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Mark Larkin
President, CNET
Mark Larkin is a prominent figure in the digital media industry with extensive experience in leadership roles at major technology and media companies. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer and President of Group Black, a position he took on after a long tenure at CNET.26
Career Highlights
CNET and CBS Interactive: Mark Larkin had a significant 25-year career at CNET, where he held various leadership positions.3 His most recent role at CNET was as President of CNET Media at Red Ventures.4 Prior to that, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the CNET Media Group at CBS Interactive, overseeing consumer tech, business tech, and gaming content.5
Group Black: After leaving CNET in August 2021, Larkin joined Group Black as Chief Operating Officer and President.26 This move was described as joining a startup project, indicating a new direction in his career.4
Personal Information
Mark Larkin is based in Lafayette, California.12 He describes himself as a lover of cars, sugar obsessed, and a father of four.2 His LinkedIn profile shows he has over 500 connections in his professional network.1
Social Media Presence
Larkin is active on social media platforms:
Mark Larkin's extensive experience in digital media, particularly his long tenure at CNET and his current leadership role at Group Black, positions him as a seasoned executive in the technology and media sectors.
Highlights
Friends and I sat at a table last night trying to remember just how many of these we’d been to. Was it 18 visits? Twenty times we’d been to CES? It was tough for us to remember when we’d all started coming to Vegas every winter, and I wanted to say this is the 20th year — a strange number to say out loud.
Even stranger is that I didn’t think I’d be coming to CES again, and yet... In September, I stepped away from my role at Group Black as President and COO, and I thought I was going to take a break. I’d take some time to unlearn Zoom, to go to my daughter’s volleyball games, walk the dog and spend time with family. And I did some of that, to be sure, but not long after I’d said my goodbyes, I was presented with an opportunity to come back to CNET and help chart its future with some familiar friends and a bunch of new ones.
I’ve actually been back for a few months, saying hello, getting reacquainted and diving back into great conversations about audiences, content and the future.
CES is mostly about the future, too — the near future as well as the part I enjoy most: what comes after that. CES is a place where we get to see the future showcased first so that we can dream about it, and where anything is possible. You can see it everywhere and feel the energy. This show is always a world of wonder with robots and appliances that do your chores, teach you how to cook and keep you company while you do it, and where AI erases the mundane and gives you back your most valuable commodity: time. It’s where in the future you can pull 100 gallons of water out of the air a day, you can harness the power of the sun through your stained-glass window or see entirely through your TV screen.
That future potential is why I posted this career update as we come to a close on my first CES for the second time around with CNET. It’s invigorating to be here, to spend time with and engage with people who are passionate about what they do and excited about building the future together.
It’s pretty cool being at CES for the robots, too. #CES2024 #FutureTech #CareerUpdate
Friends,
After two years of dedicated effort and collaboration, I am excited to share a significant transition in my journey. It has been an incredible experience building Group Black from the ground up, starting with just a card table, three founders, and two full-time employees. Today, I step down from my role as COO to make way for the next group of leaders to steer the ship.
I am filled with immense pride for the company I played a small part in shaping. What inspires me the most is the unwavering commitment towards our mission demonstrated by every talented individual at Group Black. Witnessing a purpose-driven, diversity-focused organization evolve from a handful of passionate professionals to a team of more than 60 extraordinary individuals united by the determination to create something remarkable has been a distinct honor.
Audiences today are keenly aware of corporate choices, political affiliations, and how companies spend dollars. In a not too distant future, Group Black and companies like it will succeed in helping marketers develop more authentic relationships between brands and those audiences as multicultural becomes general market.
I am leaving Group Black but I will always remain an ally, supporter, and advocate for the work being done here. I am immensely grateful to my colleagues, our founders, and our board of directors as well as our incredible partners and members. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this journey--your collective dedication has humbled me, and I will carry the lessons and experiences forward with great appreciation. I salute your unwavering passion and commitment.
As for what's next for me, stay tuned. Onward!
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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.