You’ve probably never thought about it.

But every time you get an email – from a password reset to a job offer – one invisible system is doing all the work.

It was created by this man in 1982.

It still powers the modern world.

It’s called SMTP – and here’s why it matters 🧵 Let’s say your flight gets cancelled.

The airline says they’ll send you a rebooking link.

You're already frustrated – and now you're refreshing your inbox every few minutes.

That email has to arrive. But how does it even get to you?

That’s where this story begins.

You’re not drowning in work.

You’re drowning in emails.

$300/hr execs spending 20% of their week typing “Sounds good, let’s do next Friday.”

This isn’t productivity. It’s death by inbox.

Here’s how you get your life back 🧵 Every year, we waste 200+ hours replying, scheduling, and chasing emails.

That’s 5 full workweeks.

A month of your life.

Gone.

Not because of hard work – but stupid, repetitive, low-leverage work.

Now imagine none of it even touches you.

This man made Gmail in 1 day.

With no team or roadmap. Just leftover code and a wild idea.

It launched on April Fool’s Day. And, people thought it was a joke.

Today, it runs your life – flights, passwords, taxes, memories.

Here’s how it became a system over 1.5 Billion people rely on 🧵 2001.

Paul Buchheit, one of Google’s first 20 employees, was told to “build some kind of email or personalization tool.”

So he did what engineers do –

He took some leftover Google Groups code and hacked together a prototype.

In one day.