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Rajesh Anandan
CEO Ultranauts Inc, Founder Unicef Ventures, Lecturer MIT
Rajesh Anandan is an impact entrepreneur and growth architect who co-founded and currently serves as the CEO of Ultranauts Inc, a company he established in June 2013.1 Ultranauts Inc is an onshore quality engineering firm with a unique mission: to demonstrate that neurodiversity, including autism, can be a competitive advantage in business.1
Professional Background
Anandan's career spans various sectors and roles:
Education and Early Career:
- He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Economics, as well as an M.Eng. in Computer Science and Systems Dynamics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).1
- His professional journey began at Microsoft Corporation as a Program Manager in 1995.1
Consulting and Global Health:
- Anandan worked as a consultant at Bain & Company from 1996 to 2002.1
- He then moved to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where he headed Private Sector Partnerships from 2003 to 2008.1
UNICEF and Social Innovation:
- From 2009 to 2019, Anandan was involved with UNICEF USA, where he founded UNICEF Ventures and created UNICEF Kid Power.1
- UNICEF Kid Power, under his leadership, became a significant tech-for-good platform, recognized as one of TIME's 25 Best Inventions in 2016.1
Ultranauts Inc
At Ultranauts Inc, Anandan has built a company that:
- Provides software and data quality engineering services to Fortune 500 companies and startups.1
- Has created the world's first fully remote workplace designed for neurodiverse talent.1
- Employs team members across 30 U.S. states, with 75% of the workforce on the autism spectrum.1
The company has gained recognition as a FastCompany World Changing Idea, an Interbrand Breakthrough Brand, and an MIT SOLVE Winner in the Work of the Future Challenge.1
Anandan's work at Ultranauts Inc reflects his commitment to creating inclusive workplaces and leveraging neurodiversity as a business advantage. His leadership aims to provide superior value to customers while establishing a replicable blueprint for other employers to follow in creating more inclusive work environments.1
Highlights
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Help Team-X AI get to SXSW by up voting our panel topic!
A decade in the making, Team-X builds on breakthrough insights about humans @ work, and helps teams decode their unique chemistry to drive performance - for cognitively diverse teams (i.e. every #team), #crossfunctional and #distributed teams (which is already how most #knowledgework gets done), and soon, #hybrid human-AI teams (as #ai agent co-workers become more common).
Help us get to Austin and share the new formula for high performing teams - please vote for the Team-X panel today (or by Sun 8/18)
You’re not bad or good, or one dimensional. You’re just human. Part 5
When Ultranauts Inc was founded in 2013, we set out to demonstrate that #neurodiversity could be an advantage in business. Our theory of change was simple. First Prove It (Phase I). Then, Share it (Phase II).
We spent a decade on Phase I of our mission (Prove It), and by 2022, we were tripling revenues every three years. We had won the business of industry leaders by outperforming larger firms, and demonstrated the business impact of cognitively diverse teams through our specialized services in #QualityEngineering and #DataGovernance services. We had done so with fully #distributed and truly neurodiverse organization with teammates in 30 states across the U.S., 75% of whom were neurodivergent.
As we embark on Phase II of our mission (Share It), we’re leveraging a decade of learning and experimentation on building high performing, distributed, cognitively diverse teams. The most valuable lesson we learned was about creating a workplace where #everyone can thrive.
Lesson #0: A workplace that fails some of us, will eventually fail all of us
(see comments for links to previous posts containing Lessons #1 and #2).
A typical Agile project team at Ultranauts would have teammates who are sensory avoiding and need blocks of protected time for deep work, along with teammates who are sensory seeking and need bursts of interaction to power through their work. That team would likely have teammates who are extremely direct and for whom any kind of diplomatic couching of criticism would feel viscerally dishonest, collaborating with team mates with prior trauma for whom that kind of directness could be crushing. The majority of the team might have a disability, the technical lead might be non speaking, and their executive sponsor might have auditory challenges.
Because of the extreme needs of our teammates, we couldn’t celebrate check-the-box activities that raised awareness but changed nothing. Because of the incredible diversity of our organization, we couldn’t waste time on feel-good programs that prioritized one group’s needs over others and bred resentment.
We eventually realized that the Job-To-Be-Done was not about accommodating the needs of #Autistics or #Women or #Blacks or any other group, but about redesigning the workplace to make it better for all groups.
I’m so thrilled for this next phase of Ultranauts as we start leveraging the insights and tools that emerged in our Universal Workplace to help other #teams better understand their teammates' unique needs, remove the barriers to their collective #performance, and achieve their full potential!
Starting with http://team-x.ai/ 🙂
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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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