Suggestions
Michael Weisz
Founder & CEO at Yieldstreet
Michael Weisz is the Founder and CEO of Yieldstreet, a prominent private market investing platform boasting over 450K members and $3.9B in investments as of October 2023. He co-founded Yieldstreet in 2015 to democratize access to curated private market assets for individual investors that were traditionally exclusive to institutions. As the CEO, Michael drives Yieldstreet's strategic vision to incorporate alternatives as a core component of investor portfolios. Prior to starting Yieldstreet, he established Soli Capital and served as the Vice President at a credit opportunities hedge fund in New York managing $1.2B. Michael's educational background includes a BS in Finance from Touro College.
Highlights
Friday Fuel! Marc Lore, Kevin O’Leary, AI at Yieldstreet, Vanguard, and a lot more!
Monday was all about learning. I spent some time with my friend and serial entrepreneur Marc Lore who helped me think about positioning Yieldstreet and accelerating growth. Invaluable, actionable insights - thx Marc! Over dinner, I got to know a 30-year-old entrepreneur who became uber successful really quickly by amassing a massive portfolio of healthcare-related assets. Mind you, he was bordering on poverty. America is still the land of opportunity!
Tuesday was exciting as we kicked off a project to enhance our Product and Tech teams’ capabilities around development, innovation and quality. Always be learning… That evening, we transformed our Park Ave office into the best 9th year anniversary party! I couldn't help but reflect on our incredible journey. It’s the failures and challenges I remember most. We took our pain, learned to improve, embraced our grit and our commitment to our mission, and here we are today. With 70% of startups going out of business after their first decade, this milestone is a testament to our team, our investors, and value prop – the opportunity to construct diversified portfolios through access to carefully curated alternative investments.
Midweek brought innovation at Yieldstreet. Using natural language processing and me as a candidate, our data team used an AI-based model and our vast historical data to predict what I would invest in next on Yieldstreet. Freakily, I had invested in exactly what it predicted 3 days before we went through the results! It was a powerful reminder of the incredible work our team is doing and the potential for data to transform the investing experience. Later, I shared cigars with my friends David Lyons, and Mr. Wonderful Kevin O'Leary. Kevin was full of fire and a wealth of knowledge. It was great to listen to his ideas around reducing CAC and scaling marketing. He has a new business idea and I’m all about it!
Off to Philly we go. I was inspired by how young and innovative @Vanguard can still be. Their campus was fresh and modern and the team was full of curiosity and ideas about how to incorporate private markets into their ecosystem in a scalable and seamless way. Thx for having us! Later on, at Stradley (shameless plug, we love working with them) Fahd Basir and I were asked to speak with 70+ lawyers (they got CLE credits, how cool) about the opportunity to develop market leading expertise in structuring and legal ingenuity for bringing private market investments to a wider audience. Appreciate the invite, Gary Scharmett! We capped it off with a fantastic Private Client Group event at the Barnes Foundation where we connected with our clients and partners in person, and Rebecca L. Fine flexed our art expertise! The power of our community is incredible - any city, any time.
Heading into Passover, I'm reflecting on the progress we've made and recharge for the road ahead.
Enjoy the weekend!
Yieldstreet announced a groundbreaking partnership with Wilshire aimed at reimagining access to institutional-quality alternative investments.
First and foremost, this partnership will make investing in private market alternatives simpler and more accessible. Wilshire has been advising some of the largest institutions and investors for 50 years, yet when we started discussions, it quickly became clear that we share a unified vision to make the same quality guidance and knowledge available to individual investors as well as institutions.
We now stand side by side as partners delivering on that vision, set to change the private market landscape. Over the next 10 years, private markets will be a fundamental part of every investor’s portfolio, and Yieldstreet will be the dominant force to make this a reality. To learn more, I encourage you to read our thesis on the subject below.
Like all great things, this partnership took a lot of late nights, cross-team collaboration, and patience to come together. I want to expressly thank the Wilshire leadership: Jason Schwarz, Joshua Emanuel, CFA, Mark Perry, and Jessica Nicosia. You have all been thoughtful, constructive, fun, and inspiring to work with. I value your friendship.
To my team at Yieldstreet I continue to be in awe of the privilege to work with you. Your drive to create products that change investors’ lives inspires me every day!
Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
People also viewed
Related People
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.