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Sarah Spoja
Chief Financial Officer at Tipalti | ex-KKR | ex-Bain | Passion for connecting with Finance Leaders, Globally | Stanford GSB and Williams College
Sarah Spoja is an accomplished finance executive with a diverse background in consulting, private equity, and fintech. She currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer at Tipalti, a position she has held since August 2018.13 In addition to her role at Tipalti, Sarah has been a Board Member at Zibo since August 2020.3
Career Highlights
Education and Early Career: Sarah earned her BA in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College (2000-2004) and later pursued an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business (2008-2010).13 She began her career as a Consultant at Bain & Company, where she worked from 2004 to 2008.3
Private Equity Experience: After completing her MBA, Sarah joined KKR Capstone as a Director, where she worked from September 2010 to August 2018.3 At KKR Capstone, she focused on financial services, eCommerce, and retail portfolio companies in KKR's North American Portfolio.3
Current Roles:
- Chief Financial Officer at Tipalti (August 2018 - Present)3
- Board Member at Zibo (August 2020 - Present)3
Expertise and Skills
Sarah Spoja is known for her expertise in:
- Financial Modeling
- Operations
- Pricing Strategy
- Management
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Corporate Development
- Payments
Her experience spans across various industries, including fintech, retail, consumer products, and private equity.1
Recent Activities
Sarah has been active on LinkedIn, sharing insights and experiences related to her role as a CFO and her involvement in diversity initiatives. In December 2024, she posted about Nasdaq's efforts to promote diversity among the companies represented on the exchange.2
Sarah Spoja's LinkedIn username is indeed sarahdickens, as mentioned in the query.34
Highlights
Huge thank you to Inc. Magazine for naming Tipalti to the #Inc5000 list for fastest growing companies. This is our 7th consecutive year on the list which is a huge honor and also a real testiment to Tipalti's product, customer satisfaction and continued sustainable business model to grow at fast rates far past the start-up scale for many years in a row. #Kudos to the whole Tipalti Team!
There is a lot of talk about what a soft landing could look like, and yet when I hear it my mind races to the combination of a Simone Biles Vault with Jerome Powell "sticking the landing"… (just me?)
(And, thanks ChatGPT for the best image and the badly prompted bloopers..)
All jokes aside, in simple terms, what does it mean to have a soft landing and why are people so concerned?
A soft landing in monetary policy terms, means the ability for the Federal Reserve to cool down a heated economy without driving it into a recession. In practice this means transitioning an economy from high growth and high inflation to moderate growth and sustainable inflation, without impacting, or with a minimal impact to, employment levels. So let’s break this down.
INFLATION: Inflation has come down significantly from the peeks in 2022, but has some ways to go to hit the targets the Fed has stated. 🔼 2021 – Inflation jumped up to 4.7% from 1.2% 2020, driven by the post-covid recovery and supply chain issues. ⏫ 2022 – Inflation jumped again to 8.0% driven by continued supply chain issues and geo-political factors. 🔽 2023 – Inflation began to ease but remained elevated at 4% ❔ 2024 – The Fed has publicly stated a target of 2% that it hopes to reach. For context the 20-year average inflation rate in the US is approximately 2.5%. In July 2024 the inflation rate was 2.97%.
EMPLOYMENT: 📊 There are a few employment metrics tracked, but the one most cited is the unemployment rate. Less than 4% unemployment is good, representing “full employment” in the United States.
📉 The implication of a Soft Landing is to get inflation down without impacting employment, and as such, the US has seen under 4% unemployment rates consistently since February 2022 at the same time as Interest rates were rising in order to curtail growth and inflation.
📈 However, In recent months, the unemployment rate has increased – 4.0% in May 2024, 4.1% in June 2024 and 4.3% in July 2024 and this has caused the concerns in whether or not the window for a soft landing has been missed if unemployment has risen above the 4% line.
SUMMARY:
As I am not a macro-economist in my spare time, I will have to leave it to others to discuss what could or should be done to navigate these challenges for both the US and Global economy. Achieving these goals with the backdrop of a US election and many geo-political threats at the same time is not for the faint of heart. All I can say, is as a CFO of a tech scale-up more certainty is better than less, and likely all of us will need to plan for a few different interest rate and GDP growth scenarios in our 2025 planning depending on how the decisions over the next 3-4 months shake out.
CFOs in my network – in what ways are you preparing for different scenarios in your 2025 planning?
📈 Hi, I'm Sarah, CFO at Tipalti 🔔 Connecting with other Finance leaders is a passion of mine. Follow me here: Sarah Spoja
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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
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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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.
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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.