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Ben Goldhaber 🔜 gamescom
Sr Director, Marketing at Forge | Founding Team, Twitch | GTM Expert in Gaming, Esports, Streaming
Ben Goldhaber is a prominent figure in the gaming and esports industry, known for his roles at Twitch and his current position as a marketing leader at Forge.
As part of the founding team at Twitch, Ben played key roles in marketing and partnerships, contributing to the platform's significant growth to over 100 million monthly active users.
He later ventured into founding Juked, an esports startup that successfully raised $2.5M from industry leaders, showcasing his entrepreneurial spirit.
Currently, Ben leads marketing efforts at Forge, a platform focused on helping games connect with and cultivate a dedicated fanbase.
With a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Ben possesses a strong educational background.
Throughout his career, Ben has held various significant positions, including Senior Director of Marketing at Forge, Advisor at Gankster, and Co-Founder & CEO at Juked, demonstrating his versatile skill set.
His experience also includes roles at Twitch, where he served as Director of Content Marketing, Senior Manager of Partnerships, Leagues & Events, and Gaming Outreach Manager as part of the founding team.
Ben's diverse professional journey has seen him involved in business development, marketing, and partnerships across multiple organizations within the gaming and tech sectors, highlighting his expertise in these areas.
An accomplished marketing leader, Ben excels in developing top-notch go-to-market strategies, creating compelling content, and establishing fruitful partnerships within the gaming industry.
His experience extends to roles such as Gaming Outreach Coordinator at Justin.tv, Business Development Intern at Adura Technologies, Inc., and VP of Communications at Santa Cruz Energy & Resources Collaborative, emphasizing his broad skill set and adaptability.
Ben Goldhaber's rich background includes his involvement as a Commentator and Marketing Lead at Quake Live TV, showcasing his passion for gaming and the esports community.
Overall, Ben Goldhaber is a dynamic professional with a wealth of experience in marketing, partnerships, and content strategy, making him a valuable asset in the gaming and esports landscape.
Highlights
I'm tired of the industry insiders and consultants constantly doomsaying against #esports without any mention of how to fix our problems or the path forward for our industry.
Unsurprisingly, Riot Games (s/o John Needham) has stepped in to fill this void with a direct and transparent take on why esports matters to Riot, where we're at today, how we got here, and their vision for how to fix issues of sustainability particularly in the teams ecosystem.
My takeaways/interpretation:
◉ Franchise fees and a frothy VC market led to overinvestment, inflating valuations and player salaries unsustainably ◉ League franchise revenue sharing hasn't grown as quickly as expected ◉ The economic downturn means no more free money, and the team ecosystem is struggling to stay solvent ◉ However, esports viewership and fandom is still massive - maybe not as big as we had hoped, but in the hundreds of millions ◉ Furthermore, this is a difficult demographic to reach and Riot has proven 5-7x ROI to sponsors like Louis Vuitton and Coke. Ads work. ◉ Still, the model is different to traditional sports where broadcast rights are the major revenue source, so esports needs to be more creative and nimble in generating additional models ◉ 40% of Riot's esports viewership comes from Riot owned portals (ie lolesports.com) and will build even further tools/functionality on these portals, meaning Riot owns a direct relationship with their consumers (unlike traditional sports or previous esports models) ◉ This can be used to upsell esports viewers directly into in-game monetization which can be attributed, and shared, with esports partners ie teams. ◉ Much more to come re: digital goods, including Virtual Live Event Experience -- this is the big juicy news from this blog post. Very cool.
I strongly believe this is the correct path forward for Riot’s ecosystem and for making teams sustainable. We’ve seen time and time again that esports monetization (i.e. Dota 2’s Compendium) sells like gangbusters, and as far as I’m concerned, the more of this kind of thing, the better, and I believe in John/Riot’s vision for how to get there.
But as somewhat that’s worked in the startup space (including Twitch) for the past 12 years, I still have a lingering concern: what about the rest of the ecosystem? What is Riot doing to support the startups, the independent tournament organizers, products and apps built around esports and competition? For esports to truly thrive and be sustainable long term, their needs to be a thriving, independent 3rd party ecosystem, and as excited as I am for Riot’s Watch product to launch, I’m also terribly concerned about the apps and services that have been built around live streaming this past decade.
Regardless, I have to give it to Riot again for their vision and approach to making esports a key part of their games strategy, and now taking more ownership over the health of the esports ecosystem. I wish them the best of luck.
Gimme your takes below!
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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.
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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.
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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.