A US venture capital firm: Airtable CRM ops: event-management app, deal-log audit, dedup, and applicant tracking

In one line. For a US venture capital firm, 80x built a custom event guest-list app on the firm's Airtable CRM, audited the deal log from 29 attributes down to 16, and scoped an applicant tracking system for analyst hiring.

Client & context

A US venture capital firm runs its CRM in Airtable. 80x took on an ongoing optimization engagement across four fronts, event management, deal-log hygiene, deduplication, and hiring, on weekly standups with the firm's team.

The problem

Event guest lists were managed by hand. The deal log had grown to 29 attributes, many duplicative or lightly used, and enrichment (Harmonic headcount) was populated for only a fraction of ~1,500 companies. Records carried duplicates that an executive assistant merged by hand, and email sync had no way to block noise domains. Separately, the firm needed an applicant tracking system for analyst hiring expected to draw 500-1,000 applicants.

What we built

• A custom web app for event invite management on Airtable: API-key auth, CSV upload with column mapping, auto-creation of invites, status tracking, error logging, dedupe prevention, and downloadable results, documented with a Loom.
• An events custom object linking events to attendees with Kanban views, plus an event-agnostic workflow that auto-creates invites for historical and future events alike.
• A deal-log audit cutting attributes from 29 to 16, moving CEO, founder, description, and Harmonic enrichment fields to company/universal level.
• Deduplication logic with a lightweight database for Mailchimp and arbitrary domains, plus a domain blocklist for email sync.
• A scoped ATS: Typeform intake, candidate auto-tagging, partner scoring, and staged rejection emails (automated early rounds, manual partner-stage templates).

How we did it

The event tool was built reusable across events rather than per-event: adding an attendee triggers invite creation, so both historical and future events run the same path. The deal-log audit was additive, not destructive, changes were staged for partner review before rollout. Deduplication ran programmatically, with merged records handed to an executive assistant; domain matching used exact-match logic against the maintained blocklist. The ATS used a list-based access model to wall off candidate data.

Outcome

• Deal-log attributes reduced from 29 to 16 (proposed and approved).
• The event tool was validated by the team as reducing manual workload, with ~12 historical event lists queued for bulk upload.
• The ATS was scoped for 500-1,000 applicants.

Takeaway: Four workstreams under one weekly standup, a working event tool, a 16-attribute deal log, cleaner records, and an applicant tracking system ready for up to 1,000 applicants.