Suggestions
Thierry Deflandre
Pro bono Board Member at OVO Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs
Professional Background
Thierry Deflandre is a distinguished figure in the automotive industry, showcasing a remarkable career that spans over several decades, characterized by a strong commitment to leadership, strategic foresight, and visionary analysis. As a seasoned board member and managing director, Thierry has held significant positions in various organizations, where he has implemented transformative strategies that have enhanced operational efficiency and fostered long-term growth.
Currently, he serves as the Managing Director of ACT Sprl and is a pro bono board member of OVO vzw (Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs), emphasizing his dedication to mentoring and supporting emerging entrepreneurs in the automotive sector. In addition, he provides strategic advice to electric vehicle companies, including Vitaemobility and Circle, which shows his engagement with innovative and sustainable transportation solutions.
Thierry has an impressive track record as a leader, having served as the President and Board Member of Zen Car, a car-sharing initiative, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the organizational direction. Furthermore, his experience extends internationally, with tenures in managing directors' roles across multiple operating entities in six countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, France, and South Africa. His expertise is often sought after, and he has contributed to notable organizations such as Febiac, Fidenco, Autopolis, and Financière Prooftag, enhancing their operational capabilities and competitive positioning in the market.
Thierry's professional journey is marked by a commitment to turn-around management and team development. He notably transformed Circuit Zolder operations from structural losses to achieving break-even levels, driving growth through diversification and community engagement. His passion for innovation and high-tech is evident through his three-year coaching role with a tech startup focused on document security, where he oversaw two capital rounds and established robust corporate governance structures.
During his decade-long tenure as the CEO of a business-to-business distribution company for leisure goods, Thierry's leadership guided the company from a revenue of 50 million euros to 250 million euros, largely through strategic acquisitions and the formation of a cohesive team focused on both front office and back office operations.
Thierry also brings over 15 years of experience as a managing director in Suzuki Car Import and distribution, coupled with more than 10 years as an active member of the Executive Committee of the Alcopa Family Holding. His breadth of experience ensures that he has developed a nuanced understanding of diverse business environments within the automotive realm.
Education and Achievements
Thierry holds an impressive educational background that includes an Engineer's Degree in Commercial Engineering, graduated cum laude from UHasselt, and a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from the prestigious Purdue University. He has further enhanced his expertise by studying the Basics of Corporate Governance at Guberna, equipping him with essential knowledge to navigate complex organizational landscapes effectively.
His contributions to various organizations and projects reflect his commitment not only to his professional development but also to the communities he serves. Thierry is actively involved in several notable organizations, having served as a board member at Circle-car and previously as a founding member and managing director of ACT Sprl. Additionally, he was instrumental as the President of the Board of Directors at Zen Car and played vital roles in numerous organizations, including E-Car 333 and Prooftag.
Thierry also shared roles with the FEBIAC Motorshow committee and served as Vice President of the motorcycle section, showcasing his comprehensive understanding of the automotive industry's diverse segments. His leadership experience transcends traditional roles, as he also contributed significantly as CEO at leading firms such as Circuit Zolder and Prooftag, where he utilized his strategic insights to steer organizations toward sustainable success.
Personal Attributes
A multilingual professional, Thierry Deflandre speaks fluent French, Dutch, and English. He has fair proficiency in German and basic notions of Spanish, showcasing his ability to communicate effectively in diverse settings and collaborate with global partners in the automotive industry.
Outside of his professional pursuits, Thierry engages in various hobbies, including skiing and serving as an international FIA steward as well as a national RACB steward. Additionally, he is an active member of a Rotary club, reflecting his commitment to community service and fostering connections. His current projects include a focus on e-karting, e-cars, and e-F4 single-seaters, highlighting his proactive approach to embracing new technologies and advancements in the automotive sphere.
As a driven individual, Thierry is also dedicated to coaching fellow entrepreneurs through his involvement with Ondernemer voor Ondernemer, further underscoring his passion for empowering others in the business landscape. His expansive career demonstrates a blend of strategic thinking, leadership acumen, and a commitment to innovation, making him a valuable asset in any boardroom and a force for positive change in the automotive industry.
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.