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Simon Murphy
Founder & Investor
Simon Murphy is a seasoned founder and investor known for his success in growing businesses across various sectors, including technology, digital, venture capital, sports, media, and more.
He has a diverse background, having founded an international search consulting business focused on building leadership teams, co-founded a men's haircare and wellness brand, and engaged in private equity investments in technology, consumer products, and real estate.
With an MBA in Finance, specializing in Private Equity & Venture Capital, from the University of Leicester, Simon has a solid educational foundation. He also possesses expertise in entrepreneurship, private equity, investment, capital raising, the tech sector, direct-to-consumer brands, strategy, and building leadership teams in the tech industry.
Simon's professional journey includes roles such as Founder & CEO at Talented Group, Partner/Investor at Nickleby Capital, Co-Founder & Board Director at MR, Director at Portchester Estates, Director/Partner at Talent2, Senior Consultant at Korn Ferry in the Technology Practice, and Managing Consultant in TMT at Hudson.
He has a remarkable track record of raising substantial equity capital exceeding ">50M from Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWs), Family Offices, and AIM-listed corporates. Simon Murphy's experience and skills make him a sought-after expert in business growth and investment strategies.
Highlights
🚀 Exciting Announcement: Our Fintech Startup Has Secured VC Funding!
Last week, I shared the conclusion of a previous venture, and today, I'm thrilled to announce a new beginning. Our fintech startup, which I've been passionately developing this year, has successfully secured venture capital backing from ZINC
My Co-Founder, Jack Finnegan and I embarked on this venture as part of Zinc VC's venture building program earlier this year. Selected from over 1,000 applicants, we joined 65 founders in Zinc’s VB6 Cohort, focusing on Financial Resilience. This was the genesis of our mission to impact future generations positively.
We're excited to announce that our business was among the select 8 co-founder teams to secure investment from Zinc in October. Until now, we've been quietly working on our product and building early user traction, and we're now ready to make our efforts public.
Congratulations to our incredible VB6 team-mates who are building fantastic startups too, please check them out and show them your support; Charisma Mehta, Brigitte Small FRSA, Charlie Munro, Janet Martin, Sofia Galante, Darwyn Palenzuela, Lee Ashby, Mohammed A Miah, Archit Tiwari, Max Chmyshuk, Dr. Hannah Forbes ⚡️, Alfredo Belfiori ⚡, 🟡Gaye "Gaia" Soykök🟡, Ayo Ogunde🦄✨
Our vision is centred on enabling everyday families to achieve their most important life goals, through simplified investing. Our aim is to level the playing field, allowing all families, not just the wealthiest, to build financial resilience and grow household wealth.
Our partnership with ZINC is a significant milestone. Zinc, an impact VC, shares our commitment to enhancing financial resilience. Their focus aligns seamlessly with our goals, together forming a powerful alliance for positive change. (*More details of our brand and product will follow soon)
A special thank you to the entire ZINC family for their support and belief in our vision. We are excited for the journey ahead, as we strive to make a meaningful impact on society; Ella Goldner (Levy), Paul Kirby, Julia Ross, Hannah Abdel-Hadi, Rosie Webster, Eleanor Ford, Caitlin Scheybeler, 😃 David Fogel, Francesca Marsden, Alex Cheswick, Diellza Ramadani, Rozlyn Redd, Nyasha Fraser Yerro
It takes a village to launch a startup 🙏 therefore we also want to thank a selection of our incredible advisors and Zinc fellows; Roshan B., Berthe Latreille, Andrew Robinson, Ve Dewey, MBA FRSA, Oisin Teevan, Wendy Jephson, Adam Proctor, Winsie Chen, Nitesh (Tesh) Srivastava
Last Friday marked a bittersweet milestone for me. I sold my shares in a business I co-founded 8 years ago alongside Jamie Stevens. This transaction concludes a challenging 3-year legal battle, where Jamie and I stood against our former joint-venture partners for multiple breaches of contract. Our resolve to defend our rights against a PLC with far deeper pockets, who attempted to bully us out of our own creation, was vindicated in the end. Earlier this year, the PLC agreed to settle our legal claims, covering both our legal costs and theirs. As part of the settlement, we agreed to sell our shares following an independent business valuation. Ideally, we wouldn’t have chosen this path, but after spending a significant six-figure sum, three years of our lives, and considerable emotional energy battling a better funded adversary, we made a pragmatic decision to end the fight and realise some of the value we had created. This experience taught me many things but mostly life should not be consumed by endless disputes and negative energy, especially against corporate managers more concerned with their salaries and declining share options than the business's vision. Jamie and I never fully realised our vision for MR but we take pride in knowing that hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide love our products and the confidence they bring. I want to thank everyone who has supported us over the past eight years, especially those who helped us shape the brand vision in the early stages, including the team at B&B studio. Kerry and Shaun, you and your team are amazing and we loved working with you. A massive thank you as well to the incredible teams at Boots UK and Amazon for your support of our brand. A special shoutout to our 'rockstar' lawyer, Adam Morallee and everyone at Brandsmiths. Adam, you're a legend mate, and your commitment, expertise, and tireless efforts in defending our rights as founders were crucial in securing our settlement and successful exit. I’d like to thank Jamie for his friendship, creativity and your resolve and guts to not back down despite extreme pressure. You’re a great business partner and a true friend x Lastly, a heartfelt thank you to all our friends and especially my family for being there for me through the financial, emotional, and mental challenges this journey required. Time is too precious to be held back by negativity, and I am looking forward to announcing an exciting new venture soon.
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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.