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Ivy Xu
Redesigning learning to be curiosity & passion led - Follow me for insights on the future of K12 education - Founder & CEO of Prequel
Professional Background
Ivy Xu is a dynamic and location-independent entrepreneur who has made significant strides in the realm of education, work, and innovative learning methodologies. With a wealth of experience ranging from e-commerce to strategic consulting, Ivy has honed her skills and established herself as a thought leader in the future of work. Currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Prequel, Ivy drives the vision and strategy of the organization, exploring new avenues to reshape the learning experience in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Prior to her role at Prequel, Ivy showcased her entrepreneurial spirit by founding "Break Into Tech," a platform designed to empower aspiring professionals to transition into technology careers. Her experience doesn’t only stem from her own ventures; she was also the co-founder of BETA Camp, a unique program aiming to equip young entrepreneurs with the necessary skills to succeed in their startups. BETA Camp has received recognition for its innovative approach and was successfully acquired, further solidifying Ivy’s reputation as a forward-thinking entrepreneur.
Ivy's professional journey is enriched by her experience in e-commerce, where she served as both an Enterprise Account Executive and as a Manager of Global Merchant Acquisition at Wish. In these roles, she developed strategic partnerships and played a crucial role in driving growth for the company by leveraging her expertise in business management and economics.
Education and Achievements
Ivy's educational background laid a solid foundation for her successful career. She began her journey at Lisgar Collegiate Institute, where she cultivated a passion for learning and leadership. She then pursued a Bachelor of Commerce at the prestigious Smith School of Business at Queen's University, where she gained comprehensive knowledge in business operations, strategy, and economics. Her thirst for knowledge did not stop there, as she further enhanced her understanding of economics by completing a Bachelor's Degree in Business/Managerial Economics at the Warsaw School of Economics, one of Europe’s leading institutions for economic studies.
Throughout her career, Ivy has been deeply committed to education in various forms, whether through her teaching role as a Teaching Assistant at the Smith School of Business or through her entrepreneurial ventures. Her focus on learning and development is mirrored in her endeavors at Prequel and previous ventures.
Achievements
Ivy Xu's career is punctuated with noteworthy achievements that reflect her commitment to innovation and education. With a passion for creating impactful educational opportunities, she effectively transitioned from academic settings to the world of business and entrepreneurship. Organizational dynamism was evident in her startup ventures, and the successful acquisition of BETA Camp serves as a testament to her effective leadership and strategic foresight.
In addition to her entrepreneurial ventures, Ivy has also made significant contributions in consulting roles, including her experience as a Summer Associate at Mercer, where she applied her analytical skills to real-world business challenges. This diverse background not only showcases her versatility but also highlights her capability to navigate the complexities of business, ensuring her teams and organizations thrive in competitive environments.
Ivy Xu’s story is one of continuous growth, innovation, and a steadfast commitment to the future of education and work. As she moves forward, she continues to explore new ideas and frontiers, seeking to inspire and educate others along the way.
Highlights
Last week I had the privilege of sharing a stage with Sylvia Ng, CEO of ReturnBear and previous GM at Shopify and Koru. We gave advice to over 300 teens at Prequel FounderTO.
Here's what we discussed:
- There are many forms of entrepreneurship, it doesn't all look like a unicorn startup. Defining a problem and having the agency to take action on it can happen within a larger company or as a lifestyle business.
Figure out what kind of life you want and then use your career to create and enable that life.
- It's okay if you don't know what you want to do.
Sylvia tried internships in medical MRIs and applied data before landing in e-commerce. She realized she enjoyed solving inefficiencies—the better she got at that, the more responsibility she took on and the more leadership positions opened up.
Take your best hypothesis and go after it and then keep tweaking as you go along.
- Don't set goals based on titles and recognition. Titles and recognition will come if you set goals based on the work you want to do and the impact you want to make.
Picking the right games to play in life is so important - no one ever told us that growing up.
I’ve been fascinated and diving deep into longevity recently. Bryan Johnson is the name to know in longevity.
Just this past week I did a 100 marker blood test, tried out IV drips, red light therapy, and oxygen chamber at a longevity clinic by Mark Hyman, MD and bought Blueprint, the meal supplements - recommended by Bryan Johnson.
Bryan is famous for spending millions each year to not die.
He consumes 111 pills a day
He doesn’t go into the Sun
He got a plasma transfusion of the blood of his 17 year old son (it did not change his age markers so he stopped).
Codie A. Sanchez did an interview with him where she asked why he chose this “crazy” pursuit: to not die?
He said, “I thought of the most competitive game played in history, and this is it. Every soul since inception has attempted to... not die. So I’d like to try to win this most competitive of games.”
Can you imagine taking on the challenge of being immortal?
RESPECT.
Very few people dare to play games they don’t know how to win. The rules are unclear. It is a path not traveled.
It’s people like Bryan Johnson and Elon Musk that shows us what peak ambition looks like.
I am working with an investor who wants to build 20,000 schools to fully replace the public education system. Prequel’s life skills programs will be in each one.
Crazy ambitions and the all in discipline to work on these ideas draw in supporters, talent, investments, and progress.
That’s why figuring out what game you want to play and making it ambitious is the first lesson we teach in all of our programs.
Our students are already pitching shows on Broadway, speaking at world summits, breaking intro their dream industries - doing things everything, including their parents think we’re impossible.
We should all reflect regularly - are the games we are playing to small? How can I find a bigger game to play?
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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.