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Luke Des Cotes
CEO at Metalab
Luke Des Cotes is a seasoned professional with a strong background in leading top-tier agencies globally, specializing in digital product development to drive business growth.
With expertise in strategy, design, multimedia, marketing, and digital products, Luke has held various roles in sales, account management, strategy, and leadership across a diverse range of companies, including industry giants like GE, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Vice, and NBC, as well as emerging players such as Instacart, The Athletic, Tinder, Addepar, and Expensify.
Luke's academic background includes a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing from UBC Sauder School of Business, coupled with additional studies in Marketing at Langara College.
Having served in key positions such as CEO, President, VP of Partnerships, Director of Partnerships, and Client Partner at Metalab, as well as in roles like Digital New Business lead at DAC, Account Executive at TBA Digital, and Business Development Manager at Red Label Communications, Luke brings a wealth of experience and insights to the table.
His primary focus revolves around leveraging digital strategies and innovative product development to transform businesses and drive success in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Highlights
Design Company of the Year.
Technically that honour goes to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, but Design Company of the Year Finalist doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Either way, feeling incredibly proud to be included in this list from Fast Company.
Well before my time, Metalab had a long history of not only not chasing these, but often being dismissive of them. About a decade ago, I walked into our office in Victoria and one of the first things I noticed was the Webby being used as a doorstop — not as a flex or a sign of disrespect, but more because they were so focused on their love of doing the work that the award itself didn't matter. So over time, one of our developers found a use for it.
I guess word got around and we haven't won a Webby since, so if Fast Company sends us anything in the mail, I promise we'll treat it better. And if Webby's listening, we're sorry.
But this has been about twenty years of consistent approach. Know what you're good at and don't deviate. Find incredible clients to do it with. Build the thing and let the results speak for themselves.
In many ways, today is no different — we still don't think too much about awards. But somehow this one does feel different.
Maybe it's that we're the only agency in the mix getting recognized and I know firsthand there are some incredible agencies out there.
Maybe it's that Fast Company is actually one of the few that puts the right level of thought and care into evaluating the true contributors in industry.
Or maybe it's just the number of times over the past few years I've heard the Metalab team quietly say to each other:
"If people only knew"
We often have these pinch ourselves moments when we stop and think about the lineup of partners we get to work with. It's really humbling.
So maybe this will be the moment where 'people started to know'. More likely, we'll keep building the things and the right people who know where to look will take notice.
Thanks Fast Company.
Thanks Metalab team.
Feeling very proud.
#FCDesignAwards #Design #Product
“We’re falling behind in AI”
That’s me waking up in a sweat after seeing Joe Shmoe agency leader publishing the latest AI thought piece, hosting a roundtable or coming out with a very provocative new take on how AI is both the technology advancement of our lifetime and completely overhyped all at once.
It gets to me sometimes.
As much as I love seeing people engage, learn and share, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind when everyone seems to have become an overnight expert.
That’s why for two decades now, Metalab has always taken the approach of more doing, less talking. Want to learn about something? Pick up the tools and get to building.
Today, what we’ve ended up with is a lot of pretty interesting stories building products with AI.
It probably started in earnest in early 2018, although I’m not sure we really knew what was starting back then. Otter.ai came to us for help conceiving a best in class intelligent audio transcription tool — something clicked in the early days of working on that product and today they’re one of Forbes Best Generative AI Workplace Productivity Tools.
Ever since then, we’ve been deep in this world building.
In 2021, concerned about artificial intelligence’s potential impact on the news business, Nicholas Thompson and his team at The Atlantic approached us to run a conceptual track to safely and positively leverage AI on the digital publication — a project none of us thought would see the light of day anytime soon. It’s launching in the coming months.
We then worked alongside Tim Davis, Chris Lattner and the incredible team at Modular in 2022. Quite literally creating the building blocks to AI development that’s now valued at over $600M.
Last year, during a pivotal moment in Midjourney's history, we worked with David Holz to give their 20M+ users another way of using the platform aside from their longstanding Discord centered interface.
And today, we’re working on a product that will launch to billions of people overnight when it goes live — but that’s a story for another day.
I don’t think we’ll be writing a book or doing a big thought piece anytime soon, but what I have asked the team to do is pull together some of these stories and the nuggets of learnings we took away from them, so we can start sharing — hopefully it’s not something that keeps anyone else up at night.
In the meantime, I’ll keep getting comfortable falling behind, so we can stay focused on building.
#genai #design #product #ai #aidesign
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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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