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Conrad Griffin
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley
Conrad Griffin is a highly accomplished investment banker with a rich background in finance and investment. He completed his education studying Russian, Latin, History, and French at Winchester College and later pursued history at the University of Cambridge. Conrad has had a successful career at Morgan Stanley, where he held various positions such as Investment Banking Analyst, Associate, and Vice President of Technology Investment Banking. In addition to this, he has also worked as an Investment Banking intern at Barclays Investment Bank and held the position of Cambridge University Finance and Investment Society President. During his time at Cambridge, Conrad was a campus ambassador for Deutsche Bank and worked as an Asian Equities Analyst intern at Aberdeen Asset Management.
Highlights
Thank you to friends and colleagues who donated to our recent Ukrainian aid mission. Co-pilot Hector Kociak and I just landed back in the UK following our 28 hour drive across Europe and into western Ukraine. We are pleased to report that we handed over ~£19,500 / $25,000 of aid to members of the Kharkiv Aid Office in Lviv (our friend and resistance contact Nadia pictured below). As is tradition, we stopped by the local church where the priest blessed the vehicle before its journey to the front (also pictured).
The Suzuki Rodeo 4x4, Level IV armour plates and vests, Gen 7 CAT tourniquets and medical equipment will go into immediate service with combat medics of the 25th Airborne Brigade currently engaged in heavy fighting in Kreminna (Kupiansk) and in Bakhmut. Ringfenced funds raised from select donors will supply units with 3 recon drones. And the 50kg replacement rear differential will bring another Suzuki back into service after recent damage in action in Bakhmut.
Together with last August’s ambulance mission in support of the besieged city of Kharkiv, I’m proud to say that brings the total aid raised by this network to $45,000. Despite aid from western governments on larger hardware, individual units still struggle with basic medical and protective equipment. The team at Kharkiv Aid Office do a critical and remarkably brave job sourcing and directly supplying items to the units most in need.
If you would like to lead a similar mission as mine, I can put you in contact with the Kharkiv Aid Office. The need remains great.
Godspeed to the drivers as they make final delivery to the frontlines.
Слава україні.
Last weekend I had the privilege of driving an ambulance filled with humanitarian aid directly into western Ukraine.
Thanks to the bravery of my friends Alex Thomas, Ada W. and their charity the Kharkiv and Przemysl Project (KHARPP - KHARPP.com), that ambulance is now in service on the Eastern Front around Kharkiv, and the aid is helping ordinary Ukrainians as they suffer indiscriminate violence at the hands of their neighbour.
The trip was made possible by the immense generosity of friends and, in particular, my colleagues in the Morgan Stanley team here in Menlo Park - their personal donations more than doubled the amount raised to $30,000. It fills me with immense pride to have worked with such a principled group of people for the best part of a decade now.
The money enabled us to buy not just the ambulance that carried nearly 2 tonnes of food and clothing donations from the UK, but also high value medical items in short supply in Europe that I flew directly from the United States in suitcases.
There were too many remarkable moments on the trip to recount, but these few stick in my mind:
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Crossing the border into Ukraine in hula shirts with my co-pilot Oliver Beavers and having a good laugh with the border guards as we joked we were headed for a beach holiday in Crimea
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The incredibly sobering ceremony led by Ukrainian catholic priests to bless the ambulance before its onward journey to the Eastern Front
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Standing in the pouring rain in Lviv town center looking at an exhibition of mangled Russian tanks and artillery pieces captured just a few months before in the desperate Battle of Kyiv
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Witnessing the exhausted faces of hundreds of women and children fleeing the war as we crossed back over the border into Poland with them on foot, and subsequently at the Przemysl train station where Oliver and I volunteered for a few hours carrying bags for arriving refugees
If you’d like to donate, Alex and his team at KHARPP run regular humanitarian supply missions directly to trapped civilians in the frontline towns and villages in the Kharkiv and Donbas regions, as well as organising refugee services at the Polish border. They are doing immensely brave and difficult work.
Google KHARPP for more info (KHARPP.com)
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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:
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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.
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.