Today, Voice Summit Programming and Content Director, Janice Mandel, welcomes Shane Mac to the Inside VOICE Summit podcast. Shane co-founded Assist, a conversational solution platform for chatbots and voice applications, in 2015 with Giovanni Vatieri and Geek Squad founder, Robert Stephens, who made headlines when he sold his product support company to Best Buy and become the first CTO to integrate and mine the data from messaging support provided by over 100,000 employees. Assist became known for deploying Facebook Messenger chatbots for leading brands, including its first customer, 1-800-flowers, whose CMO will take the main stage with Shane at this year’s VOICE Summit. Last March, Conversocial, a UK-based social media management and customer service software provider, acquired Assist and named Shane its Chief Automation Officer. In this conversation, you’ll learn what led Shane to his first major exit, why he says he was “overly passionate, completely ignorant, and way too confident,” how he’s grown to collect the right people, and hear his take on the convergence of diverse players that make today’s voice community so cool.