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Melissa C.
Founder of Krippit | FashionTech | 3D-Printing | Financial Advisor for Startup Investors & Small Businesses| FinTech BOD member
Professional Background
Melissa C. is a dynamic investment management professional with over 14 years of comprehensive experience, primarily focused on catering to high-net-worth business owners and startup investors. She excels in crafting integrated wealth management strategies that deftly interlace traditional investment advice with key elements such as insurance, tax, and estate planning solutions. Through her work, she emphasizes the importance of tailored financial strategies that align with the unique goals and aspirations of her affluent clientele.
In addition to her wealth management expertise, Melissa serves as a consultant for various internal innovation initiatives at CI Investments, the esteemed parent company of her independent practice. Her role involves providing insights and strategies that foster innovation within the organization, reinforcing her stature as a thought leader in both the finance and technology segments.
Entrepreneurial Ventures
Adding to her illustrious career, Melissa is also the founder of Krippit, a unique fashion tech startup dedicated to empowering women by providing a hassle-free solution to protect high heels. Her entrepreneurial venture innovatively addresses a common problem faced by many women: the frustration of heels that sink into soft grassy surfaces or break on rough subway grates. Utilizing her deep knowledge in 3D printing, product design, and customer research, Melissa designed a universal and fashionable heel protector that meets this vital need.
Her journey with Krippit reflects her unwavering commitment to solving real-world problems seamlessly through innovative and sustainable solutions. Melissa's ability to raise private funding, secure consumer packing contracts with renowned Fortune 500 companies, and obtain a patent for her revolutionary invention underlines her entrepreneurial spirit and effectiveness in bringing ideas to market.
Education and Achievements
Melissa's educational background is as impressive as her professional accomplishments. She holds a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) degree, complemented by an esteemed Fellowship through the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute (EII) at the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management. This advanced education has equipped her with the nuanced understanding necessary for navigating the complex landscape of investment management and entrepreneurship.
In addition, she pursued a Global Professional (LL.M.) in Innovation, Law & Technology at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, which has given her a robust foundation in the legal aspects of innovation and technology. Further enhancing her entrepreneurial skills, Melissa completed a Certificate in Entrepreneurship Strategy: From Ideation to Exit at HEC Paris, offering her strategic insights into starting and scaling businesses.
Her academic foundation in Economics & Media Information & Technoculture from Western University has provided her with a solid understanding of economic principles, media dynamics, and the importance of technology in today's fast-paced environment. Melissa's educational journey began at Branksome Hall and Thornlea Secondary School, setting the stage for her exceptional career path.
Notable Contributions and Roles
Throughout her career, Melissa has held numerous influential positions and contributed to several organizations, showcasing her diverse skills and leadership capabilities. She has acted as a Board Member for Signalwealth AI, where her insight helps shape strategic decisions at the intersection of finance and technology.
As an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Fashion Zone at Ryerson University, she guided budding entrepreneurs, fostering the next generation of innovators in the fashion tech industry. Her role as a Financial Advisor at CI Assante Wealth Management allowed her to develop essential advisory skills while enhancing her financial acumen.
Additionally, Melissa's involvement with various incubators and accelerators, such as Futureworks Incubator, and The DMZ, where she served as Co-founder/CEO of Krippit, demonstrates her ability to thrive in collaborative environments that foster creativity and innovation. Her contributions in these roles have profoundly influenced the entrepreneurial ecosystem in her community.
Passion for Innovation and Sustainability
Melissa C. is not just a finance and tech professional but a passionate advocate for innovation and sustainability. Her efforts with Krippit align with her desire to create products that not only solve everyday problems but do so with an emphasis on environmental responsibility. By employing contemporary technologies such as 3D printing, she promotes a forward-thinking approach to product development, underscoring her commitment to making a meaningful impact in both the business and technological realms.
Conclusion
In summary, Melissa C. is a multifaceted professional whose extensive experience in investment management, coupled with her entrepreneurial ventures in fashion technology, establishes her as a leader in both domains. Her educational qualifications and a rich history of contributions to various organizations further cement her reputation as an innovator and strategist. As she continues to build on her success, Melissa remains focused on empowering others and addressing challenges with sustainable solutions, making her a pivotal figure to watch in the realms of investment management and technology-driven entrepreneurship.
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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.