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Scott Jenkins
Finance & Operations Leader in Tech Startups
Professional Background
Scott Jenkins is a seasoned strategy and execution partner in the realm of early-stage technology, SaaS, and service industries. With an expansive career spanning B2B Enterprise, GovTech, EdTech, HealthTech, and E-commerce, he has cultivated a versatile skill set tailored to meet the dynamic needs of these sectors. His proficiency as a dual finance and operations leader positions him uniquely to drive operational efficiency and strategic growth for organizations.
Throughout his career, Scott has been instrumental in developing and owning comprehensive operating models that resonate with business objectives. With an acute ability to identify functional challenges across various domains, he adeptly supports tactical enablement, ensuring that each department is poised to thrive. This holistic approach underscores his commitment to fostering a cohesive and high-performing organizational culture.
Scott is not just a strategist; he is also a masterful team builder and integrator. His expertise spans business operations, finance, go-to-market strategies, delivery, and product development. His robust experience encompasses both domestic and international markets, making him a versatile leader capable of navigating complex global challenges. Scott’s ability to mentor and build teams is reflected in his successful track record of helping founders grow their businesses from inception to exit. He excels in guiding startups through crucial phases, including strategy formulation, financial planning, fundraising, and acquisition processes.
Education and Achievements
Scott Jenkins holds a Bachelor of Science in Process Biotechnology from Teesside University. This educational background has provided him with a solid foundation in scientific principles and analytical thinking, skills that serve as a cornerstone in his approach to business strategy and operations.
Throughout his distinguished career, Scott has held several prominent positions across various organizations. Notably, he served as the Fractional CFO/COO at CoScaler, where he was entrusted with high-level financial strategy and operational oversight. His role as CFO/COO at SimpliGov was pivotal in steering the company towards financial sustainability while implementing operational efficiencies. Similarly, during his tenure as CFO/COO at ThinkSmart LLC, Scott demonstrated a keen ability to innovate and optimize productivity involving financial management and operational strategy.
Scott's leadership capabilities were further exemplified through his role as COO at Grid Dynamics, where he was responsible for operational excellence in a fast-paced tech environment. As the CEO at Altula, he not only led the strategic direction of the company but also pioneered initiatives that drove both operational and financial growth.
His career is adorned with other notable experiences, such as serving as VP of Finance and Operations at HumanConcepts, a Saba Company, where he played a critical role in merging financial acumen with operational strategies that significantly enhanced the company’s market position. As the Director of EMEA at HumanConcepts, he leveraged his expertise to expand the company’s reach in the European, Middle Eastern, and African markets, showcasing his global operational insight.
Scott's journey also includes valuable contributions as Commercial Director at Business Money, and Business Operations Director at GoInteractTV. Each role he undertook contributed to his overall understanding of the intricacies involved in business operations and finance within a technology-driven landscape. His earlier experiences as a Business Planning Analyst at Sony and Data Analyst at Hitachi Europe equipped him with analytical skills fundamental to interpreting data for strategic decision-making.
Achievements
Scott Jenkins' career achievements stand as a testament to his capabilities and dedication to excellence in the tech industry. He has not only guided startups and established enterprises but also played a crucial role in fostering environments that enable teams to thrive. Here are some key highlights of his achievements:
- Successfully developed and implemented operating models that increased efficiency across organizations.
- Drove strategy and financial planning for diverse projects resulting in significant revenue growth and successful exits for startup founders.
- Demonstrated leadership abilities that have enabled organizations to navigate through critical growth phases.
- Cultivated collaborative teams across finance, operations, development, and product management to ensure seamless execution of business strategies.
- His work in GovTech and HealthTech sectors contributed to advancing technological solutions that address public sector challenges and improve service delivery.
In summary, Scott Jenkins brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the technology and operations
Highlights
4 ‘obvious’ (but often forgotten) steps in small business growth…
1) Get your accounting sorted out early, and do it right. It will save you $$$$ and improve the performance of your business in every area.
DON’T use your CPAs add-on bookkeeping service, you’ll likely end up over-paying for late information, meaningless reports and lack of detail (same is true for most offshore ‘budget’ bookkeepers).
DO have an experience finance business manager setup it up and review the month end close with you and train a 1099 bookkeeper or internal resource to maintain your books. Use your CPA for filings, tax and compliance advice.
2) Build (and maintain) a full month-by-month financial forecast. It will improve your cash flow and help you prioritize and manage the rest of your business.
DON’T just forecast sales. Your sales forecast will be wrong but your expenses shouldn’t vary too much so you’ll know what level of financial risk you are running at all times.
DO maintain your forecast regularly (review no less than once per month) and connect it to your monthly actuals reporting with the same format so you can interrogate variance and identify trends.
3) If you have to deal with some small operational outlier more than twice in three months, it’s not an outlier, fix the issue with process, policy or automation.
DON’T Ignore it or ask someone who doesn’t understand potential unintended consequences to fix it.
DO Allocate and empower ownership of a solution to a subject matter expert who will communicate the proposed solution to you and other stakeholders before implementation.
4) Identify SMART goals and work backwards to develop a sequence of events with realistic timeline. This applies to everything, big or small, development, ops or sales - it will provide the entire framework for your business, giving clarity and making decision-making easy.
DON’T Make untested or overly optimistic assumptions.
DO Question everything, return to the sequence of events, amend and iterate accordingly. It will help you set up the business and your team for success.
#smallbusiness #founders #fractionalCFO
I’m excited to announce my new venture - CoScaler fractional finance & ops for founders. We help founder-CEOs free time from operational details by building scalable business infrastructure and filling experience gaps within existing teams. More than fractional CFO services, we provide planning, implementation and day-to-day support across Finance, Accounting, Business Ops and RevOps. Please like, share or otherwise reference me in if you know any founder-CEOs looking for experienced but hands-on help to scale or exit.
https://lnkd.in/gVayJDkD
#founders #fractionalcfo #earlystagegrowth #coscaler
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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
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- 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.
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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.