Shane Mac is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive, best known as the Co-founder and CEO of XMTP Labs, the company developing the decentralized communication protocol XMTP. His career is marked by the creation of several technology companies that were later acquired, including the social intelligence platform Gist, acquired by BlackBerry, and the conversational commerce platform Assist, acquired by Coveo. Mac is also the co-founder of the remote executive assistant service Squared Away and is an active angel investor in the technology sector. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

He earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics from Western Illinois University. ^[2]​

Career

Early Ventures

Around 2003, Mac co-founded imsecure, an early-stage company that focused on providing enterprise-level security solutions for instant messaging platforms. This venture marked his initial entry into building technology businesses centered on communication tools. ^[4]​

Gist and BlackBerry

From approximately 2006 to 2010, Mac served as the Co-founder and CEO of Gist. The company developed a platform described as an "inbox intelligence" service and a professional contact management tool. Gist aggregated information about a user's contacts from various online sources, including social media and news outlets, and integrated this data directly into their email inbox to provide deeper context for their communications.

In February 2011, Gist was acquired by BlackBerry (then Research In Motion). Following the acquisition, Mac joined BlackBerry and served as the Director for Gist until January 2013. In this role, he was responsible for leading the Gist team and integrating its contact management technology into the broader BlackBerry ecosystem. Mac has since reflected on this period as a key learning experience regarding the cultural and operational challenges of integrating a small, agile startup into a large corporation. ^{[2] [4] [3]}

Assist

In January 2013, Mac co-founded Assist, where he also served as CEO until December 2017. Assist was an early platform in the conversational commerce space, enabling brands to build and deploy automated messaging experiences, or chatbots, on major communication platforms such as Facebook Messenger and X (formerly Twitter). The technology allowed users to interact with businesses—for tasks like booking hotels or ordering food—directly through chat interfaces. The company's goal was to streamline a wide range of business-to-consumer interactions using artificial intelligence and automation. In May 2019, Assist was acquired by Coveo, a company specializing in AI-powered search and recommendation platforms. ^{[1] [2]}​

Squared Away

Mac co-founded Squared Away in 2017. The company operates as a subscription service that provides high-quality, U.S.-based remote executive assistants to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders. Squared Away has a distinct social mission focused on hiring, training, and providing flexible, remote career opportunities to military spouses. The company is bootstrapped, having not taken any venture capital funding, and has grown to be profitable with an annual recurring revenue (ARR) reported to be over $12 million. ^{[1] [2] [4]}​

XMTP Labs

In August 2021, Mac co-founded XMTP Labs with Matt Galligan, where he serves as CEO. The company is dedicated to building tools and infrastructure for a new, open standard for communication on the internet. ^{[2] [3]}​

Media Appearances

Shane Mac appeared on the BaseLayer podcast (Episode 3), where he discussed his early work as one of the first developers on Twitter, his experience building products that scaled to millions of users, and his role in co-founding XMTP, a decentralized messaging protocol.