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Jeffrey Goldsmith
Marketing Executive with a track record of delivering results. What can I do for you?
Professional Background
Jeffrey Goldsmith is a seasoned fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) with a remarkable ability to provide innovative ideas and operational support to startups. He has a knack for enabling founders, marketers, and sales teams to execute their strategies effectively. With a career spanning several decades, Jeffrey has cultivated extensive experience across various industries, including technology, advertising, and digital marketing. His journey has taken him from New York City to high-profile positions in prominent organizations across the globe.
Initially, Jeffrey began his career in the bustling advertising scene of New York City while pursuing his studies in philosophy and art history at New York University (NYU). His academic background has enriched his creative approach to marketing, allowing him to deeply understand the art of storytelling and brand building.
After his adventure in the advertising world, Jeffrey embarked on a remarkable journey across the globe. He lived in Mexico, Japan (twice), and France—experiences that not only broadened his horizons but also shaped his perspective on marketing in diverse cultural contexts. Landing a copywriting position in Japan at the age of 24 with nothing but a single headline, he quickly made a name for himself in the industry.
Upon returning to New York City at 28, Jeffrey began a journalism career that would see him interview notable figures including the iconic Allen Ginsberg for Details Magazine in 1992. His notable contributions to publications such as Wired include fascinating features, like “The Last Human Grandmaster,” focused on artificial intelligence and chess, and the much-quoted piece “This Is Your Brain on Tetris,” which coined the term, “The Tetris Effect.” This ability to combine analytical thought with creative flair has been a hallmark of his career.
In 1996, Jeffrey pivoted towards working with startups and digital agencies in San Francisco, where he gained invaluable experience at prestigious firms such as Modem Media, Organic, Razorfish, and Carat. Collaborating with major brands like Hilton, Starbucks, Intel, Wells Fargo, and Visa, he honed his expertise in advertising strategy and brand development. His advertising career culminated in a consulting role with Wolff Olins, one of the top branding firms, where he played a pivotal role in rebranding industry giants such as Sun, PwC, GE Healthcare, and Blue Shield of California.
Jeffrey's venture into the startup ecosystem began with a small natural language processing team working on chatbots called Neuromedia, which was ahead of its time in the early days of AI. He later joined BigVine, a startup that collaborated with high-profile partners like AMEX and LVMH, to execute the successful “Win A Dream Office” promotional campaign. Through these experiences, Jeffrey developed a strong foundation in branding and marketing strategies that foster awareness and engagement.
Throughout his career, Jeffrey has consulted for numerous startups, showcasing his diverse skills in marketing, branding, and product strategy. His work with companies such as Gear6, Skytree, and Greenplum, which was acquired by EMC, has highlighted his ability to drive results and enhance brand visibility. His consulting practice also extended to Japanese startups and corporates, where he provided marketing strategies tailored to their unique cultural contexts, including branding for Monozukuri Ventures and event strategy for Mui.
Jeffrey's first official head of marketing role was at Sauce Labs, where he significantly improved lead generation through innovative digital advertising campaigns and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. He also established the first-ever Selenium conference, showcasing his commitment to community building within the tech industry.
At Catalog Spree, Jeffrey contributed to launching a two-sided catalog market that connected high-end retailers with consumers. This initiative not only garnered attention from major media outlets, including appearances on The Ellen Show and features in Time Magazine and Mashable, but also emphasized sustainability in retail.
As the VP of Marketing at Revolve Robotics, Jeffrey focused on enhancing lead generation and public relations, successfully elevating the company's presence in the telehealth and distance learning segments through strategic event planning and advertisements.
Jeffrey also led impactful marketing initiatives at Chooch AI, steering the company from pre-seed to an established technology brand, culminating in the successful organization of the Infinite Vision Summit. His contributions at CompScience included launching awareness campaigns that positioned the startup as the #1 insurtech company at ITC Vegas, further solidifying his expertise in the startup environment.
In his recent role at Emtrain, his marketing efforts generated record-breaking lead acquisition figures, marking the most successful quarter in the company's 20-year history. Jeffrey's dedication and innovative mindset continue to empower companies to achieve their goals and reach new audiences.
Education and Achievements
Jeffrey Goldsmith holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Philosophy from New York University (NYU). His academic pursuits laid a solid foundation for his understanding of aesthetics and critical thinking, which he later applied to his dynamic career in advertising, marketing, and journalism.
Over the years, Jeffrey has amassed a series of notable achievements, including generating significant buzz for various campaigns and products through creative marketing strategies. His articles in publications like Wired have contributed to dialogues around technology and marketing, and his participation in important industry events, including organizing major conferences, has made him a respected thought leader in his field.
Achievements
- Interviewing Allen Ginsberg - Jeffrey made waves in journalism by interviewing the iconic poet for Details Magazine, a reflection of his ability to connect with influential figures in and out of the marketing world.
- Pioneering Ideas - His article “This Is Your Brain on Tetris” not only coined the term “Tetris Effect” but also sparked discussions about the psychological impacts of gaming—an intersection between technology and cognitive science.
- Successful Campaigns - Throughout his career, he has led brand awareness campaigns that achieved significant media coverage and public recognition, including campaigns that reached audiences through platforms like Time Magazine and The Ellen Show.
- Startups and Consulting - His work with startups and tech companies, ranging from early-stage to established firms, has consistently generated remarkable lead flow and market visibility.
- Leadership in Marketing - As a former VP of Marketing for multiple organizations, Jeffrey has demonstrated an exceptional capacity to lead teams towards achieving ambitious marketing objectives, setting benchmarks in performance and innovation.
Through his diverse experiences, educational background, and relentless pursuit of excellence in marketing, Jeffrey Goldsmith has left an indelible mark on the tech and advertising industries. As a fractional CMO, he continues to elevate the marketing strategies of startups, ensuring they are poised for success in an ever-evolving landscape.
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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.