Peter’s Airtable tracks everyone in his life. It breaks people down into circles—so he knows what worlds his contacts run in. It lists people by skill—so he can always make connections to people who might be able to help each other. It tracks everything from how often Peter wants to be in touch with a contact, to which event Peter has last invited them to.

How the CRM is organized

The way I have my Airtable set up allows me to keep track of my relationships with people, as well as manage how I create and maintain contact with them. My People table is the most important part of my Airtable setup. In addition to their names and contact information, each People record contains the following fields: Circle is how I record what network I was a part of when I got to know someone. Was it through college? Through work? Non-profit boards? Personal friendship? Functional is how I keep a record of what work people do. For example, Tom Eisenmann is a professor at Harvard Business School, and he's an angel investor.

Status refers to whether I’ve done something to engage this person recently, while with ‘Affinity’ I record whatever someone might be into. If they’re into productivity, say, or really cool eyewear, or if they’re obsessed with ramen, I’ll put that in here. Last touch is how I keep a record of the last time I sent someone an email – I make sure to enter that manually, to try to nudge myself to keep up with all the contacts I need to make that way.

Active – do I consider my relationship with them to be currently active? Under Cadence I record how often I should be chatting with this person – quarterly, weekly, or whatever. `Geo` shows where they’re based.

A big part of the way I think about building community and helping to connect folks is by getting people together, so under Events I’ll record if I invited someone to a particular event, and I’ll use it to build invite lists in the future. Finally, under Mutual I record the acquaintances and connections that I have in common with someone – it’s all part of seeing how networks overlap and complement each other.

How Peter uses the CRM

First of all, I have a special sub-category under Circle called On Mind – it’s for founders and other folks I constantly think about – people who come across my radar really frequently. At least once a week, usually on either Monday or Friday, I’ll tap into Airtable and make sure that I’ve taken steps to keep up our connection – I should be doing something that either supports them or engages them every week. That could be introducing them to an engineer or someone else they might find interesting, or perhaps inviting them to an event we’re doing for founders. It’s all about finding ways for me to be proactive. Another thing I do is keep a category called ‘NYC Ambassadors’ – I’m big on New York-based venture and startups, and these are some of the investors & founders who are about putting New York on the map for those things.

It’s the first place I go when I think about doing something related to New York venture startups.I look at this list when I have a deal I want to send to someone, or I’m making an investment, or thinking about angels – or I’m even thinking about someone who might want to join me on a non-profit board.

This Week is basically a list of the people I'm going to engage with in a particular week. It will typically be updated by my assistant, who uses it to index all the events that are in my calendar.

I also have a group called Art Community which is for angels, founders, and friends who are broadly interested in the world of art.

Say that the New Museum is doing an opening. I can use this to find out, for example, who I might be able to invite to see new art and catch up with there. I use this quite a bit. Finally, when it comes to hosting events, I use this to organize my invite lists. As you can probably tell by now, my personal and professional lives are blurred together, and holding events is key to both. Whenever I’m going to do an event, I create a record in here with the dates and other notes. Then, when it comes to figuring out who I’m going to invite, I link it to my People table, and it helps me find who I should ask to attend.

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