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Josh Dorfman
Co-Founder & CEO, Simbly; Founder, Lazy Environmentalist
Josh Dorfman is an accomplished entrepreneur and environmentalist with a strong focus on combating climate change through innovative solutions.
He is the co-founder and host of Supercool, a platform dedicated to discussing cutting-edge methods that reduce carbon emissions and enhance modern living, expanding its influence nationwide and globally.
Previously, he led Plantd as the co-founder and CEO, pioneering carbon-negative building materials from rapidly growing grass, securing significant funding, driving early-stage revenue, and gaining recognition through prestigious awards like the U.S. DOE Epic Prize and Fast Company's Innovation By Design Awards.
Josh's leadership extended to The Collider, the first climate resilience and adaptation innovation hub in the U.S., and his ventures in sustainable furniture design showcased his commitment to eco-friendly practices.
With a diverse background that includes roles at Amazon, where he managed Vine.com specializing in sustainable products, Josh is also known for his media presence as the creator and host of The Lazy Environmentalist, a TV and radio show promoting sustainable living.
A sought-after speaker on climate innovation and communication strategies, Josh has addressed audiences at major corporations and institutions, sharing insights on driving environmental action and engaging skeptics.
Aside from his professional accomplishments, some unique aspects of Josh's life include living in his Brooklyn furniture showroom, making a memorable bicycle entrance on The Martha Stewart Show, and his entrepreneurial experience in China's bicycle lock market.
Josh Dorfman holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
Highlights
Geothermal energy is having a moment in America. On the East Coast, the first municipal geothermal system built by a fossil fuel company is nearing completion in Framingham, MA.
Eversource Energy, the largest utility in New England, will soon run water through pipes instead of natural gas. The system will start by delivering emissions-free geothermal heating and cooling to 37 Framingham homes and commercial buildings and is designed for expansion. Customers are expected to save 15-20% on energy bills.
On the West Coast, geothermal isn't just having a moment; it's having a century. Boise, Idaho operates the nation's oldest and most expansive municipal geothermal heating system. The system provides zero-carbon heat to over 100 downtown buildings, totaling 6 million square feet of indoor space.
In Boise, you can wash your clothes in a geothermal-heated laundromat, swim at the YMCA in a geothermal-heated pool, stroll snow-free streets on geothermal-heated sidewalks, and buy flowers grown in a geothermal-heated greenhouse.
We track the rise of geothermal on the Supercool podcast this week.
Tina Riley, Geothermal Development Coordinator at the City of Boise, shares how Boise has been enjoying the comfort, cost, and carbon benefits of geothermal since before the Wright Brothers invented flight - and how the city is preparing the system to accelerate its renewable energy future.
Listen to the episode: https://lnkd.in/eNappg5S
When schools cut carbon emissions, the benefits can be extraordinary. In Arkansas, the Batesville School District turned a budget shortfall into over $4 Million in savings after switching to solar, which the district used to increase teacher salaries by $10,000.
From Butte, Montana to Denver, CO, school districts are harnessing renewable energy to cut their energy bills and the energy bills of low-income families - amounting to savings of hundreds of dollars per family annually.
Leading public school districts are also offering their students paid internships to gain real-world experience in carbon reduction.
Earlier this summer, thirty-seven high schoolers at Denver Public Schools completed paid internships at the school district's Renewable Energy Academy, where they gained experience in solar panel installs, circuitry, and green construction.
For students with climate anxiety, these opportunities enable them to earn a paycheck during summer break and see a future for themselves in the low-carbon economy.
On this week's Supercool podcast, we speak with LeeAnn Kittle, Executive Director of Sustainability at Denver Public Schools (DPS), one of 59 school districts in the nation - out of over 13,000 - that has adopted formal policies and climate action plans to curb carbon emissions (see link to the list of climate-forward school districts in the comments).
Who jumpstarted climate action at DPS? The students.
DPS has been working on sustainability since 2009. However, it took two years of concerted, savvy organizing by a committed group of 30 students to finally convince the School Board of Education to adopt a formal climate policy in 2022.
The results have been extraordinary. In 2023, DPS saved $5 Million on its overall $1 Billion budget due to carbon reduction initiatives.
We also speak with Reilly Loveland at New Buildings Institute about the playbook and strategy for school districts that want to implement climate action plans.
We constantly nag our kids to stop procrastinating. Our nation's school leaders have every incentive to heed that same advice.
Listen to the episode: https://lnkd.in/eNappg5S
Gain more insights into the benefits of the low-carbon economy in our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eJHk9gDe
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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.