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Craig Elias
Entrepreneur-in-Residence - Sales Expert - Startup Mentor - Pitch Coach - Ecosystem Builder - 10,000+ Unsolicited Endorsements for Entrepreneurship, Sales & Marketing
Professional Background
Craig Elias is a distinguished entrepreneur and sales expert who has made a significant mark in the world of business and education. Recognized as LinkedIn user 3,956 among over 800 million users, Craig is celebrated not just for his accomplishments but also for his approach to startup advisory and education. His entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of remarkable, highlighted by the groundbreaking creation of Trigger Event Selling™, a sales methodology that has transformed how startups engage with potential clients. With a plethora of accolades to his name, including having helped startups win two different $100,000 pitch competitions within a single day, Craig’s expertise in lead generation and sales strategy stands unparalleled.
Craig's initial foray into entrepreneurship led him to establish a startup that quickly garnered attention by winning a $1,000,000 prize in a global pitch idea competition. This venture was not only recognized as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America by Dow Jones but also succeeded in securing funding from a reputable Tier 1 US-based Venture Capitalist within just 24 months of launch. This remarkable journey showcases his strategic insights and ability to leverage timing effectively in the sales realm.
Education and Achievements
Craig’s academic background is equally impressive and supports his professional endeavors. He studied at various esteemed institutions including Mayfield Secondary, Sir John A MacDonald, and the DeVry Institute of Technology. His educational portfolio is further enhanced by an Executive MBA in Technology Commercialization & New Venture Creation from The University of Calgary, as well as a B.A. in Business and Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario, and studies in Business Administration and Computer Science at York University. This rich educational foundation has equipped Craig with a robust understanding of the intersection between technology and business, amplifying his capabilities as an entrepreneur and mentor.
Throughout his career, Craig has been involved in a multitude of organizations, showcasing his commitment to fostering entrepreneurial growth. His role as Entrepreneur in Residence at Bow Valley College in Calgary stands out, where he not only mentors budding entrepreneurs but also facilitates initiatives like Calgary’s Innovation Rodeo and various student-focused pitch competitions like VentureQuest, 150Startups, and INVENTURE$ Student Track. His efforts have significantly contributed to the entrepreneurial landscape of Alberta, with over $100,000 awarded annually to help students launch their ventures.
In addition to his role at Bow Valley College, Craig's contributions extend to his involvement as a Startup Mentor for the Alchemist Accelerator, an advisory board member for the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, and as a National Growth Advisor for Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Business Program. His diverse experiences have enriched his understanding of entrepreneurship and enabled him to influence and guide countless startups towards success. His expertise in sales has led him to receive recognition from LinkedIn, being named Canada’s #1 B2B Sales Expert in both 2018 and 2019, ranking #15 globally.
Achievements
Craig Elias’ list of achievements is extensive and demonstrates his commitment to excellence in entrepreneurship and education. Notably, he has received the prestigious Gold Award of Excellence in Entrepreneurship from the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics. This prestigious acclaim highlights his dedication to fostering entrepreneurial spirit among students and young professionals. Craig has also had the honor of being a guest writer for the Globe and Mail and has taught entrepreneurship at the Haskayne School of Business, further contributing to the academic community.
Drawing from his extensive experience, Craig has become a sought-after speaker, advisor, and mentor, tirelessly working to uplift the entrepreneurial community. Through his initiatives like MVP Mondays, Tech Sales Tuesdays, and Founder Fridays, he continues to nurture a collaborative environment where entrepreneurs can learn, innovate, and grow together.
Craig’s approach to sales—analyzing patterns and uncovering opportunities through Trigger Event Selling™—has reshaped the way many individuals and organizations approach lead generation, making him a key figure in contemporary sales strategies. His invaluable contributions and achievements in the entrepreneurship landscape have established him not only as an expert but also as a passionate advocate for innovation and education.
Achievements
- Winner of $1,000,000 prize in a global pitch idea competition
- Named one of the 50 most promising companies in North America by Dow Jones
- Creator of Trigger Event Selling™
- Recipient of Gold Award of Excellence in Entrepreneurship
- Over 10,000 unsolicited endorsements for entrepre
Highlights
Shameless Self-Promotion Alert. ...
For the last seven years, I've had the pleasure of working with Brandy Old to help more people become first-time entrepreneurs, and for the last four years, we’ve had the benefit of working with David Bland to help them de-risk their businesses.
We use David’s business idea-testing methods in a number of our initiatives, including our twice-a-month MVP Mondays sessions with Adam Berk and Wendy Muise.
Two weeks ago, David flew up from Sacrament to do a session at INVENTURE$ for Brandy and me on testing business ideas, and we finally got to meet in person.
The room was packed - standing room only packed - and David led a fantastic session as we gave away our fifth batch of 100 copies of David's Testing Business Ideas book to participants.
During our time together, Brandy and I have brought outside expertise into the Alberta ecosystem or shared our expertise with it.
Last week, we had the chance to share our expertise outside the Alberta ecosystem.
The two of us were interviewed about our tech ecosystem and startup community-building activities (MVP Mondays, Founder Fridays, 150 Startups, Startup Bootcamp) on David Bland’s podcast and today, the recording of that podcast was released.
You can listen to that podcast here - https://lnkd.in/dYe5fDZf
Stay tuned as we find other ways to bring exposure of the great things happening in Alberta’s tech sector to other places and spaces. Sha
Congratulations to the top 12 … Here are the top 12 chosen to compete in the student pitch competition, which is part of the aspiring entrepreneur track (https://lnkd.in/g8Bai3zu) at this year’s Inventures 2024.
The aspiring entrepreneur track is next Wednesday (May 29th) and Thursday (May 30th) in Hall D of the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre. - Aryan Panchal from the University of Calgary - Casey M. from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) - Chris Small from NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) - Danielle Wintrip from Lethbridge College - David Kebede from the University of Calgary - Dawn Osland Consulting from NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) - Jenna Letain from The University of Lethbridge - Juan Felipe Rivera Cortes from Bow Valley College - Nicole Sun from Westmount Charter School Society School - Sandra Taskovic from the University of Alberta - Styn Nieuwenhuis from Olds College of Agriculture & Technology - Sujit Velmurugan from MacEwan University
A special thanks to the judges of this year's student pitch competition Dania Moazzam, CFA, Devon Wannop, CPA, CA, Heather Herring, Joanne Fedeyko, John Albright, Kara Johnston, Kate Farthing, Manpreet Deol, Mike Hrabowiecky, Saif Hashmi, Stephan Zuberec, and Tina Mathas.
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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.