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Jason Howard
Founder and Managing Partner - New Catalyst Strategic Partners
Professional Background
Jason Howard is a distinguished investment professional with a robust and varied career in finance, investment banking, and strategic management. As the Founder and Managing Partner of New Catalyst Strategic Partners, he has established himself as a forward-thinking leader in the realm of alternative investments. At New Catalyst, which is proudly majority diverse-owned and independent, Jason is dedicated to providing strategic capital to Next Generation private market firms. His focus is not only on helping these businesses launch and scale but also on transforming them into industry leaders. New Catalyst is known for its broad investment strategy across private markets and boasts a significant long-term partnership with Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest investment firms.
Prior to founding New Catalyst, Jason spent a significant portion of his career at GCM Grosvenor, where he served as a Managing Director and Co-Head of the firm’s Diverse Manager Private Equity practice. Under his stewardship, the practice committed several billion dollars to private equity investments led by historically underrepresented individuals, specifically women and people of color. This initiative underscores his commitment to diversity and inclusion within investment strategies. At GCM Grosvenor, Jason excelled in various roles where he invested in private equity primary funds, co-investment transactions, and managed investments across a variety of strategies, including buyout, growth, special situations, and venture capital.
His role as Managing Director included responsibilities such as sourcing opportunities for new and spin-out funds, overseeing fund manager investments, assessing fund performance, leading co-investment transactions, negotiating economic deals, and advising general partners on growth initiatives. Jason’s ability to work closely with large institutional investors allowed him to invest capital on their behalf while sharing best practices in portfolio construction, particularly for emerging and diverse manager investing.
Early Career Milestones
Jason's illustrious career began at Goldman Sachs, where he gained invaluable experience in the Mergers & Acquisitions division and the Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) group. There, he developed a robust analytical acumen that would serve him well in his future endeavors. His impressive analytical capabilities led him to serve as Manager in the Deal Analysis group at the Walt Disney Film Studio, where he negotiated film investments and structured talent deals, utilizing his financial expertise in the creative industry. Additionally, Jason completed several media-related projects as a consultant for Turner Entertainment, further rounding out his experience in finance and media investment.
Community Involvement
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Jason is deeply committed to giving back to the community. He serves as a member of The Salvation Army’s National Advisory Board and contributes his insights as a member of the Investment Committee at the Orange County Community Foundation. His involvement in these organizations underscores his belief in social responsibility and the importance of contributing to the community, which is crucial in his line of work.
Thought Leadership
As a thought leader in the investment community, Jason has shared his expertise and insights on investing and private equity at prestigious industry events. He has spoken at various conferences, including the Council on Foundations’ Endowments & Finance Summit, ILPA’s Members’ Conference, NCPERS Annual Conference, the NMS Fall Leadership Forum, Pension Bridge’s PE Exclusive, and many others. These platforms provide Jason with the opportunity to voice his perspectives on emerging investment strategies, the importance of diverse manager investing, and best practices for building successful investment portfolios.
Education and Achievements
Jason Howard's educational journey has laid a solid foundation for his remarkable career in finance and investment. He studied at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration with a focus on Finance. His education at Emory University was instrumental in equipping him with the necessary skills to navigate the complex landscape of investment and finance. Additionally, he is a proud alumnus of Frederick Douglass High School and participated in the highly regarded Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) program, which focuses on developing leaders of color.
Notable Achievements
Over the years, Jason has achieved numerous accolades throughout his career, reflecting his impact in the finance and investment sectors. His role as a National Scholar at the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation is noteworthy, recognizing his academic excellence and leadership potential. Furthermore, as a Delegate at the U.S. Senate Youth Program, he gained deeper insights into the intersection of politics and finance, enhancing his understanding of the economic and social challenges facing diverse communities.
Key Contributions
With his extensive background in finance, investment banking, and his commitment to diversity and inclusion, Jason Howard has become a key figure in transforming the landscape of alternative investments. His vision to bridge the gap for Next Generation firms continues to inspire many in the industry, and he remains dedicated to fostering an investment environment that promotes diverse perspectives and innovative strategies.
Through New Catalyst Strategic Partners, Jason not only exemplifies leadership in alternative investments but also champions the cause of equity and inclusion, steering the firm toward a future where diverse voices can thrive and excel.
In summary, Jason Howard stands out as a dynamic and influential investment professional who is shaping the future of alternative investments at New Catalyst Strategic Partners. His contributions to the finance industry and his commitment to diversity make him a noteworthy figure in the investment community, and he continues to play a pivotal role in fostering meaningful change within the sector.
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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.