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David Barlev
Founder & CEO of Goji Labs | Helping Companies Launch & Scale | Product Strategy Expert | Angel Investor
David Barlev is the Founder and CEO of Goji Labs, a boutique software consultancy that aids startups in launching and expanding their businesses. He is passionate about collaborating with dedicated founders to comprehend their vision and develop exceptional applications while prioritizing risk management. Originally from Tel-Aviv, David relocated to Palo Alto in his teens and holds a B.S. in Applied Physics and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Davis. With experience at General Motors R&D, MyHeritage, and a strong educational background, David co-founded Goji Labs in Los Angeles and currently resides in downtown LA where he enjoys traveling, cooking, and rock climbing.
David's educational journey includes pursuing M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Davis, studying Computer Science at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and obtaining a B.Sc. in Applied Physics from the University of California, Davis. His professional background encompasses roles such as CEO at Goji Labs, Frontend Engineer, and Product Manager at RemitRight, Software Engineer and Test Engineer at MyHeritage, Research Analyst at General Motors, and Graduate Researcher at UC Davis. David has also interned at Nanogram Corporation and YottaMark.
Highlights
Your assumptions are a significant risk to your startup. Whether you’re a seasoned tech vet or a first-time founder, blindspots can kill otherwise great product ideas. Here's how we counter this risk:
💡 The Lean Startup Approach
- Validate assumptions with research and data
You’re building your product to solve a problem. But what if your solution isn’t helpful for others with the same issue, or your pain points don’t match theirs?
We all suffer from confirmation bias, so it’s critical to validate your assumptions about the landscape, best solution for the problem, and target market before investing resources in developing anything.
- Invest in strategy
Once you’ve validated your hypothesis, use the data you’ve gathered to inform your product strategy.
Identify goals, KPIs, and metrics to track progress and success.
Distill the highest-impact points of your value prop into a feature matrix, map out user journeys, and create a roadmap for developing your MVP.
And prioritize high-quality development of the most critical features for your users. The ones that resonate most with your audience will generate the most engagement and traction.
- Design, develop, and launch a high-quality MVP
An MVP isn’t about perfection or solving every facet of the problem. It’s about putting your best foot forward—building a simple yet effective solution. One that gains enough traction for you to glean insights for iteration as you search for product market fit.
With it, you can start answering questions like:
➡ Am I headed in the right direction? ➡ What do my users want next? ➡ How much is it worth it to people to solve this problem?
- Stay humble
Once you’ve launched your MVP, don’t take your finger off the pulse. Based on the goals and KPIs you chose, set up analytics to track user behavior success. If it’s unexpected, drill deeper into those signals. Listen to what users are telling you through their actions.
You’re on the right track if you’re seeing high conversion rates and NPS scores + low abandonment rates and time-to-task. But if not, seek detailed user feedback—and stay humble and agile; many successful companies originated from pivots.
- Allocate resources wisely
When you’re starting to build a product, your main goal is to use the initial resources you have to properly validate your concept validation to secure more capital and help find product-market fit.
These resources are precious, so staying lean and investing only in high-impact initiatives is critical. Prioritize:
➡ Intuitive experience > aesthetics ➡ Development best practices > quick but shoddy programming ➡ Creating an ‘a-ha!’ moment > high feature density
This approach will extend your runway and show investors you’re strategic and fiscally responsible.
There’s a lot more to say on this topic, but these are some of the principles that guide our product development clients.
What would you add to this list?
#productmanagement #productdevelopment #mvp
Fundraising should not be your key objective when starting a tech company.
It should be concept validation.
While fundraising is ultimately necessary for growth, concept validation is the way to get there.
…Why?
Because the proven value of your product to users is a critical deciding factor for investors.
Even if it's small, an engaged customer base is way more compelling than a theoretical go-to-market strategy or TAM slide in your pitch deck.
➡️ So, here’s what to prioritize in early-stage development (for users + funding):
- Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP):
Your MVP should be the simplest version of your product that still showcases its core functionalities and addresses your users' pain points.
Gaining traction with your MVP not only proves the concept to you and future investors—it allows you to gather real feedback and iterate quickly.
It’s the fastest and cheapest way to answer the question: “Should I invest more resources in this direction?”
- A User Feedback Loop:
Talk regularly with early users and collect their feedback. Learn more about them, their issues with your MVP, and what they want next.
With this data, you can make better-informed product decisions and demonstrate user engagement (and commitment), both vital for investor confidence.
- Rapid Iteration:
The faster you can make improvements, the better. So, aim for short development cycles to iterate quickly.
Being nimble and releasing updates often will keep your users engaged and help you stay ahead of competitors who may also be looking for funding.
(Remember—if you’re building it, it means somewhere out there, someone has already started doing the same thing.)
- Clear Metrics and KPIs:
Define clear metrics to track progress. Define a North Star metric and consistently check whether everyone on your team is working towards it.
Whether you’re tracking acquisition, retention, or engagement, measurable goals will help you stay focused—and tangible KPIs will demonstrate the product’s potential to investors.
- Customer Support:
Early users are often forgiving—willing to provide valuable insights if they feel heard. So, prioritize customer support to establish trust with your users.
Check-in with them often and show them you care by responding to their requests.
Happy early adopters will become your product's superfans and serve as critical proof points to investors.
...
Leveraging these principles will increase your chances of taking your product from a scrappy beta version to a full-fledged, funded venture.
Neglecting them will make finding product-market fit difficult, limiting fundraising opportunities and wasting resources on a product users don't actually want.
We’ve seen it time and again at Goji Labs, as we’ve helped founders launch startups and get to their first raise.
I’m curious, though—what would you add to this list?
#startup #founders #productdevelopment
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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.