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Kadi-Ingrid Lilles
Venture Capital Fellow 2021 - Included VC - Startup Relationships, Community Building & B2B Marketing
Kadi-Ingrid Lilles is an intellectually curious and driven aspiring venture professional who embodies a unique blend of empathy and expertise. With a strong passion for lifelong learning and a commitment to supporting startups, Kadi has accrued several years of international experience working with early-stage startups, established corporations, and government institutions. Her focus has primarily been on sourcing, communicating, and building meaningful relationships with startups, coupled with her operational capabilities in managing marketing, communications, and community dynamics for early-stage B2B startups.
Over the years, Kadi has seamlessly navigated diverse roles across various sectors, helping DAX 30 corporations fulfil their innovation needs through impactful startup collaborations. Her experience includes marketing an early-stage B2B automotive startup in Berlin, assessing and screening promising seed and early-stage startups in the well-known hub of Silicon Valley, and contributing significantly to the development of Estonia's startup brand and ecosystem. Her entrepreneurial spirit is evident through her role as a co-founder of Estonia's first social enterprise incubator, where she has played a pivotal role in nurturing and supporting impactful ventures aimed at making a difference in their communities. Kadi is always eager to pursue new opportunities that allow her to support visionary founders and early-stage ventures throughout Europe, showcasing her dedication to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.
Professional Background
Kadi-Ingrid Lilles' professional journey is characterized by an impressive range of roles and responsibilities that highlight her multifaceted expertise in the startup ecosystem. Starting her career as a Project Manager at AIESEC, Kadi laid the foundation for her future endeavors in leadership and community engagement. She transitioned to Noored Liidrid, where she further honed her community management skills as a Community Manager and later as the Executive Manager. Her work focused on fostering young leaders and empowering them in their entrepreneurial journeys.
Kadi's passion for startups led her to explore her role in marketing and community engagement at Pipedrive, where she worked as a Social Media Marketing Intern. This position provided her with essential insights into digital marketing strategies that cater to the startup environment. Subsequently, her expertise led her to become the Head of Communications and Community at Startup Estonia, where she played a vital part in building and enhancing the startup ecosystem within the country.
In her capacity as a Venture Associate at Plug and Play Ventures, Kadi delved deep into the venture capital landscape, gaining a comprehensive understanding of what investors seek in potential startup opportunities. This was followed by her impactful role as Marketing & Community Manager at HIGH MOBILITY, further diversifying her experience and expanding her network within the automotive startup sector.
Notably, Kadi then served as the Venture Analyst and Startup Success Manager at GlassDollar, where she helped startups find the right paths to success through dedicated support and analytical insights. This role was critical in understanding startups' unique needs and how to optimize their journeys towards growth and stability. Her latest achievement includes being a Venture Capital Fellow at Included VC in 2021, which highlighted her continual commitment to professional development and her passion for empowering underrepresented founders in the venture space.
Education and Achievements
Kadi-Ingrid Lilles pursued her academic interests at Tartu Ülikool (University of Tartu), where she completed her Bachelor's Degree. Her educational foundation has been pivotal in fostering her analytical skills, strategic thinking, and understanding of business structures. Kadi's educational background complements her professional pursuits by providing her with a broad perspective on global trends and practices within the startup ecosystem.
Achieving numerous milestones throughout her career, Kadi has been recognized not only for her professional capabilities but also for her dedication to community building and mentorship. Her achievements extend to the establishment of Estonia’s first social enterprise incubator, SEIKU, which plays a vital role in supporting social entrepreneurship and impactful business models. As a co-founder, she has successfully facilitated the growth of numerous startups, guiding them toward achieving their missions and goals in social impact.
Achievements
Kadi-Ingrid Lilles' career is a tapestry of impressive achievements that reflect her commitment to innovation, collaboration, and community support. She has successfully marketed an early-stage B2B automotive startup in Berlin, showcasing her ability to blend analytical rigor with creative marketing strategies. Sourcing and evaluating promising startups from Silicon Valley has equipped her with a keen eye for identifying market opportunities, a skill crucial for any venture professional today. Her contributions to developing Estonia's startup brand have not only elevated the local ecosystem but have also attracted international attention for its growing potential.
Furthermore, her time at major corporations and startups alike has equipped her with the insight needed to help businesses navigate the complexities of the startup landscape. Kadi's role in startup collaboration for top corporations appeals to both her strategic mind and her empathetic nature, enabling her to meaningfully connect corporate innovation needs with startup solutions. Kadi's journey illustrates her unwavering commitment to fostering a vibrant startup culture in Europe, where she continues to seek new opportunities to impact aspiring entrepreneurs positively.
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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
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- 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.
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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.