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Joel Armijo
CFO | TMT | DTC | Subscription | Streaming | Sports | Advertising | Wireless | AVOD/SVOD | B2B | M&A | FP&A | IPO | PE | BOD | Investor Relations
Professional Background
Joel Armijo is a solution-driven Chief Financial Officer with an impressive career spanning over two decades in financial leadership, operational excellence, and deep expertise in the Direct to Consumer (DTC) and monthly recurring revenue (MRR) subscription models, as well as B2B advertising across the Technology, Entertainment, and Sports sectors. Known for his strategic partnerships with C-suite executives, Joel has a proven record of driving sustainable top-line growth and equity value creation in diverse company settings, including startups, private equity-backed firms, and Fortune 100 corporations.
Throughout his career, Joel has consistently demonstrated his ability to execute transformative business strategies by enhancing P&L ownership and increasing accountability, all while aligning the cost structure with the company’s revenue growth profile. His unique approach to financial leadership involves empowering team members and prioritizing innovative solutions along with contrarian viewpoints. Joel’s commitment to making data-driven decisions includes the strategic use of KPIs and developing dynamic performance dashboards that guide the decision-making process and answer the fundamental questions of “why.”
Education and Achievements
Joel's academic foundation is deeply rooted in finance and history, having attained his MBA from the prestigious UCLA Anderson School of Management. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Wesleyan University. This blend of educational background equips him with a unique perspective on economic narratives and historical context, invaluable traits in shaping corporate strategies and assessing market dynamics.
Career Highlights
His extensive experience includes prominent roles across various leading organizations in the media and telecommunications sectors. Previously, Joel served as the CFO & COO of Local Media-TV, Audio & Live Events at TelevisaUnivision, playing a crucial role in overseeing operations and financial strategy to maximize profitability.
At Comcast, he held the role of Chief Financial Officer for Comcast Cable Advertising, significantly impacting revenue operations through strategic financial planning and execution. As CFO at fuboTV, he drove transformative initiatives that enhanced business performance and optimized operational efficiency.
His career at AT&T is marked by several pivotal positions, including Chief Financial Officer at AT&T Ad Works, where he led financial strategies that positioned the company for growth in an evolving advertising landscape. Additionally, he was Vice President of Revenue Strategy & Planning at DIRECTV, where he formulated comprehensive business strategies to maximize revenue generation. His early career at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as Director of Specialty Sales and Director of Media & Entertainment equipped him with a robust background in equity research and sales, sharpening his skills in handling financial instruments and market dynamics.
Throughout his remarkable trajectory, Joel has also contributed to corporate strategy and planning at Time Warner, along with insightful management roles at Times Mirror Media Network and Cablevision. Each of these experiences endowed Joel with comprehensive insights into financial analytics, strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, and investor relations.
Notable Achievements
Joel's distinguished skills have positioned him as a go-to expert for optimizing business segments’ cost structures to boost free cash flow while reallocating resources to higher growth opportunities. His nuanced understanding of Wall Street equity markets allows him to adeptly manage business risks and assess competitive macro dynamics.
Moreover, Joel brings a wealth of expertise in managing relationships with the investment community, emphasizing capital markets, IPOs, and secondary equity offerings. His background as a former Wall Street equity analyst further enhances his capacity to craft compelling investment narratives that drive equity value appreciation.
With a focus on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), Joel has successfully developed acquisition strategies, performed rigorous valuations and due diligence, and spearheaded business integration efforts, including negotiating transitional service agreements and overseeing asset divestitures.
Overall, Joel Armijo exemplifies what it means to be a results-oriented finance executive, aligning financial discipline with strategic business growth. His extensive experience within high-paced, competitive environments, coupled with his innovative and data-driven approach to finance, sets him apart as a prominent figure in today’s financial landscape.
Highlights
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Game Changer, or the first big move in Sports delivery? With Tuesday's news of the Disney, Fox, and WBD sports JV, we once again find programmers cleaving off a substantial portion of their content from the Pay TV ecosystem. Previously, these moves were primarily limited to the entertainment segment. No more. The three companies will collectively be contributing >50% of the US sports right spend to the planned JV. Unlike the sports segment, entertainment remains highly fragmented, lacking the massive reach of the US Sports leagues, which consistently account for >90% of the top 100 live viewed TV events, with a content offering nonpareil.
Questions do remain on the service's appeal to sports fans. Having operated both at the regional level, MSGN, Fox RSNs and national level, fubo, there are multiple US sports fan cohorts, from the marquee national event viewer found on broadcast and ESPN, to the hyper local fan, think NESN/ BoSox fans. The absence of local NBA, MLB, and NHL games, along with half the NFL Sunday schedule and night game, represents a material programming void for the new JV. The local games, deliver a massive cumulative audience, equivalent to the national sports nets, ex NFL, with the major DMA’s offering >400 live games a year.
Nevertheless, the proposed JV still provides a compelling sports offering for a sizable fan segment and packaged in a highly efficient advertising juggernaut reaching the most coveted live audiences.
ESPN's inclusion, the biggest contributor of both rights and events, featuring content that was largely behind the Pay TV wall, is the key variable in this equation and with it the greatest risk for legacy Pay TV players as programmers further distance themselves from the ecosystem. While the outlook for facilities based Pay TV operators has been increasingly challenging, the debate now shifts on whether subscribers losses go from a linear to non-linear equation as VMVPD’s continue to add share and leverage their IP infrastructure to deliver a differentiated, personalized viewing experience.
Additionally, as their residential subscriber base is further separated from its video component, stand alone broadband subs, are at greater risk from new entrants, e.g., FWA, fiber, who now have a compelling national sports DTC offering they can market to consumers. Video has ultimately been the app that drives broadband,
Still, many unknowns as we await greater detail on JV, ranging from broadcast affiliates payment risk, leagues facing different renewal dynamics, and evolving economics for the JV partners. We tend to bandy about the words seismic and tectonic quite a bit in media space, but much more so than the Charter/Disney deal, this appears to be a potential game changer with 3 key players going to market with a critical mass of sports content, previously behind the Pay TV wall.
How AI can enhance LTV economics Insightful article by Doug Shapiro and the BCG team highlighting the challenges and opportunities for streaming services as they pivot to a more disciplined, value driven acquisition strategy that optimizes around both growth and value creation. Particularly notable is the role AI is playing for streaming services, driving both personalized acquisition and retention initiatives. Having spent the majority of my career in the subscriber space, understanding the inherent tradeoffs between subscriber acquisition costs and backend behavior, particularly churn/retention, and the investment required to drive more favorable subscriber outcomes, is critical to optimizing subscriber value. Whether DTC models or B2B plays, customer/client churn represents one of the biggest challenges/opportunities for organizations, and fully understanding the upstream dynamics that drive it, whether driving acquisition spend thru lowest common denominator, or not fully appreciating the challenges associated with your company’s value proposition. The BCG team highlights the material impact AI can have on both acquisition costs and retention efforts thru hyper personalization and iterative testing, and providing real work examples of performance improvement. While the article focuses exclusively on streaming services, the takeaways are for the most part applicable to the broader space including SaaS/MRR segment. A worthwhile read.
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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.
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