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Andy Towne
True Search Global Energy Transition, Industrial & Climate Tech Practice Lead & Co-Founder & CEO, Hobbs & Towne Inc
Professional Background
Andrew "Andy" Towne is an influential leader in executive search and sustainability industries, serving as the Co-Founder and CEO of Hobbs & Towne, Inc. (HTI), a prominent boutique advisory firm specializing in clean technology and climate-centric executive placements. Since its inception in 1997, HTI has distinguished itself as a frontrunner in the CleanTech and ClimateTech sector by providing comprehensive services that include talent acquisition, deal sourcing, leadership assessments, interim management, and M&A advisory. With its main offices strategically located in major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Toronto, Philadelphia, and London, HTI has established a formidable presence with a dedicated team of 40 professionals, including 15 Partners and 5 Operating Partners.
Under Andy’s visionary leadership, HTI has successfully navigated the intricacies of a rapidly evolving market, focusing on transformational and growth-driven companies across various sectors like Energy, Transportation, Manufacturing, Industrial, Food, Agriculture, and Water. His expertise in these domains has made him a trusted collaborator for numerous groundbreaking businesses committed to sustainability, such as Impossible Foods, Proterra, FlexGen, Shoals Technologies, Array Technologies, and many others.
Andy’s impressive track record includes conducting over 500 executive searches, of which more than 150 were CEO placements. His keen insight and understanding of market demands have allowed him to partner with premier investors including Breakthrough Energy Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Oaktree Capital, and Platinum Equity, helping to assemble elite leadership teams and investment cohorts for transformative companies.
Education and Achievements
Andy Towne’s academic journey began at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, where he excelled both athletically and academically, earning a full scholarship to play football for the Scarlet Knights. His time at Rutgers not only honed his skills in leadership and teamwork but also laid a strong foundation for his future career in business and sustainability. Following graduation, Andy ventured into the world of professional sports, taking on a role in the front office of the Philadelphia Phillies Major League Baseball Club, where he honed his expertise in teamwork, management, and strategic planning.
Following his tenure with the Phillies, Andy channeled his passion for sustainability and leadership into the formation of Hobbs & Towne, where he has since become a pivotal figure in the integration of climate initiatives into corporate leadership. His extensive experience in executive placements, particularly in the ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) sphere, has equipped him with a vast network of impactful investors, innovative technologists, and forward-thinking executives.
As he continues to shape the future of sustainability in business, Andy has also contributed to the community in various ways. He has served as a Board of Trustee member for Germantown Academy, a preparatory school, demonstrating his commitment to education and mentorship. Additionally, he is currently a Board Observer for High Beauty, located in Santa Rosa, CA, further expanding his influence in the sustainable and innovative sectors.
Notable Partnerships and Contributions
Throughout his career, Andy has taken part in critical mandates that have significantly influenced the landscape of executive search in the sustainability domain. By working closely with companies such as Gevo, USHR, XL Fleet, STEM, Enphase, EnerNOC, Comverge, and Vertiv, he has played a vital role in driving substantial change within industries focused on environmental responsibility and innovation.
Additionally, Andy has been at the forefront of working with emerging sustainable brands like SOURCE Global, Good Catch Foods, Smart Wires, NUGGS, SemaConnect, and Cervest, mentoring and assisting them in establishing robust leadership frameworks that align with their goals of transforming their respective sectors.
Family and Community Engagement
Outside of his professional ventures, Andy Towne is a dedicated family man. He and his wife, Shawn, are proud parents to three children: Jessica, Andrew, and Sophie. Their family-oriented approach reflects in Andy’s commitment to community service and education, as seen in his active participation on various boards. By integrating family values with professional expertise, Andy exemplifies a holistic approach to success in both personal and professional realms.
Highlights
Looking forward to the Opening Reception for #CLEANPOWER2023
I would like to thank everyone for the overwhelming response and well wishes from our announcement last week. I’m grateful for all of the support and friendship over the last 24 years. Bobby and I are so proud of our Hobbs & Towne, Inc. family, and their incredible passion and dedication. We have been truly blessed to work with amazing human beings over the years. It’s been a special journey, and I believe the best is yet to come. We are now so fortunate and excited to join True Search to launch their first ever Climate Tech practice. True provides us with the necessary resources to continue our mission and meet the growing needs of the climate technology and sustainability market globally. Bobby and I have viewed True as the gold standard in the executive search industry for years, and we have tremendous respect for the platform built by Brad Stadler and Joe Riggione. I could not imagine a better cultural fit for our team, and I look forward to the next chapter with True. Thank you to Brad, Joe and David R. and the LLR Partners team for the confidence in HTI. Also a BIG thank you to the True team for such a warm welcome! I would also like to thank my family, which is long overdue. Thank you mom, for teaching me that the glass is always half full and for seeing the positive in any situation. Thank you to my children Jessi, Andrew and Sophie, for inspiring me every day and giving me so much joy in life. And thank you to my wife and best friend, Shawn, for going on this incredible ride with me, supporting during challenging times, sacrificing along the way, providing much needed distractions, and of course, building an amazing family. I’m looking forward to many more adventures together! Again, thank you everyone, from the bottom of my heart. I look forward to seeing all of you in person soon as we chart our next course as #TrueClimate. Happy Holidays to all!
https://lnkd.in/gfKy4R-B
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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
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- 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.