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Matthieu David-Experton
China Strategic Market Research & Management Consulting (Hiring!)
Professional Background
Matthieu David-Experton is a seasoned entrepreneur and consultant with a wealth of experience in strategic market research and consulting, primarily focusing on the Chinese market. As the current CEO and President of Daxue Consulting, a prominent strategic market research firm based in Shanghai and Beijing, Matthieu has successfully managed to serve over 400 clients since the inception of the firm. Under his leadership, Daxue Consulting has gained a reputation for delivering in-depth and actionable insights tailored to its clients, helping them navigate the complexities of the Chinese market.
Before establishing Daxue Consulting, Matthieu worked as a management consultant in Paris with Junior ESSEC for two years, where he honed his analytical and strategic thinking skills. He later joined Comgest, a notable long-only investment fund based in Hong Kong, as a financial analyst, where he contributed to financial assessments and investment strategies in the Asian markets. His extensive background in finance and consulting has equipped Matthieu with a unique perspective on business operations, making him a valuable asset in the consulting sector.
In addition to his work with Daxue Consulting, Matthieu has been actively involved in launching and managing various ventures, including D'Elysee, a luxury gift box company that provided unique experiences through carefully curated packages. This entrepreneurial spirit extends to his participation in e-commerce, real estate, and internet businesses, showcasing his versatility and ability to adapt to changing market trends.
Education and Achievements
Matthieu's academic journey reflects his dedication to excellence and multidisciplinarity. He graduated from Essec Business School with a Master in Management (MiM), where his institution ranks #2 in France and #5 in Europe. He further enhanced his expertise by obtaining an MBA from Peking University, which was ranked #1 in China in 2013 and #4 in Asia – a testament to the high-quality education he received.
Additionally, Matthieu completed a Bachelor’s degree in Law, specializing in Business Law at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise. His academic path also included rigorous preparatory classes (CPGE) at Lycée Thiers, where he studied Mathematics, History, Philosophy, Literature, English, and German. This robust educational background laid the foundation for his professional journey and has played a crucial role in shaping his analytical thinking and strategic mindset.
Notable Achievements
Matthieu's career is dotted with noteworthy accomplishments. His venture, D'Elysee, not only demonstrated his entrepreneurial capabilities but also attracted attention from a multinational corporation, resulting in a successful exit within a year and a half of its launch. This experience fueled his passion for building businesses and responding to market demands, ultimately leading him to found Daxue Consulting.
Under Matthieu's leadership, Daxue Consulting has become a crucial part of the strategic decision-making process for many businesses looking to enter or expand in the Chinese market. His involvement with numerous organizations, such as Croissance Plus, Entrepreneur Organization (EO), and Centre des jeunes dirigeants (CJD), highlights his commitment to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation in the business world. Matthieu’s roles in these organizations have not only contributed to his professional growth but have also enabled him to impact the entrepreneurial community positively.
Language Skills
Matthieu is a polyglot, fluent in French, English, and Chinese, with a working knowledge of German that he continues to improve. This linguistic versatility enhances his ability to connect with clients and stakeholders across different cultures and backgrounds, a vital asset in today’s global business landscape.
Summary
With an impressive combination of educational achievements, extensive professional experience, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, Matthieu David-Experton has established himself as a leading figure in strategic market research in China. His dedication to helping clients succeed in navigating the complexities of the Chinese market is evident in the successful ventures he has launched and the insights his firm provides. As he continues to evolve in his career, Matthieu remains committed to leveraging his skills and experience to help businesses thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Highlights
What happened in China between 6 and 10 of May?
1. Trending topic of the week
🚗 Zhiji Motors has unveiled its second electric sedan, the L6, which set a new record in the moose test, underscoring its superior handling and stability. Starting at ¥199,900, the L6 features advanced technology like a digital chassis and solid-state battery. The popularity of the L6 is highlighted by the hashtag #Zhiji L6 standard version starting from 199,900# (#智己L6统统标配19.99万起#), which has garnered 140 million views. 2. Trending video of the week ☕️ Luckin Coffee and Guizhou Maotai have teamed up to open the "Four Seasons and Eight Festivals" (四时八节) themed store in Shenzhen, Luckin's first venture into Chinese-style cultural-themed offline experience stores. Drawing inspiration from Qi Baishi's (齐白石) artwork, the store merges the essence of the four seasons with traditional Chinese festivals to provide a unique coffee experience. 3. The number I pick for this week 💼 A recent Zhaopin recruitment platform report shows that pessimism among China's white-collar workers is growing, with 18.9% believing it's "very difficult" to find new jobs, up from 12.6% in 2023. Additionally, the number of actively seeking jobs has dropped nearly 20% to 45.4%. This trend reflects a shift towards prioritizing job stability, evidenced by the increasing number of applicants for civil service positions, which promise lifetime employment. 4. Brand of the week ✨ Miu Miu has gone viral once again, this time for its luxury hair clips priced at RMB 3,250 ($448.95) in China. Despite netizens joking about the cost, the hair clips quickly sold out. This buzz has contributed to Miu Miu's impressive 89% YOY revenue growth, underscoring the brand's successful engagement with younger audiences through viral products. 5. Marketing campaign of the week 🌸 JD.com and Swisse used CG technology to transform Shanghai's Wukang Building for unique campaigns, turning it into a giant birthday cake and a pink cherry blossom-adorned structure, respectively. These captivating visuals on Weibo for the hashtag # Open Shanghai Wukang Building with CG# (# 用CG的方式打开上海武康大楼) gained over 67 million views, showcasing how digital art can breathe new life into historical landmarks and engage a wide audience online.
6. A regulation change of the week to pay attention to 🧾 China updated its State Secrets Law on February 27, 2024, marking its first major revision since 2010. Effective May 1, 2024, the changes tighten the protection and disclosure of state secrets, impacting how companies manage and transfer data. As part of China's broader national security efforts, these revisions pose new compliance challenges for both domestic and international businesses operating in China.
I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on these in the comments below 👇
#china #businessinchina #chinanews #DaxueStories
What happened in China between 29th April and 3rd May?
1. Trending topic of the week
🇨🇳 On May 5, President Xi Jinping arrived in Paris for a state visit to France. As his motorcade traveled from the airport to his hotel, enthusiastic crowds lined the streets to greet him. This vibrant reception, tagged #巴黎欢迎人群敲锣打鼓舞龙舞狮# (Paris welcomes Emmanuel Macron with gongs, drums, and lion dances), garnered significant attention online, attracting 33.123 million views. 2. Trending video of the week 🎮 Meituan has partnered with the Chinese game Arena Breakout to expand its consumer base. This collaboration features immersive in-game takeout experiences, limited-edition game skins, and offline benefits for players. The collaboration videos have nearly 2 million views on Bilibili, and the hashtag #Best delivery guy in Arena Breakout# (#暗区最强外卖员#) has 60.49 million reads on Weibo. 3. The number I pick for this week 💹 Chinese consumers are spending more on insurance premiums, driven by increasing household wealth, a growing desire to protect their assets, and the country’s aging population. Half of Chinese households spent over RMB 8,000 (USD 1,100) on insurance premiums in 2023. The demand for insurance is fueled by a greater awareness of health, life protection, and the rising cost of healthcare. High-income families plan to spend more than RMB 20,000 on insurance in the coming year. 4. Brand of the week 💄 Australian luxury skincare brand Aesop recently opened its first pop-up store in Beijing, the "Aesop Sanctuary," at the WF House 19 Siheyuan. Located in a restored traditional courtyard house, it blends Aesop's signature aesthetic with the architectural heritage of the Qing Dynasty. On 小红书 (RED), the topic “Aesop Beijing WF House 19 store” gained 129,400 views, with netizens admiring Aesop's ability to integrate cultural elements into its brand experience. 5. Marketing campaign of the week 🍗 In celebration of 520, the Chinese Valentine's Day, Miu Miu introduced a capsule collection and digital ad campaign as part of its "relaxed luxury" style. Artist Rebekka Deubner shot the portrait series, featuring a summer wardrobe designed with natural tones and materials, including crochet fisherman hats, handbags, and headbands embellished with Miu Miu's light gold logos and whipstitch leather letter charms.
6. A regulation change of the week to pay attention to 🧾 China's top legislative body has revised the Law on the Guarding of State Secrets to include "work secrets," information that does not amount to state secrets but could cause "adverse effects if leaked." The new law requires internet companies to stop suspected leaks, save records, and cooperate with investigations. Foreign businesses are concerned about the lack of clarity around "work secrets" and the potential for arbitrary interpretation. I’d be glad to hear your thoughts on these in the comments below 👇 #china #businessinchina #chinanews #DaxueStories
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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.