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Richard Muscat
Climate podcaster, entrepreneur, and advisor
Richard Muscat is an entrepreneur, podcast host, and climate action advocate known for his work in climate entrepreneurship through the Fatal Error blog.
His educational background includes an M.A. from the Edward de Bono Institute, a B.Sc. (Hons.) from the University of Malta, and participation in programs at Malta Enterprise / InvestorNet.
With a diverse career, Richard has founded multiple ventures such as Carbon Custodians, Climate Pulse, and Fatal Error.
His professional journey also includes roles such as Director of Marketing at Close, Growth & Marketing Lead at Automattic (Jetpack), Programme Manager at Redgate Software, Head of User Experience, User Experience Specialist, and Management Consultant at Redgate Software.
Additionally, he has held positions like Senior Web Specialist at Uniblue Systems Ltd, Creative Director at Startup Malta Foundation for Entrepreneurship, and Software Engineer / Graphic Designer at Socratxt and StartMarketing Ltd.
Richard Muscat has a wide range of experience in software engineering, graphic design, user experience, and entrepreneurship, making him a versatile professional in the tech industry.
Highlights
I am not stupid.
It's easy to feel stupid when you listen to investors, financiers, and VCs talk. To start with, the sheer volume of jargon and acronyms thrown at you in just the most basic of presentations is overwhelming. The complexity of financial models, legalese, and convoluted documentation is even worse.
In #climate and #impact investment it is worse.
This week I sat through four separate talks or events on the topic. The regular complexity of the #VC world takes on an additional layer of jargon that talks about #sustainability — some taken directly from scientific patois and some recently invented to make impact work "fit" with #capitalism. Terms like "Climate Performance Potential" or "Total Addressable Carbon".
It is very easy to feel stupid in these contexts.
And as a consequence, its very easy to think that they have the answers. That the money being invest into "impact" is doing its job and that the system that is deeply responsible for our current set of crises has figured out a way to get us out of them by using the same set of principles and mindsets that got us into them in the first place.
But here are two things VCs don't like to talk about.
The first, is that they are pretty bad at their job. There is ample evidence for this. To quote Forbes: "Most VCs do poorly because early stage VCs fail on 80% of their ventures and there are few home runs to offset the many failures." And other research indicates that "a random portfolio will outperform most VC funds." (https://lnkd.in/dc43FWxc)
A random portfolio does better and an 80% failure rate.
Those are not good enough odds on which to bet solving an existential crisis.
The second this is this. All of the metrics, equations, acronyms, measurements, disclosures, and due diligences being applied to measure "climate impact" are almost uniformly applied towards making things "slightly less bad".
Less emissions compared to what we would have emitted. Slightly less horrific mining conditions. A little less waste dumped in the wrong place.
Hardly any of this approaches the required level of #regeneration.
The language and the complexity are there to obfuscate that fact that in fact, it is really really quite simple: You are either acting ethically and sustainably or you're not.
It's time to unfck VC if we are to unfck the planet.
#degrowth #BadAtMonopoly
Photo by Егор Камелев on Unsplash
How do you unf*ck the planet?
As I've been enjoying a summer break travelling by train across Europe and spending time in Malta I keep coming back to how badly we have damaged our ecosystems, our neighbours, and ourselves.
A bay I remember thriving with octopus, sea urchins, and crabs now has more boats than fish. A lonely ray, one eel, one mussel. 89 boats.
Skylines over which you could once see the sun rise behind rocky garigue are now clogged with ugly flats, half abandoned as taller blocks rise up behind the ones "blocking the view".
And this is just one tiny island.
The scale of the #regeneration needed is unbelievable and daunting.
Which is why, as I am preparing to share some new projects in September, I am keen to express my gratitude and very candidly promote some educational programmes that I am particularly indebted to.
The first is RegenIntel.
Their Foundations course is (literally) a series of masterclasses in an exceptional gamut of regenerative solutions and topics. There is a practical orientation that I absolutely loved and spending time in person with people like Chad, Mamta, and Ryan, some of the Project Drawdown founders, was literally priceless.
Apply here: https://lnkd.in/d7eZ-7_u
The second is (re)Biz, and in particular their Project Tipping Point course. Led by Erin, Ryan, and Kasper this was a transformative experience on an emotional level without which I don't think I would have found a strong orientation. They combine spirituality with indigenous knowledge and political theory in a manner I've not seen elsewhere.
Apply here: https://lnkd.in/dPe2f6pV
I went into these courses feeling very skeptical, having seen a lot of unseemly behaviour in the #climate and #impact space.
And I am still skeptical of magical solutions.
But what I found with these courses — and more importantly with these communities — was a space to openly talk and debate even the most thorny of issues.
I tend to be #degrowth aligned. I still am. I had great conversations in these spaces with people who are as far off politically or emotionally as it is possible to be while still wanting to be a climate solutionist.
That is something I've experienced in very few places. And I feel all the better for it. Stronger in my arguments, and better at understanding other points of view.
Photo by Krzysztof Niewolny on Unsplash
#badatmonopoly
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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.