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Greg Freeman
Executive Technology Leader | Experienced CTO | 2 Successful Exits
Greg Freeman is the Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at Teamworks, a role he holds while based in Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. His professional background includes significant experience in engineering and leadership within the tech industry.
At Teamworks, Freeman is responsible for overseeing engineering initiatives and product development strategies, driving innovation and efficiency within the organization. His expertise contributes to enhancing the company's technological capabilities and product offerings, aligning them with market demands and user needs.24
Freeman is also active on LinkedIn under the username gfreeau, where he shares insights related to leadership and technology.13
Highlights
How Gen AI Helped Me Upgrade My Long-Standing Open Source Project
A year ago, I started working with large language models (LLMs) on a daily basis. One of my open source projects is a Pomodoro app, which I started 12 years ago. This app has been essential to me for time management, helping me create focus blocks and get the most valuable things done, even as an executive.
Here's what happened when I decided to bring it up to speed with the current standards:
A 12-Year-Old Codebase Gets a Second Life:
• My Pomodoro app, a favourite among some Linux distributions, had become quite popular, with contributions from 14 developers and translations into 16 languages (everything from Catalan to Hungarian).
• Built on an obscure JavaScript runtime that predates Node.js, it was in dire need of an update to ES6 standards.
Enter Gen AI:
• Over the past year, I've become quite proficient with various Gen AI tools—OpenAI, Claude, Llama, and even some mini LLMs running on my local machine.
• I thought, why not employ these AI models to refactor my code as a way to understand their real-world applications?
The Process:
• The LLMs provided me with accurate documentation, helping me quickly get back up to speed with the app's event-driven structure.
• They updated the code to use ES6 classes without errors, transitioning from the original prototype inheritance seamlessly.
• Despite some context size limitations with certain models, Amazon Bedrock came to the rescue, allowing me to handle everything in one go.
User Requests and Overcoming Procrastination:
• Addressing long-standing user requests (like auto-starting the timer on login) became a breeze. I was able to take open feature requests, ask the LLM how it would implement them, and it was mostly right.
• One of the surprising benefits of using LLMs was overcoming procrastination. Even if the initial suggestions weren't perfect, they sparked ideas and helped me get into a flow state quicker.
Reflections and Takeaways:
• My programming journey spans 20 years, but even with less hands-on coding in recent years, the LLMs helped me get back on track swiftly. I felt like I didn't miss a beat.
• In recent years, I've been mainly coding in Python and R for data science and analytics to support my executive business cases and make informed decisions. LLMs helped me quickly translate that knowledge into other languages I used more in the past.
• I estimate that my efficiency increased by 30-50% using LLMs.
Final Thoughts:
• I don't feel LLMs will replace engineers; I had to be in control and tweak things. I ran into issues with the context window where I knew the LLM output I was getting was wrong. Coding knowledge was still important. But once I got the setup right, I was able to produce code at a much higher clip than I would have otherwise.
• Every engineering organisation should make these tools available to their teams. There are obvious benefits.
Want to avoid bad AI investments? Start with strategy.
The hype around AI is deafening, and I can't help but think about all the dollars being burned right now to avoid FOMO.
But let's not let FOMO lead us into making impulsive investments. The key to success with AI lies in strategic adoption.
It starts at the top. Company leadership must define a clear AI strategy that directly supports broader business goals. Once you have that, you can identify where you want to play on the AI field such as:
• Employees Powered Up by Copilots: Tools that increase efficiency and improve decision-making. Example 1: Making sales and support more efficient by serving up technical product answers on the fly without needing to involve tech or sales engineers. Example 2: Engineers using coding co-pilots. Example 3: Meeting summaries and notes.
• AI-Fueled Insights: Harnessing AI's power to analyse data for deeper business understanding driving business analytics. This has been around for a long time, but it's now much more efficient, cheaper, and accessible due to the availability of LLMs. You can gain insights with minimal training, delay, and without needing extensive machine learning expertise on staff. Example: Customer sentiment analysis on large amounts of reviews, surveys, or other unstructured data you have as often as you like, whereas before these insights were stale or costly.
• AI-Powered Products: Creating products or enhancements with AI at their core – but avoid building just for the sake of it. Ensure a real market need exists.
Pitfall: It's easy to fall into the trap of "build it and they will come". Remember, AI-powered products need careful planning and should be subject to the same (or more) rigorous customer discovery process as any product release. Contingencies you need to account for include graceful degradation if the model is unavailable or changes due to upgrades or retirement, the output changes, data sovereignty guarantees, and the pricing you can absorb. It's also critical to log all model input and responses for debugging as needed. All of these things need to be considered on your roadmap, often you need multiple models available as backups, and these all require testing.
Recommendation: For most companies, focusing on employee-focused copilot tools is a great starting point, provided it aligns with your strategy. Is your customer support team struggling with efficiency? A co-pilot solution can help achieve clear goals in that area. Next, prioritise an AI insights initiative – identify one impactful area of your business where insights can unlock tangible results. Leave AI-powered product initiatives until you've thoroughly validated customer needs and the unique value you can provide. Validate early product ideas in AI playgrounds to avoid costs.
Focus is essential. Pick the area that best aligns with your strategy (you have one right?) and gain momentum with tangible results.
#leadership #techleaders #AI #strategy
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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
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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.