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Breen Sullivan
Founder @ The Fourth Effect | Networking and Matchmaking Site Changing the Board and Innovation Landscape
Professional Background
Breen Sullivan is a dynamic entrepreneur and the visionary Founder of The Fourth Effect, a transformative networking and matchmaking platform dedicated to bridging the gap between startups and exceptional talent. Breen's mission is to democratize access to startup boards, fundamentally changing the innovation landscape by leveraging technology and a vibrant community. She has expertly identified the unmet needs of growth-stage companies that often face challenges in filling board seats and assembling impactful advisory boards.
Drawing from over a decade of experience as a General Counsel and C-Suite executive, Breen possesses in-depth insights into the hurdles faced by under-represented founders, fund managers, and board candidates. Her expertise spans across the tech startup landscape, where she has successfully guided numerous companies through critical growth phases, ensuring they are equipped with the right governance and advisory structures to thrive.
Breen's entrepreneurial spirit has culminated in The Fourth Effect, which currently boasts an impressive membership of 12,000+ individuals, including 3,100 premium users and 2,000 senior executives, such as General Counsel, C-Suite officers, and Senior VPs from diverse industries. The platform also connects over 800 startups and entrepreneurs with vital resources, including access to 23 Affiliate Funds and a network of 150+ angels, LPs, and GPs.
Breen's commitment to fostering an inclusive and diverse startup ecosystem is a driving force behind her work, as she actively empowers startups to form advisory and governing boards that reflect a greater variety of perspectives. Through this democratization, she not only facilitates professional growth and wealth-building opportunities but also actively levels the playing field for all participants in the startup arena.
Education and Achievements
Breen Sullivan's educational journey has been marked by a pursuit of excellence that is reflected in her choice of institutions and fields of study. She earned her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Theater Studies from the prestigious Yale University, where she developed strong communication skills and a keen understanding of storytelling that now serves her well in her roles as an executive and founder. Following her undergraduate studies, she continued her education in the legal field, obtaining her Doctor of Law (JD) from both Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley. This robust legal foundation has been instrumental in shaping her career, positioning her to navigate complex regulatory environments and contribute meaningfully to the governance of innovative companies.
Breen's professional accomplishments have garnered widespread recognition in leading media outlets. She has been featured by Forbes, Nasdaq, and the Corporate Counsel Business Journal, among others, highlighting her contributions to the field of legal affairs and entrepreneurship. This extensive media presence not only affirms her status as a thought leader but also amplifies her mission to create more opportunities for under-represented individuals in the startup ecosystem.
Involvement and Impact
Throughout her career, Breen has held several key positions that reflect her leadership capabilities and commitment to the professional growth of others. As the Chief Administrative Officer at Watermark, she played a critical role in advancing the organization's initiatives. Additionally, she served as the Head of Legal and Business Affairs at Known and held the position of General Counsel at Bright Power, Inc., where she was instrumental in overseeing legal strategies and compliance matters.
Earlier roles in her career, such as an Intellectual Property Associate at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP and an Oil & Gas Litigation Team member at GE, further showcase her diverse experience across various sectors. Breen's journey also includes valuable insights gained as a Law Clerk at the New York Civil Liberties Union and her early experience as a Language Arts/Theater Teacher-Intern at Casablanca American School. Each of these roles contributed to her holistic view of the professional landscape, thereby enriching her leadership approach at The Fourth Effect.
In her role as a founding member of Marble Collective, Breen has helped to build a community that nurtures innovation and collaboration among emerging leaders. Her impact is continually felt as she actively engages in discussions on panels and podcasts, sharing her expertise with audiences eager to learn about leveraging technology for equitable access to board opportunities and investment pathways.
Breen Sullivan's work embodies a pioneering spirit aimed at reshaping the startup narrative. Her efforts not only highlight the crucial need for diversity on boards but also create a structured framework that encourages talented individuals to step into board positions—ultimately contributing to a richer innovation ecosystem that values every voice. As a mentor and advocate, Breen remains dedicated to empowering the next generation of leaders, ensuring that their potential is recognized and cultivated.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Breen Sullivan stands as a beacon of innovation and inclusivity in the startup community. Through her groundbreaking work with The Fourth Effect, she is transforming the way startups access board talent, paving the way for a brighter future where diverse perspectives can flourish in leadership roles. Breen's extensive legal background, proven executive experience, and unwavering commitment to equitable access underscore her mission to empower startups and change the industry for the better.
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Clay 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, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
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
- 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
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.