I was working at my day job in 2008 when I received a call that changed my life. My then-young design company was hired to design PayPal’s first iPhone experience. We had a month to complete the task. While it was sometimes stressful, that month bore fruit: the people I worked with at that time became the foundation of much of my professional network. Many of those people have built their own companies, launched startups, and landed important roles at big companies in the following decades.