#Airtable and zapier and square how to#

So to assess an incoming application, and at each stage of the application process, each reviewer's feedback is captured on the form, which is them recorded in AirTable. AirTable lets us structure this as a form, which I keep linked from my browser bookmarks tab: The answers to these questions get stored in the Assessment table, which links to the Application table. It looks like this (I've hidden our actual applicants, and there are closer to 15 statuses in total):įor every single startup that applies, we assess the applicant using a special set of questions that we also use in our Design Reviews throughout the program itself. That way, if a company applies to several classes, we can easily see each of them, and see how the company has evolved from one application to the next.īecause AirTable allows us to view a table using a Kanban view, we can easily create a view that starts applications in Inbox, allows us to drag them to Under Consideration, Invite for Pitch, and so on. Each Application links to a Company, which in turn links to several People. Similarly, the startup itself is added to the Company table. Our form asks about each member of the team, and these are represented in the People table. For example, we use a tag field (technically a 'multi-select') for the areas of focus for the venture, a text field for a link to the deck, and long-text for the qualitative questions. To that, we add Applications and Assessments. Almost every question from our form is represented here. These contain all the people and all the companies in Matter's ecosystem not just those who have come through the application process. Our ecosystem base has two core tables: People and Companies. Each table in a base can reference each other. And while a traditional database might have field types like text and integers, AirTable adds file-sharing, images, tagging, spreadsheet-style formulae, and a lot more.

Datasets are split up into 'bases', which each contain 'tables'.

#Airtable and zapier and square how to#

So storing it in a way that can be analyzed easily is vital. I don't have time to write my own scripts, and the investments team shouldn't need to have a computer science degree or know how to code in order to do this.ĪirTable looks like a spreadsheet (at least, by default), but is much more like a database. It's also used in aggregate to examine trends in the startups that apply to us, and to help us figure out where the gaps in our sourcing might be, as well as how to iterate our process. (It's early stage, so these answers are more than likely imperfect, and that's fine.) Do you know who your user is? Who is the team, and can you execute? What is the mission, and why is that important? What are the trends that make this the right time to start this venture? How do you think you'll make money? We also ask diversity and inclusion questions to help us track our progress on our goal to build a more diverse and inclusive kind of startup community.Īll of this data is used to make decisions in the sourcing process individually. For a while, we had it embedded on our site, but a few users reported that the embed didn't work well on mobile devices, so I decided to link directly to the form instead.Īlthough the form is designed to be quick to fill in, we ask for a lot of information that will be useful to us as we make our decisions.

The interface is both simple and pleasant to use. We've used Typeform to power our application form for years. The entire application to our accelerator takes place on a single form. We don't ask for a video, although we do want to see links to external resources like your website - and we definitely want to see a deck. Inspired by Nick Grossman's piece about how Union Square Ventures ran their analyst application process, I thought it might be interesting to show off how we're using a collection of tools to drive our Matter accelerator application process. The trick is to ensure that everyone is handled fairly, robustly, and with transparency internally to the team. Nothing happens based on a whim, and nobody can fall through the cracks. We get many hundreds of applications for every class, which almost all arrive via our website. It's my job - together with my New York City counterpart, Josh Lucido - to run the process, source candidates, and find the twelve teams that will walk through our San Francisco garage door on August 13.