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Fan Bi
Buying $5-30M eCom/DTC/CPG brands
Fan Bi is the CEO and co-founder of The Hedgehog Company, an e-commerce holding company that acquires direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands with revenues between $5 million and $15 million.178 The Hedgehog Company focuses on buying smaller brands with brand equity to increase efficiency through a shared services model.3 He has been in the DTC e-commerce space for over 13 years.5
Bi's LinkedIn username is fanbi.9 According to his LinkedIn profile, he is interested in buying and advising $5-50M DTC brands in special situations.4
Additional points about Fan Bi:
- Entrepreneurial ventures He is the founder and non-executive chairman of Blank Label, a custom menswear brand established in 2009.15
- Education He studied business administration and management at Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts, after earning a finance degree from the University of New South Wales.5
- Past roles Prior to his current roles, Bi was the Founder and Executive Director of MOTM (Meeting of the Minds), Chairperson at Blank Label, an Associate at Macquarie Bank, and an Assistant Tax Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.9
- Recognition He was included in Inc's 30 Under 30 list.9
- Acquisition focus The Hedgehog Company functions as an "off ramp" for brands, acquiring those too small for strategic acquisitions but not profitable enough for financial sponsors.13 They target brands with revenues typically ranging from $3 million to $15 million.1 Some of the brands that The Hedgehog Company has acquired include Rockets of Awesome, Felix Gray, The Reset, and Baboon to the Moon.1
- Investment strategy As an angel investor, Fan Bi invests in consumer brands and looks for ways to create revenue streams that are not entirely ad-driven.26
Highlights
In 2019, more than 90% of American men said they never wear makeup.
By 2024: 75%.
68% of Gen Z men used facial skincare in 2024, up from 42% two years earlier. Sephora's tinted moisturizer sales for men up 65% in a single year.
And there's still no dominant men's makeup brand.
The same Gen Z man optimising sleep with an Oura Ring, nutrition with AG1, and recovery with HYROX is now optimising his appearance.
Concealer isn't vanity. It's looking rested in the 8am Zoom call. Tinted moisturizer isn't self-expression. It's looking like the best version of yourself on camera.
The framing shifted from beauty to self-improvement. And, that changed everything.
TikTok did the distribution work. Looksmaxxing, systematically maximizing your physical appearance, migrated from niche internet forums to mainstream Gen Z culture. Biohacking, applied to how you look.
The K-beauty precedent tells you where this goes. South Korea ran this adoption curve a decade ago. BTS normalised grooming and subtle makeup across Asia. Today Asia is 38.6% of the global men's makeup market.
The US is following the same curve, just 10 years behind.
US men's grooming: $7.1B. Men's makeup globally: $1.8B in 2025, projected $4.2B by 2034. Nearly 10% annual growth.
One professor put it plainly: "Men's beauty is one of the last categories left where brands can see easy double-digit growth simply by showing up."
The whitespace is obvious.
Nobody has built the Dollar Shave Club of men's makeup. Nobody has built the Hims of complexion. A DTC-first brand with performance positioning built for how Gen Z actually shops.
Once a man is already moisturising, exfoliating, and wearing SPF, concealer doesn't feel like crossing a line. It feels like the next logical step.
The category has been unlocked. Who builds the $1B brand?
You've seen the nasal strips.
On NFL quarterbacks during the Super Bowl. On TikTok mouth-taping videos. In Huberman's sleep protocol. On James Nestor's viral Breath content.
But how big a business is it actually?
Bigger than almost anyone realises.
Breathe Right just sold for $1 billion.
$200M in revenue. $95M in EBITDA.
How does a plastic strip achieve pharmaceutical-level margins?
It's been the only brand anyone asks for since 1994.
The same way they ask for a Band-Aid. The same way they ask for Scotch tape.
Breathe Right launched as a snoring product. Sat quietly in the CVS nasal care aisle for three decades.
Then the internet rediscovered nasal breathing.
James Nestor's Breath sold millions of copies. Huberman dedicated multiple episodes to nasal breathing and sleep quality. Mouth taping went viral on TikTok. "Better breathing = better sleep = better everything" became one of the most discussed wellness topics of the last three years.
Prestige Consumer Healthcare paid $1.045 billion. 11x EBITDA. Their largest acquisition ever.
In a world chasing the next AI-integrated wearable, one of the biggest wins of 2026 came from a piece of plastic and some medical-grade adhesive.
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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 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.
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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.