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John Tan
Human flourishing
Professional Background
John Tan is a prominent education entrepreneur and visionary leader recognized for his significant contributions to the edtech landscape. With a mission to empower children to become curious, self-directed learners and original thinkers, John has founded two important initiatives: Saturday Kids and Doyobi. Both organizations focus on fostering a culture of creativity and purpose in the lives of young learners. Through his work, he advocates for impactful educational practices that seek to inspire students to take charge of their own learning journeys.
In addition to his pioneering work in the classroom, John has made strides as an angel investor and partner at multiple ventures. His experience as the CEO and founder of Doyobi has further established him as a significant player in educational technology, where he emphasizes the importance of student agency and modern learning methodologies. As an influential figure on boards and organizations such as Ninja Van and ErudiFi, he brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the fields of education and entrepreneurship.
John's previous roles as the Chief Education Officer and Board Member at ErudiFi showcase his commitment to improving access to quality education, particularly in Southeast Asia. His dedication to educational innovation led him to become a Transcend Fellow at the Transcend Network, where he collaborated with like-minded individuals to reshape the future of education.
As a notable Obama Leader for the Asia Pacific at the Obama Foundation, John actively promotes community engagement and social entrepreneurship. His leadership speaks volumes about his dedication not only to education but also to uplifting various communities through collaborative efforts and shared values.
Education and Achievements
John's foundation in economics and technology has been integral to his success as an entrepreneur. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours in Economics from University College London (UCL), where he gained a solid understanding of economic principles, financial systems, and analytical skills that would later inform his strategic decisions as a leader in the education sector.
Beyond his formal education in economics, John pursued a Full Stack Web Development Certification at freeCodeCamp. This training equipped him with essential technical skills to navigate the rapidly evolving digital landscape of education technology, allowing him to blend innovative solutions with educational practices effectively.
Throughout his career, John has been recognized for his leadership roles in various organizations. From co-founding Saturday Kids, which focuses on nurturing a love for learning in children through engaging programs, to his tenure as Principal at Orita Sinclair School of Design, New Media & the Arts, John's efforts reflect his unwavering dedication to fostering growth in the educational sector.
His roles on boards and as a mentor, including his tenure at JFDI.Asia and Orita Sinclair, demonstrate his commitment to guiding the next generation of entrepreneurs and creative thinkers. His expertise and influence stretch across many fields, from educational design to innovative product development, solidifying his role as a thought leader in these domains.
Achievements
John Tan's noteworthy achievements stand as a testament to his passion and drive as an educator and entrepreneur. The establishment of Saturday Kids and Doyobi has earned him recognition in the edtech community, with both initiatives receiving accolades for their impact-oriented approach to education.
Moreover, John's successful track record as an angel investor showcases his keen insight and support for innovative startups. His involvement with multiple ventures emphasizes a growing trend of collaboration within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, where he assists others in scaling their businesses while continuing to be involved with his own impactful initiatives.
In addition to his entrepreneurial pursuits, John’s recognition as an Obama Leader illustrates his commitment to social change and leadership within the Asia Pacific region. His ability to connect with various organizations and individuals speaks to his collaborative spirit and vision for a more engaged and educated society. As he continues his journey, John's impact on the education sector and beyond serves as an inspiration for many aspiring leaders and innovators.
Achievements
Highlights
“A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest - but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move.” - Richard Louv
Reading Last Child In The Woods in Karuizawa while running Saturday Kids Unplugged is a reminder to myself why I do this. Kids today are losing their childhood to textbooks, assessment books, tuition, assessment papers and of course, screen time. Along the way they also lose their innate curiosity, observation skills, resilience, and have very limited self-awareness.
At the half way mark of this week’s Saturday Kids Unplugged Karuizawa, I can say with absolute certainty that kids need to be out in the woods, running, playing, exploring, experimenting. The skills they develop go much much further than anything they learn in a tuition class.
When AI can do eighty percent of the CEO’s job, the most important functions of a human CEO are setting vision, building culture and convincing great people to join the team (AI can find talent, but amazing hires don’t join because an AI made them an offer).
“Nearly half — 47 percent — of the executives surveyed said they believed “most” or “all” of the chief executive role should be completely automated or replaced by A.I. Even executives believe executives are superfluous in the late digital age.” - The New York Times
“My first instinct is they would say, ‘Replace all the employees but not me. But I thought more deeply and would say 80 percent of the work that a C.E.O. does can be replaced by A.I.” - Anant Agarwal, founder of EdX
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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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