The people who change our lives often begin as strangers.

I used to work at a global investment bank with tens of thousands of people. And yet almost every day, I talked to the same eight: the people who sat around me, the people I went to lunch with. Unless there was a big meeting once a quarter, a firm that size felt very small.

Interns came to me all the time. They had questions and didn't know whom to ask. So they mostly talked to each other, or to the same handful of people they already knew. I started wondering how many useful conversations weren't happening simply because people didn't know whom to approach.

So I built a way to introduce people across the firm.

I had about 26 coffees through it myself. I learned what Legal, the investment bankers, and the risk team were working on. I met people in Berlin and Japan with technology ideas close to mine, and sat down with directors and managing directors I would never have met from my desk in New York.

With every coffee, the firm got a little bigger.

And it wasn't just me. Thousands of people met through it, people who might otherwise never have crossed paths. When COVID sent everyone home, the offices emptied, but the introductions continued. I saw what those conversations meant to people, and I never stopped thinking about it.

Later, I noticed the same thing at events. You talk to the person on your left and the person on your right. At the break, people stand around or look busy on their phones, in a room full of people who came because they care about the same things.

So I built a version for events, and watched people who might have spent the day as strangers find each other across the room.

Then I started seeing the same pattern everywhere: in alumni associations, universities, and communities. People surrounded by others they had every reason to know, but rarely met.

Why now?

More of us work from home. More of our day happens on a screen. And increasingly, machines do work that once brought us into contact with other people. Yet the desire to connect hasn't gone anywhere. Often, what's missing isn't the willingness to meet someone new. It's knowing where to begin, or whether the invitation will be welcome.

We have more ways to find and follow people than ever before, yet so much of our technology keeps us on screens rather than bringing us together.

Technology, and AI especially, can make us worse at relationships or better at them. Too much of it has made us worse.

Let's Get Coffee is my bet that it can make us better: a thoughtful introduction, a reason to meet, and a coffee.

I hope you'll pull up a chair.