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Brent Vartan
Managing Partner at Bullish Inc.
Brent Vartan is the Managing Partner at Bullish Inc., a firm known for its innovative approach to brand investment and marketing. Established in 2015, Bullish combines financial investment with strategic and creative services to support early-stage brands, challenging the traditional ad agency model by acting as both an investor and a consultant.12
Background and Experience
Before joining Bullish, Vartan held significant positions at Consigliere Brand Capital, LLC, and Deutsch, where he honed his expertise in brand strategy and marketing. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from a university between 1994 and 1998.4
Role at Bullish
At Bullish, Vartan focuses on investing in early-stage companies, typically providing between $500,000 to $3 million to brands that demonstrate remarkable potential. The firm emphasizes a culture-centric approach to branding and advertising, aiming to identify groundbreaking ideas before they become mainstream.5 Under his leadership, Bullish has gained recognition as a forward-thinking agency that values creativity alongside capital investment.12
Public Engagement
Vartan is also active in public discussions about branding and marketing strategies. He recently appeared on the "Any Insights Yet?" podcast, where he shared insights into the evolving landscape of brand investment and the unique positioning of Bullish in the market.1
For more professional updates, Vartan maintains a presence on LinkedIn, where he engages with a network of over 500 connections.3
Highlights
“We’re still experimenting to find who our ICP is.” If you’ve ever said this out loud, your brand is probably spending too much money with the Zucksters and/or the Googlie-Booglies.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve shared some of our best practices for how founders can release CAC-killing Creativity from a recent webinar titled “Living that Low-CAC Life” that we put on for our portfolio companies at Bullish.
Here is the third and final part…
Part 3: Be your most creative with the people who matter most
Sounds cool Brent - where does that work begin? I’m so glad you asked!
Cultivate First-Party Data: Never let a medium or merchant stand between you and your hard-earned or should-be customers. Know who they are and what they want (not just need). And don’t limit “Data” to things that are quantitative by hiding behind databases, surveys and screens. Get outside and into their lives. Have a conversation with the people you want to engage. Be human. When you do that, the creativity will come rushing forward.
Identify Your Pioneers: Not Innovators, not Early Adopters. Pioneers: real people who love your brand that other people turn to for their genuine opinion - 15% of a population. (FULL DISCLOSURE: "Pioneers" are a cohort that we have been developing and activating for years at Bullish.) In a world where there is no shortage of choice, people turn to other people to cut through the clutter. Once you know who your Pioneers are, find creative ways to activate them on your behalf and you'll unlock a growth hack that creates "virality loops" wherever you sit in consumer goods and services.
Surprise and Delight: People talk about things, for better or worse, when there is an incongruity between an experience and an expectation. Be unexpected. (SIDENOTE: If you are asking your team to “make the brand go viral” you should keep that front of mind when they show you something really “unexpected”). Getting creative about how you can subvert the norms in your category, or in how you do something generous for a customer - either can pay dividends in both the short and long term (doing both will make it rain).
Every company started as an idea - they aren’t math problems. You need to keep making leaps of faith that feel remarkable in the eyes of the people you aim to engage - if you want to bend the growth curve up:
- Make creativity a team sport
- Don’t limit your creativity just to advertising
- Be more creative in customer service and surprise people
It’s not easy. But, if you do it well it will make managing CAC a lot less difficult.
We hope you and yours found something in this little three-part series helpful. As always, all feedback is welcome. If you are interested in hearing and/or doing any of this, we hope you reach out. You can catch up on the previous parts in the comments.
In the meantime, be bullish! (It’s more fun)
#CAC #Creativity #Advertising #brand #brandbuilding #bebullish #DTC #CPG #Ecommerce
If CAC is still keeping you up at night, try dreaming bigger than ads.
Last week, we laid out some thoughts on how founders need to create the conditions for creativity to flourish at their organizations, if they want more CAC-killing creative to come out of their teams. People seemed to like it. So, we are going to keep going.
Here’s what we discussed during part two of our recent Bullish founder webinar “Living That Low-CAC Life.”
Part 2: Make creativity the expectation for all you DO as a brand.
Okay, what does that mean?
Ignore Your Competitors: Thinking about your fellow early-stage competitors is a time suck and an ideation trap. You’ll end up defaulting to “best practices” followed by your competitors, even if it’s subconscious. The best inspiration for creativity is just outside your category.
Product, Partners, Promos: These are things your brand can DO to earn attention and revenue. 1. Speed up your innovation - get customers to try a new product that is designed to solve a new need. 2. Find like-minded brands in your customer’s life and create 1+1 = 3 partnerships where you both win. 3. Come up with a “Cultural LTO” - a limited-time offer tied into culture - that’s so creative in it’s insight that people want to talk about it.
Track the Brand: I will hazard a guess that ~95% of brands that have less than $150M in revenue don’t have a way to understand the awareness, attitudes, and usage around their brand outside of something sold to them through some Performance Marketing channel (if that). And, that thing is not good. What do you think people - Consumers or Acquirers - are really buying? You have to have a system in place to monitor the creation of brand value and everyone needs to care about that.
If you create the conditions for creativity, if you make creativity an expectation for all you DO at your organization, CAC-slaughtering creativity will follow.
Let me know if you agree or disagree - I am more than happy to debate it.
Based on the assumption that you find this at least a little useful, Part 3 of this is coming next week where we talk about placing your bets with your MOST valuable Customers. You can catch up on Part 1 below. #CAC #Creativity #Advertising #brand #brandbuilding #bebullish #DTC #CPG #Ecommerce
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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
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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.
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