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Ash Phillips
Founder at Yena 🚀 Angel investor at Ada Ventures 🏦 Advisor to Ecologi, Whalecake (+ others) 🧠
Ash Phillips is the Founder of Yena and an accomplished mentor, speaker, and advisor in the business and tech industry.
Recognized as the Best Mentor/Advisor of the Year at TechSPARK awards in 2017, Ash has a proven track record of guiding and supporting startups.
He has spoken at TEDx events and participated as a panelist on topics related to education and business.
Ash was listed as part of the prestigious Maserati100 and has an extensive background in brand and digital marketing.
His expertise has been acknowledged by publications like Forbes, Sunday Times, and Virgin.
Ash completed his A Levels at Filton College and his GCSE's at Filton High School.
Throughout his career, Ash has been involved in various organizations, including being a former Angel Investor and Investment Scout at Ada Ventures.
He has also served as a Board Advisor at Offset Earth and held positions as a Non-Exec Advisor at Whalecake and Adviser at Vaughan + Company.
Ash has an extensive background in marketing, previously working as the Director of Business Development at Gumption Agency and the Head of Marketing at TEDxBristol.
He also has experience in mentoring and advising startups through his own consultancy and has a rich history of speaking engagements at prestigious events.
Highlights
In case you'd forgotten, Dffrnt by Rebellious Co is our community for the most ambitious & entrepreneurial minds. And it's helping people every day 💪
As one of the leading startup mentors in the UK, I often get asked: "Ash, can I pick your brain?" and while I'd love to say "yes!" every time, it's just not feasible with my workload and the projects we're beavering away on at Rebellious Co (and beyond...).
However, community members get access to me not only once per week for an hour via our Community Office Hours, but ad-hoc throughout, via personalised video answers to your most burning questions ⚡️
Yesterday one of our members used our Community Office Hours session to ask about fundraising for their new startup. In reply, they got what can only be described as a 30-minute personalised workshop giving them advice & homework to get them fit to fundraise (and figure out if they even need to in the first place). Usually, this would only be accessible via 1:1 work with me at a premium, but they got this through yesterday's session instead.
This is on top of regular lessons & sessions from expert guests, weekly check-ins & body doubling, a library of past recordings, a premium course on interpersonal super-skills, deals & offers worth 1,000x your membership, a network of like-minds to connect with, a leaderboard to shoutout the most engaged learners & members, and much, much more.
All for less than your Netflix subscription 🤯
It's proud to see that it's honestly becoming the best investment you can make in yourself as an aspiring business leader. And while we began this mission with entrepreneurs in mind, entrepreneurial leaders of all kinds can benefit from what the community has to offer.
Today we have Simon Alexander Ong on a live webinar at 1 pm talking about his book, coaching, the line between the Science & Spirituality of 'energy' and motivation, among other things, I'm sure.
Join us. Join a class full of those voted "most likely to succeed" in their yearbooks. Join a community of folks who are already making it happen with companies started by members valued at over £100m.
...then, if you want to pick my brain. You'll never need to ask again 😉
I'll see you in there!
Trigger warning: average white dude talking about diversity 😆
Last night I hosted our Bristol edition of Rebel Meetups, something I've loved doing for the 11+ years they've been running ...damn, I feel old.
Along the way I've had a number of comments about diversity at our events and about how good it appears to be. I won't get too deep into talking about invisible diversity here but this also factors in.
However, these comments are often followed by questions about how we've managed to do this and specifically what we're doing [proactively] to ensure that we engage underserved people.
Last night this happened again when when someone asked me: "I've noticed that the last few events have all had female speakers, is that by design?"
Now I'm not putting anyone on blast here. It was a woman who asked the question and in good nature too. But she's not the only one. Someone once asked me "where we get our stock imagery from", seemingly presuming it must have been a staged photograph but it was simply just a picture from one of our events (the photo in question is featured here 👇 which was taken by the legendary Aaron Llewellin and features 4 people including the lovely Elizabeth C.).
The fact that society creates an environment where these become questions in the first place is the more curious dynamic here.
Our speakers, like our audience, happen organically. I won't claim that this wasn't without consideration though, nor that we are blind to it as an organisation or that I am as an individual – I'm not sure we can be. Though for the longest time I didn't give us or myself credit as I felt that what we did was so "normal", that it didn't deserve any extra attention. Wasn't everyone else doing the same?
Turns out, they weren't.
So I wondered: what were we doing differently?! 🤨
From day one, we've baked-in diversity and accessibility to everything we do. It's a default. It factors into our imagery, our language, our colour scheme, our iconography, our venues, our format, our timings – considered down to the difference 30 mins makes – and every other thing we do.
I'm aware it's nigh on impossible to accommodate everyone, especially for us as an organisation with zero paid staff and virtually zero resources, but we do our darnedest to try.
The result?
Our community visibly – and invisibly – leads in most diversity metrics as far as I can tell (sadly I don't have the resources to truly survey this to prove it but anyone who has come to one of our events will attest to this being the case the vast majority of the time and certainly on average over the whole time we've been running).
I don't claim to be an expert on diversity at all. I have my lived experience but I serve others with many different experiences to me. What I do try to be though, is someone who is mindful of humans and all their circumstances. I hope more can do the same to ensure that "why so many women?" and similar questions don't need to be answered any more.
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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.
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