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Joachim Van Erps
Strategic GTM | #1 European Commercial Hire at Aurora Solar & Miro
Professional Background
Joachim Van Erps is a proven strategic go-to-market (GTM) driver with extensive experience in the energy, production, and SaaS sectors. He has established himself as the first European Commercial hire for both Aurora Solar and Miro, with a keen focus on the DACH region. Joachim's career is marked by a passionate commitment to driving growth, helping organizations achieve their sustainability goals, and enhancing operational scales.
In his role at Aurora Solar, which he joined as Sales FTE #1 in EMEA in May 2023, Joachim has played a crucial role in steering the company's European go-to-market efforts. Collaborating with top-tier clients, he has effectively utilized the innovative SaaS solar platform to amplify solar energy initiatives, making significant contributions towards the overarching mission of creating a sustainable solar future for everyone.
Prior to his impactful presence at Aurora Solar, Joachim joined Miro as its first European Commercial hire in May 2021. During his tenure there, he achieved remarkable success by adding over $1.6 million in net new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in less than a year, which led to his promotion to Enterprise Account Executive. His strategic partnerships included accounts with workforce sizes from 1,000 to 10,000 employees, and even encompassed influential companies with over 10,000 employees, facilitating a doubling of Miro’s customer base and enhancing the company's engagement in the EMEA market.
Joachim's journey into sales began with Demodesk, a startup he joined as the first sales hire. He successfully developed the sales function over a span of 17 months, leading the company towards two significant financing rounds—Seed and Series A—while expanding the team to 40 members. His innovative sales strategies and playbooks were pivotal in transitioning Demodesk from a startup phase to achieving seven-digit ARR growth.
His early career at DataGuard, where he commenced in a Sales Development Representative (SDR) role, equipped Joachim with solid SaaS sales acumen. This foundation has proven invaluable in his subsequent roles and achievements.
Education and Achievements
Joachim's educational background lays a strong foundation for his impressive career. He studied Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zürich, which provided him with a technical perspective on product innovations. Further, his studies in Management & Technology at the Technical University of Munich helped him develop essential leadership and strategic skills that are integral to driving business growth. As a Startup School Graduate in 2019 at Y Combinator, he gained entrepreneurial insights that would later enrich his approach to sales and market development. Obtaining a Baccalaureatus Europaeus in Mathematics and Physics from the European School Brussels III represents his robust analytical and problem-solving abilities.
Among his many distinctions, Joachim has received training in the MEDDPICC sales framework and certifications in “Command of the Message” by Force Management—tools that he utilizes effectively to surpass sales targets, with an exemplary average attainment surpassing 130%.
Joachim is also a vibrant part of the Munich-based hub of Pavilion, where he actively cultivates revenue-generating communities for both seasoned executives and emerging professionals. His commitment to nurturing talent and fostering business growth aligns harmoniously with his passion for promoting sustainability within organizations.
Achievements
Throughout his career, Joachim has achieved numerous accolades and milestones that reflect his dedication and expertise:
- Driving Growth at Aurora Solar: Since joining as the first European sales hire, he has been essential in launching and establishing the company’s prominence in the European market.
- Revenue Generation at Miro: He has been pivotal in generating an impressive $1.6 million in net new ARR, which contributed to doubling Miro’s customer outreach in the EMEA region.
- Sales Function Establishment at Demodesk: His efforts in building the sales function from the ground up significantly influenced the company’s ability to secure substantial investment funding and scalability.
- Strategic Sales Development at DataGuard: Progressed rapidly through various sales roles, equipping him with comprehensive insights and skills in the SaaS domain.
- Entrepreneurship: Co-founded Fleetcleanse and Unleashed Marketing, both of which achieved successful exits, showcasing his entrepreneurial spirit and ability to innovate within competitive markets.
Personal Background
Joachim was originally based in Brussels for 18 years before broadening his horizons across Europe, spending two years in Zurich and two years in Amsterdam, and now residing in Munich. This blend of experiences across distinct markets has enriched his perspective and understanding of diverse cultures throughout Europe, enhancing his ability to connect with clients and teams across various scenarios.
Joachims's career exemplifies not just a trajectory of professional success but also an unwavering commitment to fostering growth, innovation, and sustainability in the sectors he engages with. His journey showcases the importance of strategic vision and the ability to execute plans effectively, underscoring his reputation as a leader in GTM strategies and sales excellence.
Overall, Joachim Van Erps embodies the spirit of modern entrepreneurial endeavors within the energy and SaaS industries, driving impactful change towards a cleaner, more sustainable future.
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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.