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Kelly Lyons
Strategic finance expert and business builder. Lyonshare founder, Atlas Financial co-founder. $10B+ capital raised.
Professional Background
Kelly Lyons is a dynamic entrepreneur and seasoned financial expert who has made significant strides in the world of venture capital and strategic finance. As the founder of Lyonshare, a VC-readiness and strategic finance firm, Kelly has positioned herself as a leader in helping startups prepare for successful fundraising efforts. Over her remarkable career, she has played a pivotal role in facilitating the raising of more than $10 billion in capital. This impressive feat underscores her deep understanding of finance and her ability to connect investors with promising ventures.
In addition to her role at Lyonshare, Kelly is also a co-founder of Atlas Financial, where she has helped shape the company’s vision and growth. Her breadth of experience encompasses various prestigious financial institutions where she held significant roles, including Morgan Stanley, AIG, and Golub Capital. Kelly's impressive track record reflects her commitment to driving innovation and providing invaluable insights to companies seeking to elevate their financial strategies.
Prior to establishing Lyonshare, Kelly served as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and President of Casa, a fintech venture with substantial backing. Her leadership helped Casa navigate the complexities of the financial landscape, demonstrating her ability to effectively manage and grow financial operations in a competitive environment.
Education and Achievements
Kelly’s academic background laid a solid foundation for her illustrious career in finance. She earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Economics and Finance from Boston College, where she honed her analytical skills and developed a passion for understanding market dynamics. In addition, her studies at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) further enriched her expertise in economic theory and strategic financial planning.
Throughout her career, Kelly has continually expanded her knowledge and skills across various sectors of finance. From her earlier roles as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley to her position as a Summer Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs, she gained diverse experience that has become instrumental in her success.
Notable Roles
Within her impressive career, Kelly has held several significant positions that reflect her expertise and versatility in the finance sector:
- Co-Founder, CFO at Atlas Financial: In her role at Atlas, Kelly’s insights have been vital in shaping the company’s framework and strategies, allowing it to thrive in the competitive financial landscape.
- Founder at Lyonshare: At Lyonshare, Kelly focuses on empowering entrepreneurs and startups, providing them with the tools they need to secure funding and achieve sustainable growth.
- Advisor at XRC Labs: In this capacity, Kelly leverages her extensive financial background to guide emerging companies, fostering innovation and strategic development.
- Former President and CFO at Casa Inc: Kelly’s leadership at Casa involved strategic planning and financial oversight, contributing to the company’s impressive growth trajectory.
- New Funds and Direct Investing at Golub Capital: Kelly’s experience here allowed her to gain insights into managing funds and directing investments towards high-potential opportunities.
- Global M&A and Strategic Planning Associate at AIG: This role further developed Kelly's strategic thinking along with her ability to assess market conditions and mergers & acquisitions.
- Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley: Early in her career, this position provided Kelly with a strong foundation in financial principles and analytics. Her analytical skills were honed here, enabling her to analyze data effectively.
- Summer Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs: This experience contributed to Kelly's robust understanding of financial markets and investment strategies.
Achievements
Kelly’s career is marked by several notable achievements, which highlight her influence in the finance and venture capital spheres:
- Successfully raised over $10 billion in capital throughout her career, cementing her status as a leading figure in the fundraising ecosystem.
- Co-founded Atlas Financial, which focuses on empowering startups—demonstrating her commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Established Lyonshare, which has become a trusted partner for businesses seeking to enhance their VC-readiness and strategic financial planning.
- Played a crucial role in the CFO position at Casa, significantly impacting the company's direction and helping it secure vital venture capital funding.
- Provided advisory support at XRC Labs, guiding startups toward successful execution of their business models.
Kelly Lyons embodies the essence of a consummate professional in finance, showcasing her ability to navigate complex market dynamics and facilitate substantial financial growth. Her impeccable academic background, combined with her extensive experience across prominent financial institutions, makes her a sought-after expert in the field. With a focus on supporting innovative startups through Lyonshare and Atlas Financial, Kelly continues to influence the finance landscape positively and contributes to the overall growth and sustainability of emerging businesses. Her journey exemplifies what it means to be a leader in the finance industry, inspiring both current and future entrepreneurs to pursue their ambitions with diligence and passion.
Highlights
🍷 It was nice to gather an intimate group of VC women at my home last night for our quarterly Women in Venture Wine Night. We loved discussing the state of the fundraising environment, and also talking about NOT work for a minute.
If you'd like to join next time, message me! https://t.co/6tktvhzpr3
(4/6): 𝗔 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵. Strong IP, viral growth, or clear product-market fit—if you have it, geography matters less.
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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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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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- 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.
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