I was refreshing, refreshing on this tweet, an absolute banger. It was MasterClass is the ad budget of Shen Yun. And I was like on the dopamine hamster wheel. I was like, I've cracked it. We're good to go. I had trolls, famous people liked my tweet. John Cena followed me. Huge. A reporter from the New York Times reached out to interview me. So I was like on the phone with him.
Paige of Behind Genius driving an AI electric train in St. Louis (Intramotev Visit)
