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Bjorn Eriksson
Entrepreneur
Professional Background
Bjorn Eriksson is a distinguished marketing leader and business innovator with a robust track record of building successful businesses across the realms of enterprise software, hardware, and services. With extensive experience in various marketing functions, Bjorn has a unique ability to combine strategic vision with practical execution. Over the years, he has developed a deep expertise in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies, and digital marketing capabilities that drive measurable performance and results.
His career journey is marked by a diverse range of roles in high-profile organizations where he has not only contributed but has also led teams to achieve significant milestones. Notably, he served as the Chief Executive Officer at Always Labs and was the President & CEO at Blue Steel Advisory. Throughout his career, Bjorn has held pivotal positions such as Senior Vice President of Marketing at Instructure, Chief Marketing Officer at SmartRecruiters, and Head of Enterprise Product Marketing at LinkedIn Learning. His expertise spans from product management to product marketing, where he has fine-tuned his skills in product launch, product validation, and positioning while managing profit and loss (P&L) effectively.
Bjorn's insightful approach is to understand the full potential of great innovation—identifying its value, constructing exceptional products, and integrating them seamlessly into the right ecosystem. His passion for marketing is fueled by the desire to resonate emotionally and rationally with stakeholders, which ultimately leads to the creation of powerful brands. He believes in the philosophy that successful businesses are built one notable win at a time.
Education and Achievements
Bjorn's education paved the way for his outstanding career in business and marketing. He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the prestigious Harvard Business School, an institution renowned for shaping some of the most prominent leaders in the business world. Additionally, he earned a Master of Science (MSc) from Linköping University, providing him with a solid foundation in engineering and business principles.
Throughout his impressive career, Bjorn has been instrumental in the success of many organizations. At Oracle, he operated as Director of Customer Results, where he played a crucial role in delivering customer-centric solutions in cloud services. During his tenure at SuccessFactors, an SAP Company, he contributed to enhancing the company’s stature in the HR tech industry, focusing on performance management and recruitment technologies.
Bjorn also made significant contributions as Product Line Manager at NVIDIA and as Senior Consultant at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. It is in these various roles that he honed his capabilities in P&L management and deep domain expertise in machine learning, big data, and SaaS applications.
Personal Philosophy and Leadership Style
Beyond his impressive professional achievements, Bjorn is dedicated to fostering growth and potential in others. He is a strong believer in providing opportunities for individuals to develop their skills and talents. This involves a balance of coaching, guidance, and offering the necessary space for innovation to thrive. Bjorn's approach is characterized by his commitment to not only drive business success but also to cultivate an environment where team members can flourish both personally and professionally.
His passion for hiring people with great potential showcases his understanding that every individual deserves a chance to succeed. Bjorn’s leadership style emphasizes the importance of empathy and empowerment, which he believes are critical elements in nurturing a thriving workplace culture. His ability to motivate and inspire others has fueled teams to embark on shared journeys towards achieving success with innovative products and services.
Achievements
Bjorn Eriksson’s career has been marked by notable achievements that reflect his capabilities as a leader and innovator. Some of his key contributions include:
- Leading innovative marketing strategies that have transformed enterprise applications and services, significantly increasing customer engagement and satisfaction.
- Successful product launches across several leading companies, ensuring that the market received products that resonated well with customers and industry stakeholders.
- Development and deployment of marketing campaign frameworks that measure performance, allowing teams to fine-tune their strategies over time and maximize their impact in the marketplace.
- Building strong brand identities through effective communication and marketing strategies that emphasize both emotional and rational connections with consumers.
- Nurturing high-performing teams that excel in sales development, lead generation, and analyst relations, ultimately contributing to substantial revenues and growth for the organizations he has been a part of.
Bjorn Eriksson's journey is a testament to the powerful combination of innovation, leadership, and a genuine desire to support others in achieving their potential. His extensive experience in the business landscape, coupled with his educational background, has positioned him as a thought leader in marketing and enterprise solutions. As he continues to contribute to his fields of expertise, there is no doubt that Bjorn will remain a significant force for innovation and growth in the industry.
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Clay 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.
Clay 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
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- 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
Clay 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, Clay 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 Clay 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 Clay 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.
Clay 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. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay 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.
Clay 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. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay 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. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay'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.
Clay 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. Clay'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.
Clay 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. Clay 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, Clay 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.
Clay 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.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay 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. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay 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 Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay 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, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay 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. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay 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.
Clay 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 Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay 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, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay 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.
Clay'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. Clay 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 Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay'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, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay 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 Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.