Suggestions
Stephen Levin
Head of Ops, Finance, People at Flashbots
Professional Background
Stephen Levin is a seasoned operations and analytics expert, known for his strategic approach to business development. Currently, he is a vital member of the leadership team at Flashbots, an innovative company valued at $1 billion, which focuses on developing core infrastructure for Ethereum while addressing the challenges posed by miner extractable value (MEV). In his role at Flashbots, Stephen is dedicated to ensuring that critical decisions are made and the organization stays aligned with its strategic goals. He oversees all business operations, implementing effective decision-making practices across the organization.
Before joining Flashbots, Stephen had a remarkable journey at Zapier, a leader in automation software. In his capacity as a Senior Director, he led the Business Operations team and served as the Executive Sponsor for the Pricing and Packaging initiative. Stephen’s comprehensive approach in Biz Ops involved driving key company initiatives and facilitating interdepartmental collaboration. He successfully steered the Weekly and Monthly Business Review processes, aided in annual strategic planning, and ensured robust revenue performance through effective pricing strategies and monetization techniques. His strategic oversight contributed significantly to sustaining an extraordinary 600% growth in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) while maintaining the company's profitability.
Prior to his tenure at Zapier, Stephen honed his skills in data analytics at Sestra Systems, where he contributed to the development of IoT-connected beverage dispensing systems, and Speek, an online communication platform. His extensive experience extends to consulting roles, where he has been an owner and coach at his consultancy, Think Analytically, and has played pivotal roles in organizations focused on data analytics and operational efficiency.
Education and Achievements
Stephen’s educational background laid a solid foundation for his successful career in business operations and analytics. He earned both a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Master of Science in Commerce, specializing in Marketing and Management, from the prestigious University of Virginia, graduating in 2011. This blend of analytical and business acumen from a renowned institution has equipped him with the necessary skills to excel in data-driven environments and make impactful business decisions.
His journey into the business world began during his school years at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), where he ran a small tutoring organization that sparked his interest in leadership and entrepreneurship. This early experience was instrumental in shaping his passion for helping organizations thrive through effective operational strategies and analytics.
Notable Achievements
Stephen Levin’s ability to bring innovative solutions to complex challenges is reflected in his accomplishments across various organizations. At Zapier, his leadership in the Business Operations team was crucial as the company underwent rapid growth, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning and operational alignment.
His expertise in pricing strategy and revenue growth led to a remarkable transformation in how Zapier approached its market strategy, contributing to its sustainability and continued expansion. By ensuring seamless collaboration between departments, Stephen was able to implement effective OKR systems that focused the company on its most important goals.
Stephen's previous roles exemplify his versatility and commitment to operational excellence. Through his leadership at Sestra Systems, he led data analytics initiatives that drove innovation in product offerings, while his mentoring and coaching roles at 1776 showcased his dedication to nurturing the next generation of business leaders. His proficiency in analytics not only comes from practical experience but also as a former Chief of Staff to the CEO at Zapier, where he directly influenced key strategic initiatives and company direction.
As a thought leader in analytics and operations, Stephen has consistently demonstrated the ability to synthesize data into actionable insights that enhance business performance. His experience as the Head of Analytics at MITRE, and his participation in various consulting projects, further attests to his depth of knowledge and dedication to advancing operational strategies across diverse sectors.
Overall, Stephen Levin's impressive background, analytical skills, and strategic leadership capabilities have made him a valuable asset in every organization he has been a part of. His ability to bridge the gap between data and actionable business strategies highlights his career as one characterized by helping companies achieve their visions and operational excellence.
Highlights
#hiring for another role on the Ops team at Flashbots! This time I'm looking for an Ops person focused on our #events.
Flashbots does lots of events, and they are often chaotic to orchestrate, with challenging internal and external stakeholders and last-minute planning.
This is a high-intensity role, requiring notable international travel and on-call expectations while you're there, but will be a ton of fun for the right person!
Looking for extremely high attention to detail combined with the flexibility to roll with the chaos of Flashbots' events style.
While events experience is obviously a benefit, it's not a core requirement if you can prove to me that you're going to do a great job. Background as an EA, Teacher, or similar cat-herding could be a good fit.
Link in the comments.
#operations
Making the first hire on my team at Flashbots: a Controller!
The ideal profile is an experienced Controller who's excited to grow into the leading finance voice in the company. We're a small, efficient team and intend to stay that way, so expect to be a finance org of 1 (with outsource help) indefinitely.
But with the small team comes outsized opportunity for influence: You'll own all of the financial day to day, plus play an integral role in things like our fundraise, revenue design, and company operations.
I'm excited to work with someone who wants to take ownership for an important function at the business and work with me to ensure that the operations team overall is as impactful as possible.
About Us: Flashbots plays a critical role in the Ethereum ecosystem and has researched and developed multiple pieces of infrastructure that garner adoption rates over 90%. The ops team is here to help ensure that our researcher and builders can continue doing their best work in a long-term sustainable company.
Link to Job in the Comments. Feel free to reach out with any questions!
People also viewed
Related People
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.
People also viewed
Related People