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Dave Bradley
COO at Steel Media Ltd (Pocket Gamer)
Professional Background
Dave Bradley is a seasoned manager, writer, editor, and event host, bringing over 25 years of rich experience in the games, home computing, and entertainment sectors. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Steel Media, where he collaborates closely with the senior leadership team to oversee various business facets, particularly in editorial and event communications. Steel Media is renowned within the mobile gaming community, especially for its premier product, Pocket Gamer, alongside a range of other influential websites. The company is not just a digital media hub; it also hosts numerous prestigious conferences and summits in key gaming destinations including London, San Francisco, Dubai, and Helsinki, among others. For more information about upcoming events organized by Steel Media, you can visit Pocket Gamer Connects.
In 2019, Steel Media became part of Enthusiast Gaming, a trendsetter as the largest network of communities tailored for gamers and esports enthusiasts globally. Under Dave's leadership, Steel Media has maintained its reputation in the fast-paced gaming industry, aligning ever closer with emerging trends and gamer interests.
Previously, Dave held the esteemed position of Group Editor-in-Chief for Future's Film Group. In this role, he steered high-profile entertainment brands such as SFX, Comic Heroes, Crime Scene, and Total Film. His editorial expertise also extends to highly regarded home computing publications, including the official Microsoft Windows magazine, where he played a pivotal role as Senior Editor.
Dave’s passion for the gaming and entertainment world does not stop at his professional pursuits; he is frequently seen at networking events and conventions around the globe. His ability to connect with industry peers and share insights is unparalleled. He has had the privilege of addressing game developer groups worldwide, and he boasts extensive experience as a moderator, having conducted countless hours of online webinars. Those interested can explore his engaging webinar sessions by visiting his YouTube channel dedicated to Pocket Gamer Connects: PocketGamerbiz Videos.
In addition, Dave has made significant contributions to discussions surrounding science, technology, and entertainment. He has hosted prominent events such as the Arthur C. Clarke Award's science and technology panel at London's famed Royal Society and participated in various panels during the esteemed San Diego Comic-Con. As an active writer, speaker, and podcast guest, he continues to be engaged with discussions on gaming, science fiction, and broader entertainment topics, showcasing his depth of knowledge and passion for the field.
Beyond the confines of Steel Media, Dave provides his expertise as a commercial publishing consultant, offering editorial advice and services to multiple esteemed publishing companies, including Future, Dialect, and Crime Fiction Lover. He is particularly devoted to nurturing the next generation of media professionals through his involvement in Bath Spa University's Industry Mentorship scheme, where he shares valuable insights into careers within media and publishing.
Education and Achievements
Dave possesses a solid academic foundation, holding a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with Honors and a Master of Arts (MA) in English Language and Literature from the prestigious University of Oxford. He further honed his expertise by studying Medieval English Language and Literature at King's College London, where he obtained another MA. This rigorous educational background has greatly influenced his writing and editorial work, enabling him to produce high-quality content across various platforms.
Over the years, Dave has amassed a stellar array of achievements. As a former Commercial Publishing Consultant at That Media Thing Ltd and a freelance writer at SFX Magazine, he expanded his professional network and further developed his editorial acumen by contributing compelling stories to diverse audiences. He also has an impressive track record in operations management, having held roles as Managing Director at Electric Box Media Ltd and Chief Operations Officer at Steel Media Ltd.
Throughout his career, Dave has worn many hats—serving as Editor-in-Chief for popular magazines like SFX and Comic Heroes and leading the editorial teams on significant publications such as Total Film and Microsoft Windows XP: The Official Magazine, and PC Format. His ability to adapt to different editorial lenses while maintaining high standards of creativity and relevance is a testament to his versatility and commitment to the industry.
Personal Interests
When he is not traveling for work or playing games, Dave enjoys channeling his creativity into writing short stories. This passion for storytelling echoes his professional pursuits and highlights his understanding of narrative structures, character development, and reader engagement. He embraces every opportunity to exchange ideas related to gaming and technology, and is always open to collaborations, industry discussions, and event meet-ups.
Conclusion
Dave Bradley is a prominent figure in the media and gaming industries, known for his leadership, editorial expertise, and dynamic presence at industry events. With a career deeply rooted in creativity and a commitment to fostering connections within the gaming community, he continues to inspire others through his contributions, insights, and collaborative spirit. Whether through his editorial work or speaking engagements, Dave consistently delivers value that resonates with both audiences and industry professionals alike.
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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.