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Eric Li
Experienced product leader passionate about climate, education, & justice - BCG, Khan Academy Alum
Professional Background
Eric Li is a distinguished product leader with over six years of experience within the technology sector. He possesses a profound ability to seamlessly blend user advocacy with data-driven insights, effectively translating those into impactful product strategies that foster growth and engagement. At Khan Academy, Eric was pivotal in generating an impressive 45% of the annual classroom growth while also helping to secure over $4 million in donations with just 7% of the organization’s product resources. This achievement highlights not only his talent for resource optimization but also his capability to deliver high-impact, user-centric products.
Founder of the retention team at Credible, Eric was instrumental in the development of products from scratch to drive user engagement and ensure customer retention. His strategic orientation is evident in his successful launch of a new homepage at PeopleGrove, which resulted in a 40% increase in student connections, the primary Key Performance Indicator for the company. This endeavor was backed by comprehensive user interviews and meticulous usability tests, showcasing Eric’s commitment to user research and his capacity for data-informed decision-making.
Eric’s influence extends beyond just product launches; he significantly reduced product development times by 75% by creating a scalable marketing infrastructure. This innovation allowed for simultaneous product launches across multiple countries, including the United States, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, showcasing his adeptness in managing complex projects efficiently on a global scale.
Eric has also lent his expertise to various prestigious organizations, ascending through roles that further solidified his reputation in product management. His ability to communicate effectively and lead cross-functional teams has set him apart in every organization he has contributed to.
Education and Achievements
Eric is a well-rounded individual with robust academic credentials. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Rice University, where he developed a strong analytical skill set. Further sharpening his expertise, Eric studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science, taking on a General Course in Economics. His commitment to ongoing education is exemplified by his fellowship at Terra.do, specializing in Climate Change and Learning for Action.
His educational background has laid a solid foundation for his ability to create inspiring product visions and navigate the complexities of product development. Eric’s formative years were spent at Cinco Ranch High School, contributing early to his interest in economics and technology.
Notable Achievements
- Generated 45% of Khan Academy's Annual Classroom Growth: Eric's strategic insights and product development direction propelled significant growth at Khan Academy, emphasizing how targeted efforts can lead to substantial educational impact.
- Founded Retention Team at Credible: Recognizing the necessity of user engagement, Eric established a team dedicated to enhancing customer retention through innovative product strategies.
- Achieved 40% Increase in User Connections at PeopleGrove: By launching a new homepage informed by extensive user feedback, Eric took proactive steps to improve user engagement metrics.
- Reduced Product Development Times by 75%: His innovative marketing infrastructure allowed for accelerated product launches across various markets, illustrating a novel approach to scaling products effectively.
Professional Expertise and Skills
Eric specializes in a broad range of essential product management skills:
- End-to-End Product Management: His ability to manage products from inception through to launch underscores his comprehensive understanding of the product lifecycle.
- Data Analytics and User Research: Eric utilizes rigorous data analytics combined with user feedback to make informed decisions that directly impact product performance.
- A/B Testing: His approach to A/B testing has refined product features and enhanced user experiences based on empirical data.
- Exceptional Communication Skills: Whether through oral presentations or written documentation, Eric excels at conveying complex ideas in an accessible manner—an invaluable asset in cross-functional leadership roles.
- Inspirational Product Vision Creation: His knack for crafting compelling product visions ensures alignment across teams and fosters a culture of shared goals.
- Systems and Infrastructure Thinking: Recognizing the importance of supporting structures, Eric's strategic thinking extends to building operational backbones that sustain product initiatives.
Career Journey
Currently, Eric is part of the product team at Afresh, contributing his extensive expertise to enhance product offerings within the organization. His previous roles include serving as the Education Engagement Programs Lead at Adobe, where he managed educational initiatives that fostered user engagement with Adobe products.
Before Adobe, he was a Senior Product Manager at Credible and PeopleGrove, where he applied his deep understanding of user engagement to drive product innovation and retention strategies. Additionally, Eric's tenure at Khan Academy, Spire Education, and The Boston Consulting Group reflects his commitment to improving educational frameworks through technology and innovative product solutions.
His diverse career history also includes experience as a GMAT and SAT Tutor at Varsity Tutors, as well as a Summer Associate at Boston Consulting Group and as a Spring & Summer Analyst at J.P. Morgan, broadening his perspective on the intersections between technology, education, and financial services. As a co-founder and CEO of Wisga.com, he demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit early in his career.
Conclusion
With a rich blend of expertise in product management, data analytics, and user engagement, Eric Li exemplifies the modern product leader who is not only focused on business outcomes but also committed to the user experience. His track record of delivering high-impact products and innovative solutions makes him a valuable asset in any technology-driven organization.
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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.