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Alexander Small
Managing Director & Founder at UMAI
Alex Small is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of UMAI, a restaurant technology company in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Before UMAI, he held key positions at Zalora.com and FoodPanda Singapore, focusing on special projects and directorial roles.
Small's experience extends to launching venture-backed companies for Rocket Internet in Europe and Asia, serving in CEO and Managing Director roles.
With a background in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, Small contributed to strategy development and operational cost reduction in the U.S. and the Middle East.
Notably, Small also has entrepreneurial experience from operating as an independent entrepreneur, as well as working in financial analysis at top firms like Goldman Sachs and UBS Investment Bank.
In academia, Small studied Entrepreneurship and Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science and earned a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration focused on Finance from Morehouse College.
Small's diverse background includes a stint as a bartender on a Cambodian island, where he innovated by introducing the island's first ATM system and led low-budget fishing and crabbing expeditions for tourists.
You can reach out to Alex Small for professional assistance or to learn about catching sand crabs.
Highlights
Why Fortune Favors the Focused 👇
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘅𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 💬 "For the last 15 years, the economy (and venture world) has been a world of excess, not scarcity. As a startup, resources are deliberately scarce. Your role as a founder is to maximize the reach of those resources and make your company as valuable as possible before you need to raise additional capital. To do this, you need to be incredibly surgical, concentrating your resources behind a concise plan to maximize its chance of success."
⭐ 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗶𝗰𝗸'𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 💬 "Hick's Law asserts the more options available to a person, the longer it will take to decide which option is best." 💬 "Simply by paring the playbook down and reducing the number of decisions you have to make, you can improve both the speed and efficacy of making critical choices for your business."
⭐ 𝗔𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 💬 "Paradoxically, the more options you leave open for your business, the less likely you are to achieve them. Optionality isn't about establishing a breadth of infinite options but positioning yourself for the right downstream pathways. 💬 "Diffusing resources across multiple options reduces the power you have in achieving critical mass for any of them."
⭐ 𝗣𝘂𝗿𝘀𝘂𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘃𝘀. 𝗜𝗿𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 💬 "Rather than getting lost in analysis paralysis, you are better off making an educated bet on the most advisable path and letting the data guide you." 💬 "While 'irreversible decisions' require greater collaboration and consensus, many business decisions can be made with minimal consequence."
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 💬 "Like many of the best things in life – startup strategies are best when craftly planned, swiftly executed and remarkably simple. Focus isn't going to guarantee your success, but it's certainly going to increase your odds."
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Actionable insights from: ➡ Rick Zullo (Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Equal Ventures) ✏ “Hick’s Law – Why Fortune Favors the Focused”
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👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors
Navigating the seed funding stage - explore how the landscape has transformed from a decade ago 👇
Actionable insights from: ➡ Mattias Ljungman (Founder at Moonfire) ✏ “Seed is broken. Here’s how to fix it.”
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: "Between 2010 and 2020, the average seed deal grew from $1.7m to $4.6m – some upwards of $22m. Last year, 1,500 angel, pre-seed, or seed rounds were $5m or more, with some stretching into the tens or hundreds of millions."
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱-𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀: "The median age of companies funded at Pre-Seed is now 1.2 years old, according to Pitchbook. And startups are on average 23 months old when they raise a Seed round, according to data from Cendana Capital's portfolio. A decade ago they were less than a year old."
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱" 𝗟𝗮𝗯𝗲𝗹: "This is not just an observation of the larger amounts of capital raised, or the velocity of early-stage traction, but a recognition that often these startups are led by experienced third-time founders who have a head start with deep learnings, a strong network, and a powerful team behind them. This means that startups, especially those led by first-time founders, now have to demonstrate significant traction to attract the same level of investment they might have achieved before."
⭐ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔: "The perceived 'step up' from Seed to Series A is now equivalent to scaling a sheer cliff face. It's no wonder the percentage of Seed stage startups able to advance to Series A within two years has dropped – from 23% for the 2020 cohort to just 5% in 2022."
⭐ 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱" 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲: 🛠️ Seed Inception: "The very beginning of the journey, perhaps before the founders have formally established the company. They're rapidly iterating the product and making the first critical hires." 💥 Seed Expansion: "At this point, the founders have raised a previous pre-seed (Seed Inception) round to start building and get their first customers. The focus is now on iteration and go-to-market testing."
⭐ 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: "Founders can use the above framework as both diagnostic and roadmap. Orient yourself and set your operational priorities; know where you are and where you're going. For investors, it provides a more granular understanding of where a Seed-stage startup is at so they can tailor funding and support, align on priorities and expectations, and help founders navigate their early stages of growth more effectively."
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👉 Follow me, Alexander Small, for tactics and strategies for building startups from industry-leading Founders, Operators and Investors
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.