Managing Pipeline with Airtable

Sadly, I was overexcited to work on this project, so I figured I'd share a few of the details with you.

This week, I decided to tackle the Fundraising CRM. Historically, I would've leaned directly into Hubspot, but I gotta say, it's simply gotten too expensive for startups. Yes, they have a special startup program, but at some point, you're going to pay full price – and I just don't think it's worth it anymore.

So I started to dig around. I looked at Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, and Zendesk CRM. And then it dawned on me, why not use Airtable? I learned to use the product through The Fund. It's free. And there has to be a CRM template, right?

I was right. This is a very common use case for Airtable, so they have several amazing, pre-built templates available. I chose to start with the Sales CRM template for this project.  

Create Your CRM In Airtable

The most important things to track in your sales CRM:

• Accounts & Contacts: Who are you pitching and where do they work?

• Opportunities: What's the opportunity with this person and company?
  It's important to break this out because there may be more than one way for you to work with your contacts! For example, at ShowClix, ReedPop was an Account. Our Opportunities with them were New York Comic Con, C2E2, Emerald City Comic Con, and more.

• Interactions: Keep track of every conversation you have and email you send. You want to have quick access to this without having to search your inbox.

These are the basics. You can get super fancy with it after laying a strong foundation.

Here's what our Opportunites view looks like:

And here's the Interactions page:

And the first timesaver I added: Log Interactions With Buttons!

When you click on the Log Interactions button, it launches a form to fill add details around the type of interaction you had with the opportunity.

In addition to adding a button to log interactions quickly, I also added a formula to prefill the form with existing data, so we don't have to do extra work.

Here's the video on how to do that (not as easy). If you don't want to watch the video, here's the formula you need to plug into the Button URL formula:

“FORMLINKHERE?prefill_First+Field=” & {Field Name} & “&prefill_Second+Field=” & {Field Name}

Up Next: Two Additional Databases.

One to collect information about the mentors, advisors, and builders who will be working with us, and a second to collect ideas from our future founders!

Speaking of, while decompressing from the bridge collapse at Margaux last Friday, I was pitched an amazing CPG idea...

Magnetic coats!

And no, the entire coat isn't magnetic. That would be crazy. You'd be covered in forks by the end of the day. It's much more sophisticated than that. These coats have magnetic closures. Think of it as an apparel version of this:

This idea was pitched to me and my friend Ryan Gent by a guy named Eric. He was an excellent bar neighbor.

Cheers!

Until next time,
✌️Lynsie

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lynsiecampbell.com
thefund.vc
buildhooman.com

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