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Seth Lasser
Founder & CEO @ Lantern. Driving growth for Digital Health & Consumer Internet startups.
Seth Lasser is the founder and CEO of Lantern, a growth agency that combines experienced leaders with functional experts to drive strategy and execution across the entire funnel.
With decades of experience, Seth has a background in strategy consulting, marketing leadership, and startup environments, where he has played pivotal roles in companies' growth trajectories.
At Lantern, Seth and his team support clients in executing comprehensive marketing plans, covering areas like messaging, brand strategy, website design, creative development, conversion rate optimization, and more.
Seth Lasser's expertise spans various domains such as e-commerce, brand strategy, mobile marketing, customer acquisition, SEM/PPC, SEO, web analytics, and product marketing, among others.
He has a strong educational foundation with an MBA in Marketing from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management and a BA in History & Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Seth's career includes roles at notable companies like Doctor On Demand, 1800flowers.com, and Atomic, where he has made significant contributions to marketing and growth initiatives.
His leadership positions range from VP of Marketing to Founder & CEO, showcasing his versatile skill set in areas such as business development, digital marketing, PR, and customer research.
Seth Lasser's experience at Lantern has helped numerous companies in the Digital Health and Consumer Internet sectors achieve substantial revenue growth and milestones.
He is known for his ability to blend high-level strategic thinking with hands-on execution, fostering a community of talented marketers and creatives to drive success for early-stage startups.
Highlights
I think PR is overrated.
Some of you will disagree - here's what I've seen:
Most of the time you’ll try and fail. It’s just quantitatively harder to get coverage than ever before.
There are 6.2 PR people for every reporter. PR week estimates only 3% of pitches get picked up. The press still covers every new iPhone color - but startup funding and launches often fall by the wayside.
If you do get coverage? Don’t get me wrong - seeing your startup’s name in lights is fun.
Ten years ago, I ran marketing at a long-forgotten Uber wannabe (hey S. Daniel Leon). TechCrunch picked up our NYC launch. Success! There were a lot of high-fives.
We got a lot of traffic - but barely any new users.
At Lantern, I've helped launch dozens of digital health and consumer companies. The most successful ones didn’t spend a dime on splashy PR launches.
Instead, we focused on slow, steady growth driven by delighting customers - not reporters. These brands were relentless about improving the customer experience and optimizing their marketing funnels using multiple channels over time.
By focusing on patient, strategic brand building, we are able to: • Use multiple marketing channels in sequence to build credibility • Grow a brand through consistent messaging over time • Evolve our messaging as we learn more about our customers
In contrast, the pitfalls of chasing launch PR for most startups are: • You likely won't get the press coverage you expect (unless you’re connected at the hip to a major brand) • PR focuses on short-term awareness rather than solving customer problems • PR may generate a temporary spike of interest, but it won’t translate into sustainable growth
I saw this play out with Keeps, the leading men's hair loss brand I was privileged to help Steven Gutentag and Demetri Karagas launch.
Our competitors scored major press coverage. We iterated on landing pages. They took over stadium bathrooms. We tweaked email sequences to methodically improve retention. They bought Superbowl spots. We delivered a focused consumer experience.
Keeps became the #1 men's hair loss brand - without any major PR wins.
Don't get distracted by the perceived glamor of launch PR. Instead, focus on building your brand systematically across channels over time. Consistency trumps splashy one-off moments and leads to more efficient marketing.
Of course, nothing in the startup world is black and white. There are some exceptions to the rule that I'll drop in the comments. Curious - who else has seen a PR push really move the needle for an early-stage company?
Helping Founders is my favorite thing. Feel free to DM me to start a conversation.
In my work as a growth advisor, I have a lot of conversations with Founders. Their most common question: “What’s the marketing secret to scaling my startup?”
The answer isn’t really a secret: Develop high-converting messaging.
That is, messaging that is compelling to your target audience and differentiated from alternatives in your category. Extra points for having personality.
Of course, this is much easier said than done.
There are TONS of messaging frameworks out there. Some are too academic and hard to put into action. Others are superficial and lead to generic messaging that doesn't land with anyone. After years of tinkering, I’ve come to rely on a proven six step framework that we use for our clients at Lantern:
- Build a Customer Persona
- Construct the Benefit Ladder
- Develop the Brand Pyramid
- Anticipate the Barriers
- Test with Target Consumers
- Launch & Iterate
Today’s post will cover the first step and over the next few weeks, I’ll lay out the others in enough detail that you can put this framework into action for your business.
Step 1: Build an In-Depth Customer Persona
The most important thing to do when marketing a startup is to ground yourself in your customer. This goes beyond “we're targeting millennials.”
Instead, paint a complete picture of who you are speaking to. This allows you to craft resonant messaging that speaks directly to your customers' needs and beliefs. Consider:
• Basic demographics: Age, gender, location, and income level. Who is this person on paper? • Motivations: Your customer’s pain points and desired outcomes. What problems do they want to solve? • Awareness journey: How they discover your product. Where is the friction and points of delight? • Perceptions: Your customers beliefs about your category. What opinions do they already have? • Decision process: Their path to purchase. How do they research? Who is involved in their decision to buy? • Ideal experience: The best case user interaction with your product. How can you deliver their dream scenario?
Here’s an example of how this work informs marketing strategy: Both Signos and Sequence are weight management startups, targeting women in their 30s and 40s who want to lose weight. Yet they have totally different consumer personas based on different core insights.
The Signos insight: many consumers want to be in control of their journey and don’t believe in easy solutions. They want to put in the work — they just need guidance on how to make their weight loss efforts more successful.
The Sequence insight: another segment of consumers have tried everything to lose weight and have given up. They feel stuck. They need a significant push to restart their weight loss journey.
These are two companies in the same category with totally different consumers. These insights led my team to devise totally different messaging for each company.
What are some other pieces that traditional "target consumer" frameworks miss?
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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.