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Torrey Leonard
VP of Product @ Affiniti
Professional Background
Torrey Leonard is a dynamic entrepreneur and recognized leader in the fintech industry, whose innovative insights and technical expertise have reshaped the landscape of financial technology. With a remarkable career that began at the tender age of twelve when he founded his first online business, Torrey has consistently demonstrated a strong ability to leverage technology for business success. This early venture generated an impressive six-figure annual recurring revenue (ARR) across a half a million users, leading to its acquisition two years later, showcasing his innate business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit.
As a full-stack software engineer, Torrey honed his skills during his high school and college years by contracting with startups in diverse sectors including high finance, blockchain technology, data visualization, and artificial intelligence. His broad technical skill set enabled him to not only understand the complexities of software development but also contribute to breakthrough projects that have defined his career.
Recognizing Torrey's contributions to technology and innovation, The Business Journals named him one of the "Innovators Under 25" shortly after he graduated. This accolade solidified his reputation as a forward thinker capable of influencing the next generation of technologies and solutions.
In 2020, Torrey founded Jeti, a mobile application that gained rapid traction across colleges in the eastern U.S. His hands-on approach to design, development, and marketing fueled the app’s success, resulting in over 50,000 early access users in just two months. Under his visionary leadership, Jeti secured seed investment funding and expanded its workforce to over 25 employees, further underscoring his capabilities in scaling startups.
Torrey's career trajectory continued to ascend, and he assumed the role of Head of Product at Pebble, a venture-backed fintech company, where he not only led engineering initiatives but also directed growth strategies based on user feedback. In 2022, Torrey took the mantle of Vice President of Product at Affiniti, a fintech organization backed by prestigious investors such as Eniac Ventures, Mastercard, Y Combinator, and SoFi. His role at Affiniti marks another significant milestone in his journey, as he combines his technical and business prowess to drive product innovation and success on a broader scale.
Education and Achievements
Torrey Leonard's educational background is a testament to his commitment to understanding the intricate relationship between technology and user experience. He pursued a Bachelor's degree in Communication Technology, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience, at The Ohio State University. This program provided him with essential knowledge that informs his approach to product design and development, ensuring that technological solutions meet the real needs of users.
In addition to his foundational education, Torrey has benefited from the entrepreneurial resources and mentorship opportunities provided by Y Combinator, a leading startup accelerator that has helped launch numerous successful tech companies. His time at Y Combinator further equipped him with the strategic insights necessary for navigating the fast-paced world of tech startups.
Achievements
Throughout his career, Torrey has amassed a remarkable list of achievements that highlight his versatility, leadership, and impact within the fintech and startup ecosystems. Here are some of his notable accomplishments:
- Founder of Multiple Successful Ventures: Beyond Jeti, Torrey launched VaultCraft/Voxela Networks, LLC, and served as CTO at Grapevine, illustrating his ability to identify market opportunities and create viable business models.
- Head of Product at Pebble: In this pivotal role, Torrey significantly influenced product development that not only engaged users but also positioned the company competitively within the fintech sector.
- Vice President of Product at Affiniti: His current position allows him to leverage his insights and expertise to improve product offerings and enhance user satisfaction alongside a talented team of professionals backed by prominent venture firms.
- Advisory Roles: As a former Advisory Board Member at Linear Logic Inc., Torrey has contributed his technical and strategic knowledge to augment the growth and innovative potential of emerging companies.
Torrey Leonard’s multifaceted career showcases the power of combining technical expertise with entrepreneurial vision, creating a unique profile that is increasingly sought after in the tech industry. His journey from a child entrepreneur to an influential leader in fintech serves as an inspiration for aspiring technologists and business leaders. His ongoing commitment to innovation and user-centric solutions promises a bright future in technology, and his influence continues to be felt across the industry.
Highlights
After almost a year of building, I’m beyond excited to announce what we’ve been working on over at Thoughtly– the first-ever CCaaS platform built from the ground up for the era of generative AI.
By leveraging LLMs, Thoughtly creates human-like AI agents capable of handling every inbound and outbound phone call for high-volume contact centers. Everything you can train a human agent to say and do, you can train your Thoughtly to do the same.
We’re building a world where human voice and artificial intelligence coalesce to create the ultimate user experience for business interactions. Just as companies like Apple enhance consumer devices with voice AI experiences like Siri, we believe businesses should leverage the same technology. At Thoughtly, our innovations ensure zero hold time, 24/7 service, full scalability, deep integration, and perfect, personalized customer service every single time.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫.
When I first reached out to Casey Mackrell back in July, I couldn’t have imagined the incredible (and difficult!) journey we’ve been on ever since. From meeting our killer sales lead David Khaydatov, pitching Will Zell and the Ohio Angel Collective, being invited to work in San Francisco with awesome founders during Pioneer's summit, meeting Gaurav Jain at his offices in South Park, setting up our tiny office in New York, hanging out with Jen Hilibrand from Greycroft, to building an epic team– the journey so far has been nothing short of life-changing.
I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for everyone who has joined me on this journey so far. And we’re only just getting started!
We’ve raised our $3M seed round with participation from Afore Capital, Greycroft, Expansion Venture Capital, Shift Left Ventures, Pioneer, the Ohio Angel Collective, Andrew Ofstad from Airtable, and Rico Mallozzi from Sapphire Ventures.
Thank you so much to our investors, team, and everyone who has played a role in bringing us to where we are today. Together, let's usher in a new era of communication where every voice is empowered, every connection is personalized, and best of all– no more hold times.
#ThoughtlyLaunch #AI #VentureCapital
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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.